Tibetan parents send sons to be monks to help family thrive

Monks debating in Sera Monastery In Tibetan populations, parental decisions to make a son a Buddhist monk were guided by reproductive and economic considerations - not just by religious tradition - according to a new study led by UCL researchers. Published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B , anthropologists at UCL, in collaboration with researchers from Lanzhou University, China, explored lifelong religious celibacy in Tibetan monks in Western China. The researchers found that parents used to make one son a Buddhist monk to help the economic and reproductive prospects of their non-celibate sons, ultimately helping their family thrive - and not simply for religious tradition. Overall, the researchers found that religious celibacy can be essential for adaptive evolution, and conclude that celibacy can only evolve if it benefits the monk's brothers, and the decision is taken by parents, and not the boys themselves. To establish their findings, researchers undertook interviews with 530 households across 21 villages in the eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau, in Gansu Province, China. Respondents were asked about their family history, numbers of siblings, children, and grandchildren and whether any of them had ever been a Buddhist monk. Lead-author Professor Ruth Mace (UCL Anthropology) said: "Many major world religions often require some of their practitioners to commit to lifelong celibacy, for example monks in Buddhism and priests in the Catholic Church.