CHAPTER 7: PROBLEMS OF PARENTING

Chapter Summary

From an evolutionary perspective, offspring are the vehicles for parents’ genes, so selection should favor
parental mechanisms designed to ensure the survival and reproduction of offspring. Mechanisms of
parental care have been documented in many nonhuman species. One of the most interesting puzzles is
why mothers tend to provide more parental care than fathers. Two hypotheses have been advanced to
explain this: (1) the paternity uncertainty hypothesis—males invest less than females because there is a
lower probability that they have contributed genes to their putative offspring (maternity certainty being
100 percent and paternity certainty being less than 100 percent); and (2) the mating opportunity cost
hypothesis—the costs to males of providing parental care are higher than for females because such
investment by males curtails additional mating opportunities. Current evidence supports both the paternity
uncertainty and mating opportunity cost hypotheses.

Evolved mechanisms of parental care are predicted to be sensitive to at least three contexts: (1) the
genetic relatedness of offspring, (2) the ability of the offspring to convert parental care into fitness, and
(3) alternative uses of the resources that might be available. Abundant empirical evidence supports the
hypothesis that genetic relatedness to offspring affects human parental care. Studies show that stepparents
have fewer positive parental feelings than genetic parents. Interactions between stepparents and
stepchildren tend to be more conflict-ridden than those between genetic parents and children. Newborn
babies are said to resemble the putative father more than the putative mother, suggesting mechanisms to
influence the putative father to invest in the child. Investment in children’s college education is higher
with genetic children than with stepchildren and higher when paternity certainty is high. Children living
with one genetic parent and one stepparent are forty times more likely to suffer physical abuse and forty
to one hundred times more likely to be killed than are children living with both genetic parents. And
because mothers have higher average genetic relatedness to offspring than putative fathers, due to some
level of compromised paternity, we expect women to more heavily invest in children than fathers. Indeed,
women more than men prefer looking at images of infants, are more skilled at recognizing infant facial
expressions of emotion, and are more likely to “tend” to infants and “befriend” others as a means of
protecting them. Genetic relatedness of parent to child, in short, appears to be a critical determinant of the
quality of parental care.

Evolved parental mechanisms are also predicted to be sensitive to the ability of the offspring to convert
parental care into reproductive success. Three lines of research support this theoretical expectation. First,
children born with congenital problems such as spina bifida or Down syndrome are commonly
institutionalized or given up for adoption; if they are cared for and not given up for adoption, they are far
more likely to be physically abused by their parents. Second, a study of twins found that mothers tend to
invest more in the healthy infants than in their less healthy twins. Third, young infants are at greater risk
of abuse and homicide than are older children.

The third context predicted to affect the quality of parental care is the availability of alternative uses of
resources that could be invested in a child. Effort and energy are finite, and effort allocated to one activity
must necessarily take away from other activities. Several studies have examined patterns of infanticide on
the assumption that such killings are reverse assays of parental care—that is, they indicate the exact
opposite of parental care. Studies show that young mothers are more likely than older mothers to commit
infanticide, presumably because younger women have many years ahead in which to bear and invest in
offspring, whereas older women have fewer years. Unmarried women are more likely than married
women to commit infanticide. These trends presumably reflect evolved decision rules in women about the
ways in which they allocate effort. Finally, men, who tend to have more opportunities to channel effort
into mating, tend to provide less direct parental care. Among the Aka, men who are high in status invest
less in direct childcare than men who are low in status. High-status Aka men channel their efforts into
attracting more wives. In sum, the availability of alternative uses of resources affects decision rules about
when to allocate effort to parental care.

The evolutionary theory of parent–offspring conflict suggests that the “interests” of parents and children
will not coincide perfectly because they are genetically related by only 50 percent. The theory predicts
that each child will generally desire a larger portion of parental resources than the parents want to give.
This theory yields some predictions, such as: (1) mother–offspring conflict will sometimes occur in utero,
such as over whether the fetus is spontaneously aborted; (2) parents tend to value their children more than
their children value them as both get older; (3) mother–child conflict should intensify with the
introduction of a younger sibling, and become especially intense with the introduction of a half-sibling;
and (4) parents and their offspring will get into conflicts over mate choice and mating strategies.
Empirical evidence on preeclampsia supports the first prediction—it appears that fetuses secrete large
amounts of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) into the mother’s bloodstream, which prevents the
mother from menstruating and allows the fetus to remain implanted, thus subverting any attempts by the
mother to spontaneously abort it. Evidence from homicide data supports the second prediction—parents,
who are less valuable as they grow older, are more often killed by their older children than the reverse. On
the assumption that those who are less valuable are at greater risk of being killed, adult offspring should
be more likely to kill their parents than vice versa. Evidence suggests that mother–child conflict indeed
intensifies with the introduction of a sibling, and increases even more with the introduction of a half-
sibling to the family. Finally, parent–offspring conflict occurs around the ideal mate and preferred mating
strategy. Offspring prioritize attractiveness more than parents, whereas parents prioritize family
background more than offspring. Parents especially object to short-term mating in their offspring,
especially their daughters, and so engage in a phenomenon known as “daughter guarding.”

Parent–offspring conflict will be an important domain for future empirical studies in evolutionary
psychology.

Suggested Readings

Apicella, C. L., & Marlow, F. W. (2007). Men’s reproductive investment decisions. Human Nature, 18,
22–34.
Apostolou, M. (2009). Parent-offspring conflict over mating: The case of short-term mating strategies.
Personality and Individual Differences, 47, 895–899.
Bjorklund, D. F., & Pellegrini, A. D. (2002). The origins of human nature. American Psychological
Association: Washington, D.C.
Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (1988). Homicide. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter.
Geary, D. C. (2000). Evolution and proximate expression of human paternal investment. Psychological
Bulletin, 126, 55–77.
Marlow, F. (1999). Showoffs or providers? The parenting effort of Hadza men. Evolution and Human
Behavior, 20, 391–404.
Perilloux, C., Fleischman, D. S., & Buss, D. M. (2008). The daughter-guarding hypothesis: Parental
influence on, and emotional reactions to, offspring’s mating behavior. Evolutionary Psychology,
6, 217–233.
Schlomer, G. L., Ellis, B. J., & Garber, J. (2010). Mother-child conflict and sibling relatedness: A test of
hypotheses from parent-offspring conflict theory. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 20, 287–
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Trivers, R. (1974). Parent-offspring conflict. American Zoologist, 14, 249–264.