Helen L Ball
Biographic Data
| ID | 78805 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Helen L Ball |
| GIVEN NAMES | Helen L |
| FAMILY NAME | Ball |
| SIGNATURE | BALL H L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2255-121X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 100 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Mother-Infant Sleeping Arrangements and Night-Time Touch Behaviors
Affective touch is interpersonal touch which carries an emotional valence and is important to humans and other primates for stress resilience and social bonding. It is acknowledged that infants who sleep in close proximity to a caregiver receive more touch. However, mother-infant night-time touch has not been investigated with an understanding of affective touch mechanisms and with infant night-time location treated as a continuous rather than ca…
We don’t ask for a luxury life, just basic things’: The experiences of mothers with babies in the UK asylum system
Experiences of caring for infants in asylum accommodation were investigated. • Mothers seeking asylum in Glasgow experience hostility and poor housing. • Dispersed accommodation is inadequate and unsafe for mothers and infants. • Poor housing and hostility negatively impact maternal wellbeing and infant health and safety. UK asylum accommodation has repeatedly been indicted as failing to meet the needs of pregnant individuals, those caring for ba…
Piloting Eyes on the Baby: A Multiagency Training and Implementation Intervention Linking Sudden Unexpected Infant Death Prevention and Safeguarding
We describe the coproduction, pilot implementation, and user evaluation of an evidence‐based training intervention addressing prevention of Sudden Unexpected Deaths in Infancy (SUDI) for the multiagency workforce supporting vulnerable families with babies in a northern English county. We aimed in this pilot study to improve knowledge, skills, and engagement of professionals and support staff providing services for vulnerable families with increas…
Death from Failed Protection? An Evolutionary-Developmental Theory of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has been mainly described from a risk perspective, with a focus on endogenous, exogenous, and temporal risk factors that can interact to facilitate lethal outcomes. Here we discuss the limitations that this risk-based paradigm may have, using two of the major risk factors for SIDS, prone sleep position and bed-sharing, as examples. Based on a multipronged theoretical model encompassing evolutionary theory, deve…
The impact of swaddling upon breastfeeding: A critical review
Relationships between postpartum depression, sleep, and infant feeding in the early postpartum: An exploratory analysis
Postpartum depression may be associated with disturbed sleep due to negative perception of sleep among depressed women, rather than disrupted sleep causing postpartum depression. With regard to infant feeding method, exclusively breastfeeding women are not more likely to suffer from postpartum depression, and different pathways may predict development of postpartum depression symptoms in exclusively breastfeeding and exclusively formula feeding w…
Biologically normal sleep in the mother‐infant dyad
OBJECTIVES: We examine infant sleep from evolutionary, historico-cultural, and statistical/epidemiological perspectives and explore the distinct conceptions of "normal" produced by each. We use data from the "Sleeping Like a Baby" study to illustrate how these perspectives influence the ideals and practices of new parents. METHODS: The "Sleeping Like a Baby" study investigated maternal-infant sleep in north-east England. Sleep data for exclusivel…
A Box to Put the Baby in: UK Parent Perceptions of Two Baby Box Programmes Promoted for Infant Sleep
Between 2016 and 2019, two different infant sleeping-box interventions were implemented in England: (1) shallow polypropylene baby boxes were distributed via a feasibility study to families with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) risk factors; and (2) a commercial-health system partnership scheme distributed cardboard baby boxes to new mothers in particular locations. We conducted parent evaluations of both interventions at the time of implement…
Conducting Online Surveys
There is an established methodology for conducting survey research that aims to ensure rigorous research and robust outputs. With the advent of easy-to-use online survey platforms, however, the quality of survey studies has declined. This article summarizes the pros and cons of online surveys and emphasizes the key principles of survey research, for example questionnaire validation and sample selection. Numerous texts are available to guide resea…
Toward an Integrated Anthropology of Infant Sleep
This article provides a novel synthesis of anthropological research on infant sleep, focusing on work in biological and sociocultural anthropology in the past decade. First, we briefly review early biological anthropological research into infant sleep from 1987 to 2007, which provided the evidence base for the argument that proximate parent-infant sleep combined with lactation represents a complex set of adaptations that constitute the human evol…
Bi-ethnic infant thermal care beliefs in Bradford, UK
Purpose – Overheating is considered a modifiable risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The purpose of this paper is to explore differences in infant thermal care beliefs between mothers of South Asian and white British origin in Bradford, UK. Design/methodology/approach – This study employed face-to-face interviews with semi-structured and structured questions with 51 white British and 51 South-Asian mothers in the Bradford Distric…
Exploring Maternal Perceptions of Infant Sleep and Feeding Method Among Mothers in the United Kingdom: A Qualitative Focus Group Study
Could Parental Rules Play a Role in the Association Between Short Sleep and Obesity in Young Children?
Short sleep duration is associated with obesity in young children. This study develops the hypothesis that parental rules play a role in this association. Participants were 3-year-old children and their parents, recruited at nursery schools in socioeconomically deprived and non-deprived areas of a North-East England town. Parents were interviewed to assess their use of sleep, television-viewing and dietary rules, and given diaries to document the…
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Sids) risk reduction and infant sleep location – Moving the discussion forward
One size does not fit all
Nighttime parenting strategies and sleep-related risks to infants
A large social science and public health literature addresses infant sleep safety, with implications for infant mortality in the context of accidental deaths and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). As part of risk reduction campaigns in the USA, parents are encouraged to place infants supine and to alter infant bedding and elements of the sleep environment, and are discouraged from allowing infants to sleep unsupervised, from bed-sharing either …
Misrecognition of need: Women's experiences of and explanations for undergoing cesarean delivery
International rates of operative delivery are consistently higher than the World Health Organization determined is appropriate. This suggests that factors other than clinical indications contribute to cesarean section. Data presented here are from interviews with 115 mothers on the postnatal ward of a hospital in Northeast England during February 2006 to March 2009 after the women underwent either unscheduled or scheduled cesarean childbirth. Usi…
Trade‐offs underlying maternal breastfeeding decisions: A conceptual model
This paper presents a new conceptual model that generates predictions about breastfeeding decisions and identifies interactions that affect outcomes. We offer a contextual approach to infant feeding that models multi-directional influences by expanding on the evolutionary parent-offspring conflict and situation-specific breastfeeding theories. The main hypothesis generated from our framework suggests that simultaneously addressing breastfeeding c…
Theory‐Based Abstinence‐Only Intervention May Delay Sexual Initiation Among Black Urban Youth
Death of a Spouse May Be Associated With Increased STD Diagnosis Among Older Men
Practicing Evolutionary Medicine in a Postnatal Ward: Ameliorating Iatrogenic Obstacles to Breastfeeding
Past Academic, Drug‐Related and Sexual Behaviors Predict Risky Sex After High School
Behavioral patterns formed in high school may foreshadow sexual risk-taking in the months after young people leave high school, according to a study of 19-year-olds in the Pacific Northwest.1 In contrast with literature that associates college attendance and living away from home with increases in risk behaviors, the study shows that in the fall after high school, college attendance predicted a decreased probability of sexual risk behaviors, whil…
Dating and Nondating Relationships Among Sexually Active Adolescents Are Often Surprisingly Similar
Sexually active teenagers who are not in a dating relationship most often have sex with other adolescents whom they know well, according to a study of seventh, ninth and 11th graders in Lucas County, Ohio.1 Although 61% of sexually active adolescents surveyed had had sex with someone who was not their boyfriend or girlfriend, only a very small proportion of this group had engaged in sex with strangers, and fewer than one-quarter had had sex with …
Positive Attitudes Toward Condom Use Do Not Equal Safer Sex Among Teenagers
Mother–infant cosleeping, breastfeeding and sudden infant death syndrome: What biological anthropology has discovered about normal infant sleep and pediatric sleep medicine
Twenty years ago a new area of inquiry was launched when anthropologists proposed that an evolutionary perspective on infancy could contribute to our understanding of unexplained infant deaths. Here we review two decades of research examining parent-infant sleep practices and the variability of maternal and infant sleep physiology and behavior in social and solitary sleeping environments. The results challenge clinical wisdom regarding "normal" i…
Mother–infant cosleeping, breastfeeding and sudden infant death syndrome: What biological anthropology has discovered about normal infant sleep and pediatric sleep medicine
Twenty years ago a new area of inquiry was launched when anthropologists proposed that an evolutionary perspective on infancy could contribute to our understanding of unexplained infant deaths. Here we review two decades of research examining parent-infant sleep practices and the variability of maternal and infant sleep physiology and behavior in social and solitary sleeping environments. The results challenge clinical wisdom regarding "normal" i…
Where Will the Baby Sleep? Attitudes and Practices of New and Experienced Parents Regarding Cosleeping with Their Newborn Infants
An evolutionary perspective on human infant sleep physiology suggests that parent-infant cosleeping, practiced under safe conditions, might be beneficial to both mothers and infants. However, cosleeping is not part of mainstream parenting ideology in the United States or the United Kingdom, and little evidence is available to indicate whether, and under what circumstances, parents sleep with their newborn infants. We present data from an anthropo…
The Anthropology of Pregnancy: Comparative Studies in Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Neonatal Death
Contents: R. Cecil, Introduction: An Insignificant Event? Literary and Anthropological Perspectives on Pregnancy Loss -- P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery, Delayed Periods and Falling Babies: The Ethnophysiology and Politics of Pregnancy Loss in Rural North India -- E. Sobo, Cultural Explanations for Pregnancy Loss in Rural Jamaica -- A. Winkvist, Water Spirits, Medicinemen and Witches: Avenues to Successful Reproduction among the Abelam, Papua New Guine…
Reevaluating 'Twin Infanticide
Toward an Integrated Anthropology of Infant Sleep
This article provides a novel synthesis of anthropological research on infant sleep, focusing on work in biological and sociocultural anthropology in the past decade. First, we briefly review early biological anthropological research into infant sleep from 1987 to 2007, which provided the evidence base for the argument that proximate parent-infant sleep combined with lactation represents a complex set of adaptations that constitute the human evol…
Parent-infant bed-sharing behavior: Effects of feeding type and presence of father
Misrecognition of need: Women's experiences of and explanations for undergoing cesarean delivery
International rates of operative delivery are consistently higher than the World Health Organization determined is appropriate. This suggests that factors other than clinical indications contribute to cesarean section. Data presented here are from interviews with 115 mothers on the postnatal ward of a hospital in Northeast England during February 2006 to March 2009 after the women underwent either unscheduled or scheduled cesarean childbirth. Usi…
Nighttime parenting strategies and sleep-related risks to infants
A large social science and public health literature addresses infant sleep safety, with implications for infant mortality in the context of accidental deaths and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). As part of risk reduction campaigns in the USA, parents are encouraged to place infants supine and to alter infant bedding and elements of the sleep environment, and are discouraged from allowing infants to sleep unsupervised, from bed-sharing either …
Sleeping like a baby: Attitudes and experiences of bedsharing in Northeast England
This paper reports findings from a study that investigated infant care practices in a small population of Northeast England in order to determine whether parent‐infant bedsharing is common parenting behavior. In a year‐long prospective study we examined the opinions and practices of parents with regard to their infants’ nighttime sleeping strategies before and after the birth of their babies. Results confirm that parents pursue a heterogeneous ar…
Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives
"Abnormal births and other "ill omens: The adaptive case for infanticide
Bi-ethnic infant thermal care beliefs in Bradford, UK
Purpose – Overheating is considered a modifiable risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The purpose of this paper is to explore differences in infant thermal care beliefs between mothers of South Asian and white British origin in Bradford, UK. Design/methodology/approach – This study employed face-to-face interviews with semi-structured and structured questions with 51 white British and 51 South-Asian mothers in the Bradford Distric…
Death from Failed Protection? An Evolutionary-Developmental Theory of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has been mainly described from a risk perspective, with a focus on endogenous, exogenous, and temporal risk factors that can interact to facilitate lethal outcomes. Here we discuss the limitations that this risk-based paradigm may have, using two of the major risk factors for SIDS, prone sleep position and bed-sharing, as examples. Based on a multipronged theoretical model encompassing evolutionary theory, deve…
Practicing Evolutionary Medicine in a Postnatal Ward: Ameliorating Iatrogenic Obstacles to Breastfeeding
Positive Attitudes Toward Condom Use Do Not Equal Safer Sex Among Teenagers
"Abnormal births and other "ill omens: The adaptive case for infanticide
Reevaluating 'Twin Infanticide
Insurance Ovulation, Embryo Mortality and Twinning
The ‘insurance ova’ hypothesis (Anderson, 1990) views dizygotic twinning as a by-product of selection for multiple ovulation which sometimes – in error – results in the birth of twins. From this viewpoint, polyovulation is a mechanism which reduces the risks of fertilization failure or embryo defect/mortality. If DZ twin births are a ‘side-effect’ of a mechanism which compensates for defective embryos one might predict that embryo defect rates an…
Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape
Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge: Cross-Cultural Perspectives
The Anthropology of Pregnancy: Comparative Studies in Miscarriage, Stillbirth and Neonatal Death
Contents: R. Cecil, Introduction: An Insignificant Event? Literary and Anthropological Perspectives on Pregnancy Loss -- P. Jeffery and R. Jeffery, Delayed Periods and Falling Babies: The Ethnophysiology and Politics of Pregnancy Loss in Rural North India -- E. Sobo, Cultural Explanations for Pregnancy Loss in Rural Jamaica -- A. Winkvist, Water Spirits, Medicinemen and Witches: Avenues to Successful Reproduction among the Abelam, Papua New Guine…
Where Will the Baby Sleep? Attitudes and Practices of New and Experienced Parents Regarding Cosleeping with Their Newborn Infants
An evolutionary perspective on human infant sleep physiology suggests that parent-infant cosleeping, practiced under safe conditions, might be beneficial to both mothers and infants. However, cosleeping is not part of mainstream parenting ideology in the United States or the United Kingdom, and little evidence is available to indicate whether, and under what circumstances, parents sleep with their newborn infants. We present data from an anthropo…
Sleeping like a baby: Attitudes and experiences of bedsharing in Northeast England
This paper reports findings from a study that investigated infant care practices in a small population of Northeast England in order to determine whether parent‐infant bedsharing is common parenting behavior. In a year‐long prospective study we examined the opinions and practices of parents with regard to their infants’ nighttime sleeping strategies before and after the birth of their babies. Results confirm that parents pursue a heterogeneous ar…
Parent-infant bed-sharing behavior: Effects of feeding type and presence of father
Dating and Nondating Relationships Among Sexually Active Adolescents Are Often Surprisingly Similar
Sexually active teenagers who are not in a dating relationship most often have sex with other adolescents whom they know well, according to a study of seventh, ninth and 11th graders in Lucas County, Ohio.1 Although 61% of sexually active adolescents surveyed had had sex with someone who was not their boyfriend or girlfriend, only a very small proportion of this group had engaged in sex with strangers, and fewer than one-quarter had had sex with …
Positive Attitudes Toward Condom Use Do Not Equal Safer Sex Among Teenagers
Mother–infant cosleeping, breastfeeding and sudden infant death syndrome: What biological anthropology has discovered about normal infant sleep and pediatric sleep medicine
Twenty years ago a new area of inquiry was launched when anthropologists proposed that an evolutionary perspective on infancy could contribute to our understanding of unexplained infant deaths. Here we review two decades of research examining parent-infant sleep practices and the variability of maternal and infant sleep physiology and behavior in social and solitary sleeping environments. The results challenge clinical wisdom regarding "normal" i…
Past Academic, Drug‐Related and Sexual Behaviors Predict Risky Sex After High School
Behavioral patterns formed in high school may foreshadow sexual risk-taking in the months after young people leave high school, according to a study of 19-year-olds in the Pacific Northwest.1 In contrast with literature that associates college attendance and living away from home with increases in risk behaviors, the study shows that in the fall after high school, college attendance predicted a decreased probability of sexual risk behaviors, whil…
Practicing Evolutionary Medicine in a Postnatal Ward: Ameliorating Iatrogenic Obstacles to Breastfeeding
Theory‐Based Abstinence‐Only Intervention May Delay Sexual Initiation Among Black Urban Youth
Death of a Spouse May Be Associated With Increased STD Diagnosis Among Older Men
Trade‐offs underlying maternal breastfeeding decisions: A conceptual model
This paper presents a new conceptual model that generates predictions about breastfeeding decisions and identifies interactions that affect outcomes. We offer a contextual approach to infant feeding that models multi-directional influences by expanding on the evolutionary parent-offspring conflict and situation-specific breastfeeding theories. The main hypothesis generated from our framework suggests that simultaneously addressing breastfeeding c…
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Sids) risk reduction and infant sleep location – Moving the discussion forward
One size does not fit all
Nighttime parenting strategies and sleep-related risks to infants
A large social science and public health literature addresses infant sleep safety, with implications for infant mortality in the context of accidental deaths and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). As part of risk reduction campaigns in the USA, parents are encouraged to place infants supine and to alter infant bedding and elements of the sleep environment, and are discouraged from allowing infants to sleep unsupervised, from bed-sharing either …
Misrecognition of need: Women's experiences of and explanations for undergoing cesarean delivery
International rates of operative delivery are consistently higher than the World Health Organization determined is appropriate. This suggests that factors other than clinical indications contribute to cesarean section. Data presented here are from interviews with 115 mothers on the postnatal ward of a hospital in Northeast England during February 2006 to March 2009 after the women underwent either unscheduled or scheduled cesarean childbirth. Usi…
Could Parental Rules Play a Role in the Association Between Short Sleep and Obesity in Young Children?
Short sleep duration is associated with obesity in young children. This study develops the hypothesis that parental rules play a role in this association. Participants were 3-year-old children and their parents, recruited at nursery schools in socioeconomically deprived and non-deprived areas of a North-East England town. Parents were interviewed to assess their use of sleep, television-viewing and dietary rules, and given diaries to document the…
Exploring Maternal Perceptions of Infant Sleep and Feeding Method Among Mothers in the United Kingdom: A Qualitative Focus Group Study
Bi-ethnic infant thermal care beliefs in Bradford, UK
Purpose – Overheating is considered a modifiable risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). The purpose of this paper is to explore differences in infant thermal care beliefs between mothers of South Asian and white British origin in Bradford, UK. Design/methodology/approach – This study employed face-to-face interviews with semi-structured and structured questions with 51 white British and 51 South-Asian mothers in the Bradford Distric…
Conducting Online Surveys
There is an established methodology for conducting survey research that aims to ensure rigorous research and robust outputs. With the advent of easy-to-use online survey platforms, however, the quality of survey studies has declined. This article summarizes the pros and cons of online surveys and emphasizes the key principles of survey research, for example questionnaire validation and sample selection. Numerous texts are available to guide resea…
Medicine (27 works) · Psychology (25 works) · Developmental psychology (19 works) · Neuroscience of respiration and sleep (14 works) · Infant Health and Development (12 works) · Pediatrics (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Breastfeeding Practices and Influences (8 works) · Environmental health (7 works) · History (7 works)