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Father Absence, Parental Care, and Female Reproductive Development
Abstract
This study examines female reproductive development from an evolutionary life history perspective. Retrospective data are for 10,847 U.S. women. Results indicate that timing of parental separation is associated with reproductive development and is not confounded with socioeconomic variables or phenotypic correlations with mothers' reproductive behavior. Divorce/separation between birth and 5 years predicted early menarche, first sexual intercourse, first pregnancy, and shorter duration of first marriage. Separation in adolescence was the strongest predictor of number of sex partners. Multiple changes in childhood caretaking environment were associated with early menarche, first sex, first pregnancy, greater number of sex partners, and shorter duration of marriage. Living with either the father or mother after separation had similar effect on reproductive development. Living with a stepfather showed a weak, but significant, association with reproductive development, however, duration of stepfather exposure was not a significant predictor of development. Difference in amount and quality of direct parental care (vs. indirect parental investment) in two- and single-parent households may be the primary factor linking family environment to reproductive development.
... There is considerable literature that father absence during childhood might influence the timing of menarche [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], and be associated with sexual violence [26], earlier first sexual experience [21,24,[27][28][29], earlier first pregnancy or birth [24,27,[29][30][31][32], higher fertility [23], earlier marriage or partnership [30,31] and more sexual partners [24,28,33]. Paternal absence is wide-spread and persistent in postapartheid South Africa due to rural-urban labor migration, undisclosed paternity, denied responsibility of fatherhood, denied access to the child, dissolution of households, and divorce [26,34]. ...
... There is considerable literature that father absence during childhood might influence the timing of menarche [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], and be associated with sexual violence [26], earlier first sexual experience [21,24,[27][28][29], earlier first pregnancy or birth [24,27,[29][30][31][32], higher fertility [23], earlier marriage or partnership [30,31] and more sexual partners [24,28,33]. Paternal absence is wide-spread and persistent in postapartheid South Africa due to rural-urban labor migration, undisclosed paternity, denied responsibility of fatherhood, denied access to the child, dissolution of households, and divorce [26,34]. ...
... There is considerable literature that father absence during childhood might influence the timing of menarche [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25], and be associated with sexual violence [26], earlier first sexual experience [21,24,[27][28][29], earlier first pregnancy or birth [24,27,[29][30][31][32], higher fertility [23], earlier marriage or partnership [30,31] and more sexual partners [24,28,33]. Paternal absence is wide-spread and persistent in postapartheid South Africa due to rural-urban labor migration, undisclosed paternity, denied responsibility of fatherhood, denied access to the child, dissolution of households, and divorce [26,34]. ...
This study, a secondary analysis of the HPTN 068 randomized control trial, aimed to quantify the association of father and male presence with HIV incidence and first pregnancy among 2533 school-going adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in rural South Africa participating in the trial between March 2011 and April 2017. Participants’ ages ranged from 13–20 years at study enrollment and 17–25 at the post-intervention visit. HIV and pregnancy incidence rates were calculated for each level of the exposure variables using Poisson regression, adjusted for age using restricted quadratic spline variables, and, in the case of pregnancy, also adjusted for whether the household received a social grant. Our study found that AGYW whose fathers were deceased and adult males were absent from the household were most at risk for incidence of first pregnancy and HIV (pregnancy: aIRR = 1.30, Wald 95% CI 1.05, 1.61, Wald chi-square p = 0.016; HIV: aIRR = 1.27, Wald 95% CI 0.84, 1.91, Wald chi-square p = 0.263) as compared to AGYW whose biological fathers resided with them. For AGYW whose fathers were deceased, having other adult males present as household members seemed to attenuate the incidence (pregnancy: aIRR = 0.92, Wald 95% CI 0.74, 1.15, Wald chi-square p = 0.462; HIV: aIRR = 0.90, Wald 95% CI 0.58, 1.39, Wald chi-square p = 0.623) such that it was similar, and therefore not statistically significantly different, to AGYW whose fathers were present in the household.
... In uncertain environments mothers may react to a risky reproductive opportunity by altering their investment in their offspring. For instance, Quinlan (2003) found that extrinsic risk, measured by severity of famine and frequency of warfare, plays an important role the allocation of maternal care such that mothers decrease their investment in risky environments (Quinlan, 2006). Other types of maternal disinvestment can take a variety of forms, for instance, by preferential treatment of other older offspring or offspring of a preferred sex, usually males (Miller, 1987(Miller, , 1997Scheper-Hughes, 1992;Leonetti et al., 2007). ...
... Indeed, Marlowe (2003) found that Hadza men with wives who were nursing children brought food back to the camp more often than other men, suggesting that men increase their provisioning during this critical period when women are unable to produce as much food as usual and need extra calories to nurse. Others have also found evidence that stable pair-bonds are associated with later weaning (Quinlan, 2003;Quinlan & Quinlan, 2008). Response from social partners other than the infant's father is also an important future direction of this work. ...
Parental psychology has been shaped by natural selection. One model, the Psychological Pain Hypothesis (PPH) theorizes that mechanisms have evolved that function to detect signals relating to the investment risk in a given reproductive scenario and cue parents to either 1) alter their investment in the infant or 2) bargain for additional investment from social partners. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships implicated by the PPH between factors including parity, age, partnership, and others and postpartum depression (PPD). The study utilized publicly available data collected for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2005-2016. The data from the two phases from 2005-2008 were used for exploratory analyses, and promising models were then tested in confirmatory analyses using data from 2009-2016. Results supported previous literature that indicates poverty, unpartnered status, illness, and disability are risk factors for PPD. The study also produced mixed evidence that parity interacts with partnership to increase the risk of PPD. However, the direction of this effect is unclear. Finally, the study showed no difference of the effect of these risk factors on depression during the postpartum period versus at other times for reproductive-aged women (20-44), supporting the use of PPD as a model for general depression.
... To cite but one example, it seems that women's choice of early sexual activity and early pregnancy are directly affected by paternal presence during a critical period in early childhood (Ellis et al., 2003). This can be explained as learning from the environment which reproductive strategy is most appropriate, given low paternal investment in offspring (Quinlan, 2003). Obviously, young women never represent reproductive choices as a search for optimal fitness. ...
... Evolution in humans (and other species) generates decision-making processes that are extremely context-dependent, meaning that environmental and social aspects may dictate the limits of an individual's personal preferences. An evolutionary framework can give a useful explanation of a wide range of cultural phenomena, e.g., reproductive strategies including teenage pregnancies (Ellis et al., 2003;Quinlan, 2003), different responses or uniform objections to cheating in social exchange-in both forager and industrial societies ; local particularities of 'race' categories Sidanius & Veniegas, 2000); and many others (Barkow et al., 1992;Buss & Kenrick, 1998). ...
... A substantial body of research has been conducted on the effects of early family environments on the sexual maturity and behavior of adolescents and young adults. The majority of studies have focused on effects on females rather than males (though for exceptions see Bogaert, 2005;Hehman & Salmon, 2019;Salmon et al., 2016;Shenk & Scelza, 2012;Sheppard & Sear, 2011) and on the environment during the first 5-7 years of life (Draper & Harpending, 1982;Ellis et al., 2003;Quinlan, 2003). Hehman and Salmon (2019) reported results that suggested developmental effects of father absence on casual sexual behavior and life history strategy such that for both sexes biological father presence growing up was associated with fewer casual sex partners and slower life history. ...
... It has been suggested that the presence or absence of biological fathers affects the reproductive strategies of their offspring (Draper & Harpending, 1982). Specifically, consistent with psychosocial acceleration theory, research on the development of girls has shown that girls raised in father absent homes are more likely to reach sexual maturation earlier, engage in sexual activity earlier, have more sexual partners, and younger age of first pregnancy relative to girls raised in father present homes (Anderson, 2015;Ellis et al., 2003;Quinlan, 2003). These findings were supported by a 2014 meta-analysis of correlations between father absence and daughters' age of menarche indicating that father absence is associated with earlier pubertal timing in females (Webster et al., 2014). ...
Objective
A substantial body of research has investigated the effects of early family environments on sexual maturity and behavior, focusing mostly on effects on females. The purpose of the current study was to test the assumption that physiological maturation and casual sexual behavior are similarly influenced by early environmental stressors such as father absence (FA). Specifically, the current study investigated whether FA affects males’ and females’ casual sexual behavior and pubertal timing in the same way.
Methods
Young adults (89 females, 46 males) were asked to report the ages at which they lived with their biological father, their casual sexual behavior, and the age at which they experienced a major pubertal marker (menarche for females, first nocturnal emission for males).
Results
FA by itself did not predict casual sexual behavior, although it did predict pubertal timing such that FA was associated with earlier pubertal timing. Interaction effects, however, indicate the effect of FA on behavior and maturation was sex-specific. For females, FA was associated with more casual sexual behavior; whereas, for males, FA was associated with less casual sexual behavior. With regard to maturation, FA was associated with earlier pubertal timing for males but did not have much an effect on females’ pubertal timing.
Conclusions
Findings from the current study suggest the effects of FA on pubertal timing and casual sexual behavior are not specific to females. Furthermore, these findings suggest that sexual maturation and behavior may not be influenced in the same way by early environmental stressors.
... However, the explanations as well as the effects of father absence on early onset of menarche reported in these studies are inconsistent or equivocal. Some studies have demonstrated that father absence is associated with early onset of menarche (e.g., Moffitt et al., 1992;Quinlan, 2003;Webster et al., 2014), whereas other studies have shown that father absence did not affect menarcheal timing (Campbell and Udry, 1995;D'Onofrio et al., 2006;Sohn, 2017). In addition, whether father absence directly affects menarcheal timing or the effect is mediated by other mechanisms remains unclear. ...
... This may be due to meta-mediation analyses being conducted on post hoc basis and thus only being reported when there is evidence of an observed relationship between father absence and age of menarche. Nonetheless, numerous studies have reported the effect of father absence (Draper and Harpending, 1982;Chisholm, 1996;Hoier, 2003;Quinlan, 2003;Jorm et al., 2004) and childhood stress (Belsky et al., 1991;Moffitt et al., 1992;Kim and Smith, 1998;Rodgers and Rowe, 2000) on menarcheal age, suggesting that the published effect was actually observed and reports of the effect were reliable but needed more careful interpretations. In addition, the collapse of different family perturbations (e.g., family or parental conflict, socioeconomic stress, negative family relationship, and perceived childhood stress index) as the child experienced stress may attenuate the expected mediating results because of the heterogeneity of these family perturbations. ...
Despite extensive evidence of the association between father absence and early onset of menarche, whether father absence directly accelerates the onset of menarche or the association is mediated by other negative family psychosocial processes remains unclear. Reliable theories on the basis of which father absence has been investigated also vary. Within the life history (LH) theoretical framework, we conducted a meta-analysis of studies that investigated father absence, menarcheal timing, and various family disturbances that cause stress in children. We tested the hypothesis that father absence exerts a direct effect on menarcheal timing and an indirect effect on menarcheal timing mediated by integrated childhood stress. Quantitative synthesis using a two-stage meta-analytic structural equation modeling approach was applied to test our hypothesis. Based on seven research articles (N = 4,619) that include at least one form of family stressor as well as father absence and menarcheal timing, integrated childhood stress emerged as a robust mediator of the association between father absence and early menarcheal timing, and the total effect of father absence on menarcheal timing had reduced in size after accounting for the mediating effect of childhood stress. The findings emphasize the importance of a father figure in regulating a child's LH, including menarcheal timing.
... Here, we concentrate on the effects of parents' presence or absence during adulthood (> 15 years) on daughter and son marriage age, rather than possible early childhood effects that are well-documented elsewhere (e.g. Alvergne, Faurie, & Raymond, 2008;Nettle, Coall, & Dickins, 2011;Quinlan, 2003;Sheppard, Snopkowski, & Sear, 2014). We examine if the loss of male or female parent and parental remarriage (or lack thereof) affected the marriage probability of offspring depending on the offspring age. ...
... Our finding that death of both parents increased marriage probability in early adulthood is in accordance with findings that parental absence expedites reproduction (Hatchwell & Komdeur, 2000;Quinlan, 2003;Voland & Willführ, 2017). Even though studies have mainly concentrated on the absence of the father, absence of both parents was not likely to be uncommon in the evolutionary past of our species. ...
In cooperatively breeding species, extended living in natal families after maturity is often associated with limited breeding possibilities and the ability to gain indirect fitness from helping relatives, with family dynamics, such as parental presence and relatedness between family members, playing a key role in determining the timing of own reproduction. How family dynamics affect marriage and the onset of reproduction in humans is complex and less well-understood. While paternal absence can be associated with both earlier puberty and reproductive behaviour, or with delayed reproduction if marriage requires parental resources, in step-parent families, half-siblings could further decrease the benefits from helping and delaying own reproduction compared to families with only full-siblings. Such costs and benefits are likely age-dependent, but have not been addressed in previous studies. Using data from pre-industrial agrarian Finland, we investigated if parental loss and remarriage affected marriage probabilities of their differently-aged sons and daughters. We found that parental composition had divergent effects across adulthood: loss of a parent resulted in a higher probability to marry in early adulthood, whereas parental presence increased later adulthood marriage probability. Whilst the death of either parent was linked to an overall lowered marriage probability, remarriage of the widowed parent, especially mother, could mitigate this effect somewhat. Additionally, the presence of underage full-siblings lowered marriage probability, suggesting postponement of one's own reproduction in favour of helping parental reproduction. Overall, our results support the idea that humans are cooperative breeders, and show the importance of considering both relatedness and age when investigating family dynamics.
... It could be attributable to the increasing influence of economic growth, urbanization, and employment becoming in China over the years [25]. Although previous studies reported the association between divorce and adverse sexual behaviors in adolescents [7,[26][27][28], the potential effects of the timing of parental divorce on children's sexual behaviors are largely unknown. ...
Background
This study aimed to investigate the associations between parental marital quality, divorce, and sexual and reproductive health outcomes among Chinese young people.
Methods
The study included 51,124 students from a large-scale cross-sectional study in China from 2019 to 2020. The exposures were parental marital quality and legal marital status reported by students. The dichotomous outcomes included sexual experiences, high-risk sexual behaviors, unintended health outcomes, and sexual abuse. Multivariate logistic regression models adjusting for socio-demographic factors were used to assess the relationship between parental marital quality, divorce, and sexual and reproductive health outcomes, stratified by sex.
Results
A total of 10.72% of the surveyed students’ parents had divorced. Participants from divorced family rated perceived parental marital quality less than half of the ratings on a 10-point scale of those from intact family (3.22 vs. 7.44). Parental divorce was associated with a higher likelihood of sexual abuse, high-risk sexual behaviors, and unintended health outcomes. A higher perceived parental marital quality was associated with a lower probability of adverse sexual and reproductive health experiences and outcomes, such as forced penetrative vaginal or anal intercourse (male: OR: 0.73, 95% CI: 0.64–0.83; female: OR:0.71, 95% CI: 0.65–0.77), casual sexual intercourse (male: OR: 0.78, 95% CI: 0.73–0.83; female: OR: 0.77, 95% CI: 0.72–0.83), and sexually transmitted infections (male: OR: 0.79, 95% CI: 0.70–0.89; female: OR: 0.82, 95% CI: 0.73–0.91).
Conclusions
Parental marital quality and status are associated with poorer sexual and reproductive health outcomes among young adults, suggesting that specific intervention programs should be implemented for children from unharmonious families or divorced families to prevent adverse sexual and reproductive health outcomes.
... Father absence in particular was originally suggested to have its biggest impact on girls' pubertal timing when father absence occurs before age 5 (Ellis, 2004), but there was insufficient evidence to support or refute this. In some studies, pubertal timing was influenced by father absence only before age 5 (Culpin et al., 2014;Jones et al., 1972;Quinlan, 2003), but other studies reported effects of father absence effects at multiple developmental stages (Alvergne et al., 2008;DiLalla et al., 2021), including adolescence (Campbell and Udry, 1995). Other studies included a broad age range that prevented assessment of age effects. ...
Across nonhuman species, pubertal timing is affected by the social environment, with consequences for reproductive success and behavior. In human beings, variations in pubertal timing have not been systematically examined in relation to social environmental antecedents, although their psychological consequences are well documented. This paper focuses on links in human beings between pubertal timing and the childhood social environment, with several sections: A review of studies relating pubertal timing to the family context, a key aspect of the social environment; challenges in studying the issue; and opportunities for future work that takes advantage of and creates links with evidence in other species. The review shows that pubertal timing in girls is accelerated by adversity in aspects of the early family social context, with effects small in size; data in boys are not sufficient to enable conclusions. Inferences from existing studies are limited by variations in conceptualizations and measurement of relevant aspects of puberty and of the family social environment, and by methodological issues (e.g., reliance on existing data, use of retrospective reports, nonrandom missing data). Open questions remain about the nature, mechanisms, and specificity of the links between early family social environment and pubertal timing (e.g., form of associations, consideration of absence of positive experiences, role of timing of exposure). Animal studies provide a useful guide for addressing these questions, by delineating potential hormonal mechanisms that underlie links among social context, pubertal timing, and behavior, and encouraging attention to aspects of the social environment outside the family, especially peers.
... This means more resources devoted to securing reproductive opportunities, leading to more offspring and less care for each one (e.g. Brumbach et al., 2009;Ellis & Garber, 2000;Quinlan, 2003;Simpson et al., 2012). ...
Alloparental caregiving is key to humans' highly flexible reproductive strategies. Across species and across societies, alloparental care is more common in harsh and/or unpredictable environments (HUEs). Currently, however, it is unclear whether HUEs predict intra-population variation in alloparental care, or whether early life HUEs might predict later alloparental care use in adulthood, consistent with adaptive developmental plasticity. We test whether harshness measures (socioeconomic status (SES), environmental hygiene, crowding) and unpre-dictability measures (parental unemployment, paternal absence, household moves) predicted how much alloparental assistance families in Cebu, Philippines received, in a multigenerational study with data collected across four decades. Though worse environmental hygiene predicted more concurrent alloparental care in 1994, we found little evidence that HUEs predict within-population variation in alloparental care in this large-scale, industrialized society. Indeed, less-crowded conditions and higher SES predicted more alloparental care, not less, in the 1980s and in 2014 respectively, while paternal absence in middle childhood predicted less reliance on alloparental care in adulthood. In this cultural context, our results generally do not provide support for the translation of interspecific or intersocietal patterns linking HUEs and alloparental care to intra-population variation in alloparental care, nor for the idea that a reproductive strategy emphasizing alloparental care use may be preceded by early life HUEs.
... Family structure and dynamics may also affect the pace of reproductive maturation. Indeed, challenging familial exposures, including parental separation [135,136], having an adolescent mother [12,14,54,137], lack of parental support [44,138,139], parental control [140], low socioeconomic status [138], physical or sexual abuse, and parental substance use [141], and other family stressors [142], have all been reported to accelerate reproductive development in girls, including earlier ages at menarche, coitarche and first birth. In contrast, stable, supportive parenting environments have been associated with slower reproductive maturation, including later menarche and development of secondary sexual traits, and later coitarche [143,144]. ...
Adolescent pregnancy (occurring < age 20) is considered a public health problem that creates and perpetuates inequities, affecting not only women, but societies as a whole globally. The efficacy of current approaches to reduce its prevalence is limited. Most existing interventions focus on outcomes without identifying or addressing upstream social and biological causes. Current rhetoric revolves around the need to change girls’ individual behaviours during adolescence and puberty. Yet, emerging evidence suggests risk for adolescent pregnancy may be influenced by exposures taking place much earlier during development, starting as early as gametogenesis. Furthermore, pregnancy risks are determined by complex interactions between socio-structural and ecological factors including housing and food security, family structure, and gender-based power dynamics. To explore these interactions, we merge three complimentary theoretical frameworks: “Eco-Social”, “Life History” and “Developmental Origins of Health and Disease”. We use our new lens to discuss social and biological determinants of two key developmental milestones associated with age at first birth: age at girls’ first menstrual bleed (menarche) and age at first sexual intercourse (coitarche). Our review of the literature suggests that promoting stable and safe environments starting at conception (including improving economic and social equity, in addition to gender-based power dynamics) is paramount to effectively curbing adolescent pregnancy rates. Adolescent pregnancy exacerbates and perpetuates social inequities within and across generations. As such, reducing it should be considered a key priority for public health and social change agenda.
... Also, we lacked information about girls' age when parental death or divorce occurred. As shown by Quinlan (2003) in a large study in US, both factors can modify the associations between father absence and pubertal maturation and reproductive timing of their daughters. ...
Several evolutionary hypotheses predict that girls growing up without a father present in the family mature and start reproduction earlier because father absence is a cue for environmental harshness and/or uncertainty that favours switching to a precocious life-history strategy. Most studies supporting these hypotheses have been performed in contemporary Western societies where the father absence is usually caused by divorce or abandonment. We performed a large retrospective cohort study in the mid-twentieth century Estonia, where different types of orphans and daughters of divorced fathers were exactly matched with girls from bi-parental families based on age, birth year, urban/rural origin and socioeconomic position of the family. Pubertal maturation, assessed on the basis of the breast development rate, did not associate with family structure. Daughters of divorced fathers started reproduction on average 9.2 months earlier than girls from bi-parental families and also tended to start reproduction earlier than girls whose fathers were dead. This finding is consistent with the view that fathers prone to divorce (and/or their spouses) differ from the rest of the population and also from the fathers prone to early death in some important characteristics that affect the reproductive rates of their daughters.
... Children growing up in unpredictable environments might calibrate their life-history strategies in anticipation of a similar adulthood environment. Indeed, early adversity has been linked to physiological and behavioral signs of fast strategies: early adversity might accelerate girls' menarche, sexual debut, and first pregnancy (Quinlan, 2003), and lead to increased impulsive and risky behaviors in adulthood for both sexes (Lovallo, 2013). Adverse childhood environments might also impair individuals' physical health. ...
Cognitive style is a major component of individuals' life history and everyday life. However, individual variations in cognitive styles are not well understood from an evolutionary functional perspective. Through two studies, we investigated how childhood unpredictability might be related to deliberate or intuitive cognitive styles. Study 1, in which we surveyed 301 undergraduate students, revealed that lower childhood unpredictability was a predictor of slower life-history strategies, and such strategies in turn predicted higher self-reported deliberate cognitive style. In Study 2 (N = 269), we experimentally manipulated mortality cues and subsequently assessed participants' deliberate responses by using the Cognitive Reflection Test. The results indicated that individuals who experienced higher childhood unpredictability, relative to those who had low childhood unpredictability, displayed a smaller proportion of deliberate responses when exposed to mortality cues but not when exposed to control cues. These results imply that childhood unpredictability might predispose individuals to specific cognitive styles that serve distinct adaptive functions. This is manifested as both long-term propensities in life-history development and short-term behavioral tendencies in threatening situations.
... At the same time, the accelerated pubertal development of children with a fast life history strategy affords earlier reproduction. Individuals with a faster life history strategy, characterized by exposure to harsh parenting or low parental investment, engage in earlier and more "risky" sexual behavior that promotes current reproduction efforts, including multiple partners, unprotected sex, and teen pregnancy (Chisholm et al., 2005;Ellis et al., 2003;Hentges & Wang, 2018;Quinlan, 2003). ...
This chapter discusses two leading middle- level theories within evolutionary psychology, which attempt to explain both how and why parenting influences child development across the life span. First, it presents an overview of one of the most influential evolutionary theories in developmental psychology: John Bowlby’s attachment theory. Attachment theory revolutionized the way people understand the nature of the parent–child bond, framing the parent as not just a provider of physical needs but also as a secure base for emotional and psychological needs. These early- life bonds between the caregiver and infant are further proposed to form the basis for relationship attachments across the life span. Next, the chapter addresses how competing strategies toward resource allocation can influence individual differences in parental investment and sensitivity. According to life history theory, differences in the caregiving environment, in turn, promote the formation of distinct reproductive strategies, resulting in behavioral, social, and physiological differences across child development.
... A prominent topic of research in HBE is how father absence is associated with children's, especially daughters', own reproductive trajectories. While there is fairly consistent evidence for earlier timing of puberty and family formation in WEIRD contexts (Belsky et al. 1991;Boothroyd et al. 2013;Ellis 2004;Quinlan 2003) a cross-cultural approach reveals much more variation indicating that father absence means different things depending on local ecologies (Sear et al. 2019). In this issue, Moya et al. (2021) use a longitudinal and intergenerational dataset from Sweden to examine how parental absence associates with timing of first birth, whether this is mediated by educational achievement, and if these relationships hold across two adjacent generations. ...
Researchers across the social sciences have long been interested in families. How people make decisions such as who to marry, when to have a baby, how big or small a family to have, or whether to stay with a partner or stray are questions that continue to interest economists, sociologists, demographers, and anthropologists. Human families vary across the globe; different cultures have different marriage practices, different ideas about who raises children, and even different notions of what a family is. Human behavioral ecology is a branch of anthropology that is particularly interested in cultural variation of family systems and how these differences impact upon the people that inhabit them; the children, parents, grandparents. It draws on evolutionary theory to direct research and generate testable hypotheses to uncover how different ecologies, including social contexts, can explain diversity in families. In this Special Issue on the behavioral ecology of the family, we have collated a selection of papers that showcase just how useful this framework is for understanding cultural variation in families, which we hope will convince other social scientists interested in family research to draw upon evolutionary and ecological insight in their own work.
... However, the considerable cross-cultural variation in paternal investment suggests that we should find a norm of reaction in the magnitude of sexual jealousy, an expectation supported by the finding that sexual infidelity was viewed more harshly by men in cultures where they invest more in children (Scelza et al., 2020) Facultative variation in reproductive strategies is addressed more broadly within the framework of life history theory, which considers how trade-offs between growth and reproduction, and mating and parenting effort, are optimally allocated given environmental conditions. Building on early work by the anthropologists Draper and Harpending (1982), anthropologists and psychologists have provided evidence that growing up in father-absent homes (Draper and Harpending, 1982;Ellis et al., 2003) and harsh and unpredictable environments (Belskyet al., 2012;Belsky et al., 1991;Quinlan, 2003) is associated with earlier reproduction and other traits associated with a life history biased toward reproductive effort. Questions remain regarding the degree to which these associations reflect genetic confounds rather than environmentally contingent adaptations (Barbaro et al., 2017). ...
... To cite but one example, it seems that women's choice of early sexual activity and early pregnancy are directly affected by paternal presence during a critical period in early childhood (Ellis et al., 2003). This can be explained as learning from the environment which reproductive strategy is most appropriate, given low paternal investment in offspring (Quinlan, 2003). Obviously, young women never represent reproductive choices as a search for optimal fitness. ...
... Evolution in humans (and other species) generates decision-making processes that are extremely context-dependent, meaning that environmental and social aspects may dictate the limits of an individual's personal preferences. An evolutionary framework can give a useful explanation of a wide range of cultural phenomena, e.g., reproductive strategies including teenage pregnancies (Ellis et al., 2003;Quinlan, 2003), different responses or uniform objections to cheating in social exchange-in both forager and industrial societies (Sugiyama, Tooby, & Cosmides, 2002); local particularities of 'race' categories (Kurzban et al., 2001;Sidanius & Veniegas, 2000); and many others (Barkow et al., 1992;Buss & Kenrick, 1998). ...
... Narrating father loss UNICEF (2017) has reported that there are about 140 million orphaned children worldwide who have lost one or both parents. The death of a parent may entail the loss of an important and often irreplaceable source of emotional and instrumental support, which may cause a permanent decrease in one's subjective well-being and other negative emotional and behavioural effects (Amato & Anthony, 2014;Quinlan, 2003). In many cases, grieving children may not be recognized as mourners in a family although they are deeply affected by the loss, especially at younger ages (Bowlby, 1970;Fearnley, 2015;Silverman, 2013). ...
This qualitative study explored the intergenerational family narratives around loss and bereavement as perceived by 12 Israeli adults, whose fathers died before they were born. Using the interpretative phenomenological analysis approach, the intergenerational narrative process was examined as it appeared in in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Three phases of this process were identified: (1) the first generation: establishing the rule of silence, (2) the second generation: obeying the rule of silence, and (3) the third generation: breaking the rule of silence. The discussion presents a nuanced examination of the functions of silence in family narration in the case of traumatic loss, its impact on children whose fathers died before they were born, and the notion of the timing and processing of intergenerational dialogues of loss between grandparents, parents, children, and grandchildren. Practical implications include the importance of recognizing the need for a careful balance between silence and speech, both for the family as a unit and for its grieving members. Also, family therapists should consider incorporating three-generation therapy sessions in cases of parent loss in general, and father loss before birth in particular.
... Starkweather, 2017) or when alloparents can substitute the majority of daily care for younger children (e.g. Ivey, 1993;Meehan, 2008;Quinlan, 2003). In both cases, we would still expect time spent in childcare by mothers and fathers to be somewhat complementary in that fathers should increase the amount of direct care to make up for lost care by mothers, as has been shown among Aka fathers (Hewlett, 1991). ...
Evolutionary treatments of women's work and the sexual division of labour derive from sexual selection theory and focus on an observed cross-cultural trend: tasks performed by women tend to be more compatible with childcare and produce less economic risk than tasks performed by men. Evolutionary models emphasize biological sex differences and opportunity costs to understand this pattern of behaviour, yet deviations remain poorly understood. We examine variation in women's work among Shodagor fisher–traders in Bangladesh with the goal of explaining such deviations related to women's work. First, we demonstrate that women's trading produces higher variance returns than men's work – a pattern not previously quantified. Next, we test predictions from the economy of scale model to understand the socioecological circumstances associated with trading. We suggest that relaxing model assumptions around biological constraints may elucidate key circumstances under which members of one gender should systematically engage in work that is incompatible with childcare and/or produces higher levels of economic risk. Results indicate that biological sex differences are insufficient to explain gendered patterns of behaviour but removal of childcare constraints and comparative advantages related to opportunity costs can explain adherence to and deviation from trends in women's work and the division of labour.
... It has been suggested that the presence or absence of biological fathers affects the reproductive strategies of their offspring (Draper and Harpending 1982). Specifically, consistent with psychosocial acceleration theory, research on the development of girls has found that girls raised in father absent homes are more likely to reach sexual maturation earlier, engage in sexual activity earlier, have more sexual partners, and younger age of first pregnancy relative to girls raised in father present homes (Anderson 2015;Ellis et al. 2003;Quinlan 2003). These findings were supported by a 2014 meta-analysis of correlations between father absence and daughters' age of menarche indicating that father absence is associated with earlier pubertal timing in females (Webster et al. 2014). ...
When FA occurred during middle childhood, males exhibited faster LH strategies, whereas when FA occurred during adolescence, females exhibited faster LH strategies.
... In the UK for example, 47% of the single parent families live below the government defined poverty line [6]. A Swedish study stated that children from single parent families are three times more likely to kill themselves or end up in hospital after an attempted suicide [7]. A US study showed that children of divorced parents are seven times more likely to suffer from depression in adult life. ...
This paper aims at resolving the mass murder of female babies or fetuses in India, China and elsewhere. The number of female babies or children killed in India and China alone is running at over 220 million over this generation alone. The only thing humans at large can do about this appalling genocide (the killing of babies without the Y gene) is to foster equal status of men and women and bring about men of quality who respects women's equality. This genocide has been covered up with names like infanticide but it is actually the worst genocide in the history of earth. The word genocide has been adopted by United Nations to have legal consequences in January 1951. Once a situation categorized as genocide, countries are compelled to take action. 140 nations have rectified this convention so far. This United Nations charter came about due to the vigorous campaign by a lawyer named Raphael Lemkin to prevent the horrors of the holocaust from ever happening again. Keywords: Female infanticide, genocide, status of women and men.
... Awareness of the elevated risk of premature death is related to a fast LH strategy and favors, among others, risk-taking behavior (Kruger and Nesse 2006), short-term mating preferences , earlier reproduction and lower parental investments (Quinlan 2010). According to LH theory, extrinsic morbidity-mortality experienced in early childhood has the most significant impact on LH strategy (Belsky et al. 1991;Chisholm et al. 1993;Quinlan 2003). However, it has also been claimed that, due to behavioral flexibility, the pace of LH strategy can be adjusted to environmental life expectancy cues, not exclusively during childhood, but throughout the course of adult life as well Quinlan 2010). ...
A high risk of morbidity-mortality caused by a harsh and unpredictable environment is considered to be associated with a fast life history (LH) strategy, commonly linked with criminal behavior. However, offenders are not the only group with a high exposure to extrinsic morbidity-mortality. In the present study, we investigated the LH strategies employed by two groups of Polish men: incarcerated offenders (N = 84) as well as soldiers and firefighters (N = 117), whose professions involve an elevated risk of injury and premature death. The subjects were asked to complete the Mini-K (used as a psychosocial LH indicator) and a questionnaire which included a number of biodemographic LH variables. Although biodemographic and psychosocial LH indicators should be closely linked with each other, the actual connection between them is unclear. Thus, this study was driven by two aims: comparing LH strategies in two groups of men with a high risk of premature morbidity-mortality and investigating the relationship between the biodemographic and psychosocial LH dimensions. The study showed that incarcerated men employed faster LH strategies than soldiers and firefighters, but only in relation to biodemographic variables (e.g., number of siblings, age of sexual initiation, life expectancy). No intergroup differences emerged regarding psychosocial LH indicators. Moreover, the correlation analysis showed a weak association between biodemographic and psychosocial LH indicators. The results strengthen the legitimacy of incorporating biodemographic LH traits into research models and indicate the need for further research on the accuracy of the Mini-K. The possible explanations for the intergroup differences in LH strategies are discussed.
... In considering coparenting from a life history perspective, I assume that coparental alliances are an important feature of human parenting effort that supports the effective expenditure of parental investment (Feinberg, 2003;Sear & Coall, 2011). Human parenting effort encompasses both direct parental investment, which entails the investment of time, energy and resources in the firsthand care of children (e.g., feeding, playing, providing comfort), and indirect parental investment, which entails the investment of time, energy and resources in creating and maintaining conditions that increase offspring fitness (e.g., attaining wealth and status, investing in education; Quinlan, 2003). Maintaining a good coparenting relationship can be thought of as a special form of indirect parental investment, one that supports the provision of direct parental care, whether by the parent him/herself or by a coparenting partner. ...
Recent extensions to life history theory posit that exposure to environmental unpredictability during childhood should forecast negative parental behaviors in adulthood. In the current research, this logic was extended to co-parental behaviors, which refer to how parents coordinate, share responsibility, and support each other’s parental efforts. The effects of early-life unpredictability on individual and dyadic co-parental functioning were examined in a sample of 109 families (two parents and their firstborn child) who were followed longitudinally from before the child’s birth until the age of two. Greater early-life unpredictability (family changes, residential changes, and parents’ occupational changes by age 8) experienced by mothers, but not fathers, predicted more negative co-parental behaviors in triadic observations 6 months post birth, and lower couple-reported co-parenting quality assessed 3, 9, 18, and 24 months post birth. These effects were not explained by parents’ childhood socioeconomic status or current relationship quality. These findings highlight the role of mothers in shaping co-parenting relationships and how these relationships might be influenced by mothers’ early-life experiences.
... The sequelae of early life stress and sequence of reproductive development may be a key to forming adult phenotypes. Stressful family environments have been associated with accelerated reproductive development including early puberty, sexual debut, and age at first birth (Ellis & Garber, 2000;Ellis, McFadyen-Ketchum, Dodge, Pettit, & Bates, 1999;Hulanicka, 1999;Moffitt, Caspi, Belsky, & Silva, 1992;Quinlan, 2003). More recent studies tested the potential mediating role of pubertal timing. ...
Few studies have examined the role of early vs. later environment in the development of life history (LH) strategies, whether age at sexual debut mediates LH development, or whether LH indicators contribute to environmental stress in adulthood. In the current study, we addressed these gaps cross-culturally using data from Jenu Kurubas who live in the rural outskirts of Mysore (n = 133), India, and mixed-caste peri-urban residents in Mysore city (n = 222). Research took place from October 2016–July 2017. First, participants engaged in semi-structured interviews to formulate quantitative measures of current environmental stress (n = 60). Next, participants (n = 355) completed structured questionnaires that measured demographics; early and current environmental stress; and LH indicators including age at sexual debut, facets of impulsivity, education, and number of children. Structural equation modeling was used to test for the developmental cascade reported in Western studies of psychosocial acceleration (e.g., indirect effect of early environmental stress on number of children through age at sexual debut). Consistent with Western findings, environmental stress appeared to hasten sexual debut, decrease self-regulation and educational attainment, and increase current environmental stress in the peri-urban sample. Early environmental stress forecasted younger age at sexual debut in both samples; however, no other effects of early environmental stress nor any associations with current environmental stress were consistent between samples. Although age at sexual debut appeared to translate early environmental stress into greater numbers of children and current environmental stress in the peri-urban and rural samples, respectively, it was associated with different outcomes between the samples and forecasted adult environment only in the rural sample. Taken together, our findings indicate more research is needed to determine whether the developmental cascade suggested by most applications of LH theory to humans generalizes across cultures and rural and peri-urban environments.
... In line with life history theory, a growing body of literature on contemporary western societies established a link between paternal absence in childhood and children's reproductive behavior in adolescence and adulthood. For instance, it has been shown consistently that the father's absence in childhood reduced the daughters' age at first menarche and first sexual intercourse and increased their risks of teenage pregnancies (Chisholm et al. 2005;Ellis et al. 2003;Quinlan 2003;Vigil and Geary 2006;Webster et al. 2014). Children who lost a father in early childhood are therefore expected to accelerate reproduction and enter first marriage earlier (Voland and Willführ 2017). ...
Parental death in childhood, which is often referred to as demographic stress, is
a traumatic event that may influence an individual’s life course in many different
ways. This doctoral thesis therefore aims to investigate how individuals responded
to parental death in the family and how this potential threat to their well-being
affected children’s transition to adulthood, thereby focusing on the Netherlands
in the period 1850-1952. Studying the consequences of parental death is relevant
because a large share of the population was confronted with the death of a parent
in the past. For instance, nearly one out of four children born in the study area
between 1850 and 1880 lost a parent by the age of 16. In this doctoral thesis,
three outcomes related to the transition to adulthood are researched in detail:
age at first leaving home, entry into first marriage, and occupational position
in young adulthood. Moreover, systematic changes in family dynamics such as
parental remarriage, family dissolution, and outmigration following the death
of a parent are examined. The Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN)
is exploited which contains rich information about the life courses of 37,000
male and female individuals born in the Netherlands between 1850 and 1922.
Quantitative methods such as event-history analysis are applied to compare the
adulthood transitions of parentally bereaved individuals with those of their nonbereaved
counterparts. The results show that parental death strongly accelerates
non-marital home leaving, whereas the transition to marriage is hardly affected
by the loss of a parent. The most consistent finding of this interdisciplinary thesis
reveals that a mother’s death is generally more disruptive than a father’s death.
Given the structural differences in the allocation of tasks between husband and
wife in the study period, this indicates that from a life course perspective the
loss of parental care in childhood is more harmful than a decline in economic
resources and living standards.
... Our findings are in line with a previous study corroborating the menarche-accelerating effect of an absent biological father [31]. Findings relating to a stepfathereffect [32] which were found in another earlier study were less pronounced in this study. Several reasons may play a role, for example, one reason may be that fluctuations in the family structure cannot be adequately depicted through a point assessment of family structure at age 15. ...
Background:
Early menarche has been associated with father absence, stepfather presence and adverse health consequences in later life. This article assesses the association of different family compositions with the age at menarche. Pathways are explored which may explain any association between family characteristics and pubertal timing.
Methods:
Cross-sectional, international data on the age at menarche, family structure and covariates (age, psychosomatic complaints, media consumption, physical activity) were collected from the 2009-2010 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey. The sample focuses on 15-year old girls comprising 36,175 individuals across 40 countries in Europe and North America (N = 21,075 for age at menarche). The study examined the association of different family characteristics with age at menarche. Regression and path analyses were applied incorporating multilevel techniques to adjust for the nested nature of data within countries.
Results:
Living with mother (Cohen's d = .12), father (d = .08), brothers (d = .04) and sisters (d = .06) are independently associated with later age at menarche. Living in a foster home (d = -.16), with 'someone else' (d = -.11), stepmother (d = -.10) or stepfather (d = -.06) was associated with earlier menarche. Path models show that up to 89% of these effects can be explained through lifestyle and psychological variables.
Conclusions:
Earlier menarche is reported amongst those with living conditions other than a family consisting of two biological parents. This can partly be explained by girls' higher Body Mass Index in these families which is a biological determinant of early menarche. Lower physical activity and elevated psychosomatic complaints were also more often found in girls in these family environments.
... LHT also predicts changes outside the economic domainin love, for example. According to LHT, individuals growing up in affluent environments are more motivated by long-term pair-bonding and show stronger attachment to their spouses (Chisholm et al. 2005;Del Giudice 2009;Quinlan 2003;Simpson et al. 2011). Thus, LHT predicts that higher levels of innovativeness should be associated with greater romantic attachment, which is what is observed in the Roman period and the medieval period, as well as in the early modern period with an increase of romantic works (e.g., Tristan and Iseult) during periods of affluence . ...
Baumard's perspective asserts that “opportunity is the mother of innovation,” in contrast to the adage ascribing this role to necessity. Drawing on behavioral ecology and cognition, we propose that both extremes – affluence and scarcity – can drive innovation. We suggest that the types of innovations at these two extremes differ and that both rely on mechanisms operating on different time scales.
... LHT also predicts changes outside the economic domainin love, for example. According to LHT, individuals growing up in affluent environments are more motivated by long-term pair-bonding and show stronger attachment to their spouses (Chisholm et al. 2005;Del Giudice 2009;Quinlan 2003;Simpson et al. 2011). Thus, LHT predicts that higher levels of innovativeness should be associated with greater romantic attachment, which is what is observed in the Roman period and the medieval period, as well as in the early modern period with an increase of romantic works (e.g., Tristan and Iseult) during periods of affluence . ...
Baumard proposes that life history slowing in populations over time is the principal driver of innovation rates. We show that this is only true of micro-innovation rates, which reflect cognitive and economic specialization as an adaptation to high population density, and not macro-innovation rates, which relate more to a population's level of general intelligence.
... Alio, Kornosky, Mbah, Marty, & Salihu, 2010;Balayla, Azoulay, & Abenhaim, 2011;Daly & Wilson, 1988;Gaudino Jr, Jenkins, & Rochat, 1999;Hurtado & Hill, 1992;Jeynes, 2016;Mathews, Curtin, & MacDorman, 2000;Mattison et al., 2014), psychosocial development and well-being (e.g., Cummings & Davies, 2002;Goldberg & Carlson, 2014), and future reproductive strategies (e.g. Ellis et al., 2003;Quinlan, 2003;Scelza, 2010;Sheppard & Sear, 2012). Furthermore, in adult relationships, the link between sexual satisfaction and overall relationship stability has been well-documented: couples who report a satisfactory sex life also report greater love and commitment in their relationships, and those who experience a higher level of satisfaction tend to stay together longer (McNulty, Wenner, & Fisher, 2016;Sprecher, 2002;Yeh, Lorenz, Wickrama, Conger, & Elder Jr., 2006). ...
Humans exhibit an unusual pattern of sexual behavior compared to other mammalian females. Women's extended sexuality has been hypothesized to be related to a variety of possible benefits, especially non-genetic reproductive benefits, such as securing male investment via reinforced pairbonds or paternity confusion. But sexual behavior also comes at a cost, particularly for pregnant women, in terms of energetic costs, potential disease, and possible harm to the fetus. We hypothesize, therefore, that sexual behavior in pregnant women should reflect adaptive strategies and that pregnant women will be particularly strategic about their sexual behavior in order to maximize potential benefits while minimizing potential costs. One hundred twelve pregnant women completed a survey of their partners' qualities and their sexual desires toward their primary partners and men other than their primary partners. Results showed that women's perceptions of relationship threat positively predicted sexual desire for primary partners, while their perceptions of their partner's investing qualities negatively predicted sexual desire for extra-pair mates. These qualities, as well as cues to partner's genetic quality and gestation age, also interacted in ways that suggest that pregnant women's sexual desires are sensitive to cues of future investment and relationship stability.
Attitudes towards sexual minorities have undergone a transformation in Western countries recently. This has led to an increase in research into the experiences of sexual minorities in a variety of life domains. Although parenthood is a valued life goal only a few small-scale studies have looked into the parenthood goals of individuals in relation to their sexual orientation. The aims of this study are to analyse the diversity of sexual orientation, the factors associated with it and the relationship to fertility intentions among adolescents aged 16 to 19. The study draws on a nationally representative youth survey conducted in 2020 in Estonia (N = 1624), and employs descriptive methods and logistic and linear regression models. The results show that adolescents in Estonia exhibit considerable diversity of sexual orientation, with one-fifth reporting some degree of attraction to their own sex. The minority sexual orientation is more frequent among groups which can be regarded as more open or exposed to new behaviours, but is also associated with a disadvantaged family background. The results reveal a clear negative association between the intended number of children and the minority sexual orientation, which is not explained by other available variables.
The interface of sexual behavior and evolutionary psychology is a rapidly growing domain, rich in psychological theories and data as well as controversies and applications. With nearly eighty chapters by leading researchers from around the world, and combining theoretical and empirical perspectives, The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology is the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference work in the field. Providing a broad yet in-depth overview of the various evolutionary principles that influence all types of sexual behaviors, the handbook takes an inclusive approach that draws on a number of disciplines and covers nonhuman and human psychology. It is an essential resource for both established researchers and students in psychology, biology, anthropology, medicine, and criminology, among other fields. Volume 2: Male Sexual Adaptations addresses theory and research focused on sexual adaptations in human males.
Wide-ranging and inclusive, this text provides an invaluable review of an expansive selection of topics in human evolution, variation and adaptability for professionals and students in biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, medical sciences and psychology. The chapters are organized around four broad themes, with sections devoted to phenotypic and genetic variation within and between human populations, reproductive physiology and behavior, growth and development, and human health from evolutionary and ecological perspectives. An introductory section provides readers with the historical, theoretical and methodological foundations needed to understand the more complex ideas presented later. Two hundred discussion questions provide starting points for class debate and assignments to test student understanding.
Wide-ranging and inclusive, this text provides an invaluable review of an expansive selection of topics in human evolution, variation and adaptability for professionals and students in biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, medical sciences and psychology. The chapters are organized around four broad themes, with sections devoted to phenotypic and genetic variation within and between human populations, reproductive physiology and behavior, growth and development, and human health from evolutionary and ecological perspectives. An introductory section provides readers with the historical, theoretical and methodological foundations needed to understand the more complex ideas presented later. Two hundred discussion questions provide starting points for class debate and assignments to test student understanding.
Wide-ranging and inclusive, this text provides an invaluable review of an expansive selection of topics in human evolution, variation and adaptability for professionals and students in biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, medical sciences and psychology. The chapters are organized around four broad themes, with sections devoted to phenotypic and genetic variation within and between human populations, reproductive physiology and behavior, growth and development, and human health from evolutionary and ecological perspectives. An introductory section provides readers with the historical, theoretical and methodological foundations needed to understand the more complex ideas presented later. Two hundred discussion questions provide starting points for class debate and assignments to test student understanding.
Wide-ranging and inclusive, this text provides an invaluable review of an expansive selection of topics in human evolution, variation and adaptability for professionals and students in biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, medical sciences and psychology. The chapters are organized around four broad themes, with sections devoted to phenotypic and genetic variation within and between human populations, reproductive physiology and behavior, growth and development, and human health from evolutionary and ecological perspectives. An introductory section provides readers with the historical, theoretical and methodological foundations needed to understand the more complex ideas presented later. Two hundred discussion questions provide starting points for class debate and assignments to test student understanding.
Wide-ranging and inclusive, this text provides an invaluable review of an expansive selection of topics in human evolution, variation and adaptability for professionals and students in biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, medical sciences and psychology. The chapters are organized around four broad themes, with sections devoted to phenotypic and genetic variation within and between human populations, reproductive physiology and behavior, growth and development, and human health from evolutionary and ecological perspectives. An introductory section provides readers with the historical, theoretical and methodological foundations needed to understand the more complex ideas presented later. Two hundred discussion questions provide starting points for class debate and assignments to test student understanding.
Cross-cultural psychology has come of age as a scientific discipline, but how has it developed? The field has moved from exploratory studies, in which researchers were mainly interested in finding differences in psychological functioning without any clear expectation, to detailed hypothesis tests of theories of cross-cultural differences. This book takes stock of the large number of empirical studies conducted over the last decades to evaluate the current state of the field. Specialists from various domains provide an overview of their area, linking it to the fundamental questions of cross-cultural psychology such as how individuals and their cultures are linked, how the link evolves during development, and what the methodological challenges of the field are. This book will appeal to academic researchers and post-graduates interested in cross-cultural research.
Cross-cultural psychology has come of age as a scientific discipline, but how has it developed? The field has moved from exploratory studies, in which researchers were mainly interested in finding differences in psychological functioning without any clear expectation, to detailed hypothesis tests of theories of cross-cultural differences. This book takes stock of the large number of empirical studies conducted over the last decades to evaluate the current state of the field. Specialists from various domains provide an overview of their area, linking it to the fundamental questions of cross-cultural psychology such as how individuals and their cultures are linked, how the link evolves during development, and what the methodological challenges of the field are. This book will appeal to academic researchers and post-graduates interested in cross-cultural research.
Cross-cultural psychology has come of age as a scientific discipline, but how has it developed? The field has moved from exploratory studies, in which researchers were mainly interested in finding differences in psychological functioning without any clear expectation, to detailed hypothesis tests of theories of cross-cultural differences. This book takes stock of the large number of empirical studies conducted over the last decades to evaluate the current state of the field. Specialists from various domains provide an overview of their area, linking it to the fundamental questions of cross-cultural psychology such as how individuals and their cultures are linked, how the link evolves during development, and what the methodological challenges of the field are. This book will appeal to academic researchers and post-graduates interested in cross-cultural research.
Cross-cultural psychology has come of age as a scientific discipline, but how has it developed? The field has moved from exploratory studies, in which researchers were mainly interested in finding differences in psychological functioning without any clear expectation, to detailed hypothesis tests of theories of cross-cultural differences. This book takes stock of the large number of empirical studies conducted over the last decades to evaluate the current state of the field. Specialists from various domains provide an overview of their area, linking it to the fundamental questions of cross-cultural psychology such as how individuals and their cultures are linked, how the link evolves during development, and what the methodological challenges of the field are. This book will appeal to academic researchers and post-graduates interested in cross-cultural research.
Cross-cultural psychology has come of age as a scientific discipline, but how has it developed? The field has moved from exploratory studies, in which researchers were mainly interested in finding differences in psychological functioning without any clear expectation, to detailed hypothesis tests of theories of cross-cultural differences. This book takes stock of the large number of empirical studies conducted over the last decades to evaluate the current state of the field. Specialists from various domains provide an overview of their area, linking it to the fundamental questions of cross-cultural psychology such as how individuals and their cultures are linked, how the link evolves during development, and what the methodological challenges of the field are. This book will appeal to academic researchers and post-graduates interested in cross-cultural research.
Cross-cultural psychology has come of age as a scientific discipline, but how has it developed? The field has moved from exploratory studies, in which researchers were mainly interested in finding differences in psychological functioning without any clear expectation, to detailed hypothesis tests of theories of cross-cultural differences. This book takes stock of the large number of empirical studies conducted over the last decades to evaluate the current state of the field. Specialists from various domains provide an overview of their area, linking it to the fundamental questions of cross-cultural psychology such as how individuals and their cultures are linked, how the link evolves during development, and what the methodological challenges of the field are. This book will appeal to academic researchers and post-graduates interested in cross-cultural research.
Cross-cultural psychology has come of age as a scientific discipline, but how has it developed? The field has moved from exploratory studies, in which researchers were mainly interested in finding differences in psychological functioning without any clear expectation, to detailed hypothesis tests of theories of cross-cultural differences. This book takes stock of the large number of empirical studies conducted over the last decades to evaluate the current state of the field. Specialists from various domains provide an overview of their area, linking it to the fundamental questions of cross-cultural psychology such as how individuals and their cultures are linked, how the link evolves during development, and what the methodological challenges of the field are. This book will appeal to academic researchers and post-graduates interested in cross-cultural research.
We examine the relationship between having an emotionally close and active father in an adult child's social network compared to having a father who is not close, or a father who was not named. We hypothesize that fathers provide both essential and important contributions to their children's psychosocial development, and those contributions continue into active adulthood. Using the 2015 UC Berkeley Social Networks Study (UCNets), we find that adult children who name an emotionally close father in their network tend to have more males as social ties, but not more female ties. We conclude that fathers continue to play an important and active role in their children's lives long after childhood.
It is difficult to appreciate attachment theory fully without understanding its evolutionary foundations and purposes, many of which are rooted in infancy. In this chapter, we showcase attachment-relevant models of social development guided by the overarching evolutionary framework of life history theory (LHT). We begin by discussing the features of the physical and social environments in which our ancestors and the attachment behavioral system most likely evolved. We then discuss why attachment theory is a major, middle-level evolutionary theory and review some of its key normative and individual difference components. Following this, we discuss the central tenets of LHT, after which we describe six evolutionary-grounded, attachment-based models of social development. Each model leverages ideas, principles, and processes from attachment theory in combination with other evolutionary thinking to explain how and why people develop in different ways across their lives, starting in infancy. We conclude by considering some ways in which attachment theory and research might benefit from incorporating additional constructs from other domains of evolutionary psychology.
The interplay of genes and environments (GxE) is a fundamental source of variation in behavioral and developmental outcomes. Although the role of developmental time (T) in the unfolding of such interactions has yet to be fully considered, GxE operates within a temporal frame of reference across multiple timescales and degrees of biological complexity. Here, we consider GxExT interactions to understand adversity-induced developmental acceleration or deceleration whereby environmental conditions hasten or hinder children's development. To date, developmental pace changes have been largely explained through a focus on the individual: for example, how adversity "wears down" aging biological systems or how adversity accelerates or decelerates maturation to optimize reproductive fitness. We broaden such theories by positing shifts in developmental pace in response to the parent-child dyad's capacity or incapacity for meeting children's early, physiological and safety needs. We describe empirical evidence and potential neurobiological mechanisms supporting this new conceptualization of developmental acceleration and deceleration. We conclude with suggestions for future research on the developmental consequences of early adverse exposures.
Every year, millions of Americans experience the incarceration of a family member. Using 30 years of administrative data from Ohio and exploiting differing incarceration propensities of randomly assigned judges, this paper provides the first quasi-experimental estimates of the effects of parental and sibling incarceration in the United States. Parental incarceration has beneficial effects on some important outcomes for children, reducing their likelihood of incarceration by 4.9 percentage points and improving their adult neighborhood quality. While estimates on academic performance and teen parenthood are imprecise, we reject large positive or negative effects. Sibling incarceration leads to similar reductions in criminal activity. (JEL H76, J13, K42)
About one eighth of people are exposed to adversities such as abuse and neglect. Life history theory suggests that early experiences of adversity are strongly associated with later engagement in risky sexual behaviors. Specifically, those exposed to early adversity tend to engage in sex at an earlier age, have casual sex, and have high numbers of partners. Interestingly, it is also known that individuals exposed to early adversity are more likely to engage in more same-gender behavior. Existing research clearly outlines the association between early adversity and sexual behaviors that are considered risky. However, we have yet to identify a potential mediating mechanism that explains the full range of sexual behaviors seen in those who experience early adversity including adult sexual risk taking and same gender behavior. Outlining the specific mechanisms that influence later sexual risk taking is critically important in understanding the unique developmental experiences of those who experience early adversity. Here we propose and support one mediator important in the association between early adversity and later sexual behavior. We hypothesize that an increased sensitivity to the potential for sexual rewards mediates the association between early experiences of adversity and later sexual behavior, both risk behavior and female same-gender behavior. In the present manuscript we review relevant theoretical and empirical research in support of our claims.
Unraveling the sources of phenotypic variability for human behavioral traits has been a notoriously elusive goal. Attempts to determine the influence of genes on traits such as general cognition are frustrated by the fact that we know little about how genes and environment combine to shape a developing individual. Although this influence may be quantified in a number of ways, we will use heritability in the narrow sense (), which measures the additive contribution of genes to the variation in a trait observed among members of a specific population. Given a particular model, the heritability of a trait may be estimated from familial correlations, as in the recent study of 240 pairs of elderly twins by Gerald E. McClearn . (Reports,). However, there are many possible models, and we have little information about which is the most appropriate for a given trait. 1 et al 6 June, p. 1560 Heritability studies based on twins are particularly suspect because twin correlations alone do not provide sufficient data to disentangle genetic from cultural influences. The most important factor missing from models of the type used by McClearn . () is a measure of the environmental correlations among monozygotic () and dizygotic () twins. The twin research design used by McClearn . cannot be used to estimate these by saying that the heritability of general cognitive ability is high, namely, 62%, but he does not point out that the 95% confidence interval is 29% to 73%. There is also no mention that the statistical model used does not account for environmental differences between monozygotic and dizygotic twins. et al We have examined a number of different linear models in an attempt to determine the sensitivity of heritability estimates for IQ to underlying assumptions (Table). These estimates, which are commonly used in the literature, vary widely. The most important factor appears to be whether or not twins are used exclusively or whether the observed data include other familial correlations. Heritability estimated from all known familial correlations is substantially lower than heritability estimated from twin data alone. In particular, monozygotic twins resemble one another more closely than expected from the similarity among other relatives (as evidenced by the high estimates of in Table). This may be because there is a substantial correlation in the environmental experiences of monozygotic twins or because of the existence of specific genetic interactions (epistasis) that make genetically identical individuals more alike, but which contribute little to the resemblance of other relatives.
It is well established that young people whose parents divorced or experienced marital breakdown during their childhood are likely to enter into first partnerships and into parenthood earlier than those whose parents remained married. In this paper, using data from the British National Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles Survey, we examine how far the timing of first coitus plays a role in the genesis of this demographic behaviour for children of divorced parents. Other factors, including the timing of menarche, attitudes to sexual activity, degree of parental strictness and religiosity, were also examined. In general, these factors had little explanatory power. The analysis showed that earlier sexual activity for men and women from disrupted families is an important proximate determinant of their earlier entry into partnership and parenthood, compared with those brought up with both natural parents.
Some evolutionary models of human behavior posit that father-absence during early childhood influences subsequent adult reproductive strategies. We compare evidence for intergenerational transmission of conjugal stability in Western industrial populations with multigeneration patterns of conjugal stability in a rural Caribbean community. Genealogies (N=803) and behavioral data for a Caribbean community suggest that father-absence during early childhood has weak influence on later conjugal stability. Father-absent females were slightly more likely to have father-absent children than were father-present females (p=.08). Women whose mother had multiple mates were more likely to have multiple mates themselves (p=.03). Father-absent males were not more likely to become absent fathers than were father-present males. Men whose mother had multiple mates were not more likely to have multiple mates. Evidence from industrial populations and behavioral observations in a Caribbean community suggest that parental supervision during adolescence influences children's subsequent conjugal stability.
A central theme of the flood of literature in recent years in "evolutionary psychology" and "behavioral genetics" is that much or even most human behavior has been programmed into the human genome by natural selection. We show that this conclusion is without basis. Evolutionary psychology is a series of "just-so" stories rooted in part in the erroneous notion that human beings during the Pleistocene all lived in the same environment of evolutionary adaptation. Behavioral genetics is based on a confusion of the information contained in a technical statistic called "heritability" with the colloquial meaning of the term, exacerbated by oversimplification of statistical models for the behavioral similarity of twins. In fact, information from twin studies, cross-fostering, sexual behavior, and the Human Genome Project makes it abundantly clear that most interesting aspects of the human behavioral phenome are programmed into the brain by the environment. The general confusion created by the genetic determinists has had and will continue to have unfortunate effects on public policy.
Predicting the timing of weaning in diverse environments is important because breast-feeding significantly contributes to child survival and overall health, especially in developing countries. This study examines associations between weaning and household demographic variables that test predictions derived from parental investment (PI) theory. Data were collected for 101 children (49 males and 52 females) in a rural community in Dominica. Analyses indicate that father absence is associated with early weaning. This was the only prediction from PI theory that was supported. The following results were contrary to expectations: (1) Availability of female alloparents and household wealth were negatively associated with age at weaning. (2) Number of dependent children in the household was positively associated with age at weaning. (3) Mother's age at birth was not correlated with the timing of weaning. Lastly, (4) interaction terms for child's sex by wealth and sex by maternal social support were not associated with age at weaning, indicating the lack of a Trivers–Willard effect on weaning in this population. We suggest that explanations of weaning from PI theory will benefit from including high opportunity costs of prolonged nursing, demands for reciprocal female labor, and the importance of investment in “embodied capital.”
SYNOPSIS Objective. To develop an evolutionary model that integrates human parenting and family formation with ideas about the evolved functions of distinctive hu-man characteristics, such as concealed ovulation and sophisticated socio-cognitive competencies. Design. Theoretical and empirical research across sci-entific disciplines is reviewed. The emphasis is on ecological and social conditions that covary, across species, with parenting, family formation, and potentially coevolving characteristics, such as a long developmental period. Results. For humans, social competition through coalition formation emerges as the key selective pressure that readily explains the coevolution of a constella-tion of characteristics that covary with parenting and family formation, includ-ing a lengthy developmental period, reduced sexual dimorphism, concealed ovulation, menopause, complex kinship networks, large brains, and sophisti-cated sociocognitive competencies. Individual and cross-cultural variations in patterns of parenting dynamics and family formation are viewed as adaptive phenotypic responses to different ecological and historical conditions. Conclu-sions. Human parenting and family formation are features of a coevolving suite of distinctive human characteristics, the evolutionary function of which is to fa-cilitate the formation of kin-based coalitions for competition with other coali-tions for resource control. In this view, a central function of human parenting and the human family is to provide a context for the development of socio-competitive competencies appropriate to the local ecology.
A current view in the human sciences emphasizes an understanding of the individual as a representative of a past history of selection for survivorship and reproduction. All of us are descendants of individuals who lived long enough to produce reproductive offspring. Our current generation represents the variable mating success of our ascendants. Some of our grandparents and great grandparents had many offspring, others had only one or two. At each generation there are new opportunities to expand and to contract the genetic contribution of particular individuals to future generations. Since evolution favors those (1) who survive and (2) who are most successful at reproduction, we expect Darwinian theory to be most immediately helpful for comprehending our survivorship, mating, and parenting, while it may be less immediately applicable to domains like religion that are less intimately tied to fitness. In the case of humans, for whom learning plays a central role in differentiating reproductive success from failure, the social circumstances and social lessons we experience play a substantial role in influencing our reproductive behavior, the number of offspring we have, and the manner in which we rear those offspring. Learning also contributes to the social niche we occupy during the lifespan. Attention therefore is increasingly focused by sociobiologists on the evolution of human learning.
Contrasting explanations of variation in reproductive strategies emphasize nature (i.e., heritability) and nurture (i.e., environment). In this chapter it is argued that both may be correct, but not simply because, as so commonly assumed, nature and nurture interact to shape development. Rather, the proposition is advanced that there may be variation in susceptibility to rearing influence. Thus, in the case of some individuals, early vs. late maturation, promiscuous vs. committed sexuality, producing many vs. few offspring, and low- vs. high-investment parenting may reflect heritable proclivities (i.e., alternative reproductive strategies). In other individuals, however, environmental effects may account for observed differences in such features of development and behavior that define reproductive strategies (i.e., conditional strategies). After advancing this differential-susceptibility argument with respect to reproductive strategy, evidence is reviewed suggesting that highly negative infants may be most susceptible to rearing influence, at least with respect to the development of problem behavior, self control, and conscience, in order to illustrate the argument that individuals may vary in the degree to which their development is shaped by forces of nature and nurture.
Precocious pubertal development has been observed among girls in single parent families and among girls exposed to family conflict. One explanation for their precocious puberty is that it is evolutionarily adaptive (called here the “life history theory” view). Another explanation is that mothers simply pass on genes for precocious puberty. Thus, family environmental circumstances are not causally determinative of rates of pubertal development. The evidence for these two views was evaluated using the genetically-informative sibling pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Both menarcheal age and pubertal timing were heritable (h2 = .44 and .40, respectively), with negligible shared environmental variation. However, in White girls, greater parental warmth delayed puberty, as did living in two parent families. A test of genetic influences underlying the correlation of warmth and pubertal timing was negative, however. Although some of these findings were inconsistent with the evolutionary life history theory, they did not disprove it decisively.
In humans, fertility and other fitness-related traits (life history traits) usually have low to moderate heritabilities, suggesting genetic variability for these traits. This variation is often attributed to some form of “balancing” natural selection that actively maintains it. However, results from evolutionary genetics suggest that most genetic variation is due to non-adaptive forces such as mutation. In this chapter, we apply results of evolutionary quantitative genetics to existing data on human fertility and other fitness components. First, we compare heritabilities and genetic variances for human traits to similar measures in two model organisms: Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) and Mus musculus (house mice), and we argue that genetic variances are much more informative for such comparisons. General results are that genetic variances and heritabilities are similar in humans and in Drosophila. The mean coefficient of genetic variation in humans is 11%, and in Drosophila 9%. Mean heritability in both species is about 0.2. We also describe both adaptive and non-adaptive mechanisms that can maintain variation within populations, and evaluate evidence relating these mechanisms to human variation. An important implication of this analysis is that only about 12% of phenotypic variation in human fitness traits is likely due to genetic polymorphism that is actively maintained by natural selection. The remainder of phenotypic variance for these traits is either non-genetic, or due to non-adaptive forces such as mutation. We discuss ways in which methods and results of evolutionary quantitative genetics can be applied to studies of human traits.
This study explored two possible endophenotypes for marital status: 1) the predisposition to form and maintain lasting pair bonds and 2) the predisposition to have multiple mates over the life span. These endophenotypes were constructed using 1972 and 1985 marital status data from a followed-up subsample of the NAS-NRC WWII Veteran Twin Registry. In the 1972 data, consisting of 2297 MZ and 2443 DZ twin pairs, 42% of the variance in pair bonding could be attributed to additive genetic and 58% to nonshared environmental factors and measurement error. Of the variance in multiple mates, 28% could be attributed to additive genetic and 62% to nonshared environment/error factors. In the 1985 data, consisting of 1359 MZ and 1208 DZ twin pairs, 31% of the variance in pair bonding could be attributed to non-additive genetic and 69% to nonshared environment/error factors. Of the variance in multiple mates, 22% could be attributed to additive genetic and 78% to nonshared environment/error factors. Although parameter estimates were marked by wide confidence intervals, no variance in either endophenotype could be attributed to common family environment.
Current findings on parental influences provide more sophisticated and less deterministic explanations than did earlier theory and research on parenting. Contemporary research approaches include (a) behavior-genetic designs, augmented with direct measures of potential environmental influences; (b) studies distinguishing among children with different genetically influenced predispositions in terms of their responses to different environmental conditions; (c) experimental and quasi-experimental studies of change in children's behavior as a result of their exposure to parents' behavior, after controlling for children's initial characteristics; and (d) research on interactions between parenting and nonfamilial environmental influences and contexts, illustrating contemporary concern with influences beyond the parent-child dyad. These approaches indicate that parental influences on child development are neither as unambiguous as earlier researchers suggested nor as insubstantial as current critics claim.
Black teenagers living in metropolitan areas of the US initiate sexual intercourse at earlier ages than other teenagers and have higher rates of premarital pregnancy. Ethnographic studies of black families have claimed that economic uncertainties cause young blacks to delay marriage, while many young women achieve adulthood through premarital parenthood. It is also probable that girls who grow up in a female-headed family or who see their sisters become teenage parents are more likely to accept single-parenthood as a way to achieve adult status. The ethnographic explanations of the fertility behaviors of black adolescents are tested, using data from a random sample of more 1000 black females aged 13-19 who lived in the city of Chicago in 1979.-Authors
The present study examines the relationship between daughters' attitudes and behaviors and their mothers' marital status. More specifically, it investigates premarital sexual activity and attitudes toward divorce and marriage of young unmarried women from intact (n = 30), divorced (n = 30) and reconstituted (n = 30) families. Women from intact families reported the most positive attitudes toward marriage, while those in the reconstituted-family group reported the most accepting attitudes toward divorce. Women from divorced and reconstituted families reported significantly more sexual experience than did those from intact families. Family conflict, disruption, and the presence or absence of one's father emerged as significant predictors of dating behavior and attitudes.
The argument presented here is that parental divorce diminishes the economic and social resources available to children, which in turn has negative consequences for children's educational attainment, marital timing, marital probability, and divorce probability. Based upon a combined sample of national data, for white respondents only, the analysis shows that parental divorce is associated with lower educational attainment and earlier age at marriage for both sexes. Daughters of divorced parents have a higher probability of being divorced. For sons of divorced parents, the probability of ever marrying is lower and of divorcing is higher only if they have lower social class backgrounds.
Data from a panel study of white virgin adolescents first interviewed in junior high school confirm previous findings by others that parental marital status and its changes are related to initiation of coitus by young adolescents. Compared to the experience of adolescents in stable households with two natural parents, the state of being in a mother-only household predicts a higher probability of subsequent transition to coitus for girls. Only the disruption of the two-parent household between interviews predicts transition to coitus for boys. Parental marital status has the same effects on other age-graded delinquencies that it has on initiation of coitus. This finding supports conceptualizing marital status effects on adolescent coitus as parental loss of control over the whole class of age-graded delinquencies rather than a specific sexual effect.
This study examines the family environments and hormone profiles of 316 individuals aged 2 months-58 years residing in a rural village on the east coast of Dominica, a former British colony in the West Indies. Fieldwork was conducted over an eight-year period (1988–1995). Research methods and techniques include radioimmunoassay of cortisol and testosterone from saliva samples (N=22,340), residence histories, behavioral observations of family interactions, extensive ethnographic interview and participant observation, psychological questionnaires, and medical examinations.
Analyses of data indicate complex, sex-specific effects of family environment on endocrine function. Male endocrine profiles exhibit greater sensitivity to presence of father than do female endocrine profiles. Father-absent males tend to have (a) low cortisol levels during infancy, (b) high or abnormal cortisol profiles during childhood and adolescence, and (c) high cortisol and low testosterone levels during adulthood compared with those of males raised with a resident father. These results indicate that early family environment has significant effects on endocrine response throughout male life histories.
This study examined the association between attachment style and marital functioning, focusing on cognition as a key explanatory link. Married spouses completed measures of anxious and avoidant attachment, negative attributions, and perceived marital support and conflict. Attachment style was related to marital adjustment and to attribution style, with anxious attachment being a stronger predictor than avoidant attachment. The interaction of husbands' and wives' attachment styles also predicted marital functioning. In some cases, the tendency to make negative attributions for spouse behavior mediated the effects of attachment style on marital adjustment. Couples also participated in a marital interaction task involving two social situation manipulations - an agency threat (i.e., evaluation) and a communion threat (i.e., disagreement with one's spouse). Following the task, participants completed a measure assessing their appraisals of their spouses' behavior. Attachment style interacted with the social situation manipulations to affect spouse appraisals. The results support the general hypothesis that adult attachment style predicts functioning in intimate relationships, and suggest that cognitive processes may form part of the path explaining this association.
The effect of parental divorce on the divorce-proneness of offspring was estimated separately for white males, white females, black males, and black females through analysis of pooled data from 11 U.S. national surveys conducted from 1973 to 1985. The estimated effect for white females was substantial and statistically significant, but any effects in the other race-sex categories appear to have been moderate. Analyses performed to test some common and plausible explanations for an intergenerational transmission of divorce-proneness yielded indirect support for a "lower-commitment-to-marriage" explanation and revealed that a small proportion of the estimated transmission effect can be explained by a tendency for the children of divorce to marry at an early age.
Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper (1991) predicted that early childhood stress or conflict in the family environment would be associated with childhood behavioural symptoms, early puberty, and early, less discriminate reproductive behaviour. A cross-sectional self-report survey of childhood family life and adolescent development was carried out with 357 university students aged 18 to 24 from Toronto, Canada. In women, earlier menarche was associated with more parental marital conflict in early childhood (birth to age 7), more parental marital unhappiness throughout childhood (birth to age 11), more independence from mother or father in late childhood (age 8 to 11), less anxiousness or internalising symptoms (anxiousness/depression) in late childhood (age 8 to 11), earlier age at dating men, and more boyfriends. In men, earlier spermarche was associated with father absence (birth to before spermarche), more stress in quality of family life, parental marital unhappiness, and parental marital conflict in early childhood (birth to age 7), more independence from mother or father in late childhood (age 8 to 11), earlier age at dating women, more girlfriends, and earlier age at sexual intercourse. These ndings are generally consistent with the Belsky et al. (1991) view that childhood psychosocial stresses affect puberty and reproductive life history, though they do not preclude alternative accounts.
Ethnographic data from a rural Trinidadian village were examined to test for differences in step-and genetic parent/offspring relationships. The data indicated that when both step- and genetic offspring are co-resident in the same household, fathers interact more frequently and less agonistically with genetic offspring than they do with step-offspring. Contrary to predictions from attachment theory, two possible mechanisms for paternal attachment, duration of co-residence and co-residence at birth, are associated with lower rates of interaction, and higher rates of agonistic interaction with stepoffspring. The data also indicate gender differences in step- and genetic parent/ offspring relationships, higher rates of “fosterage” for stepoffspring, higher rates of emigration from the village for stepoffspring, and lower reproductive success for individuals raised by a stepparent.
I first review studies that deal with the tempo of maturation of girls from dysfunctional families in Poland. The authors of the studies used various methods both to gather the data and to compare the tempo of maturation of girls. The methods are presented and discussed here mainly from the point of view of their applicability to the theory of Belsky, Steinberg and Draper [(1991) Childhood experience, interpersonal development and reproductive strategy: an evolutionary theory and socialization, Child Development 62, 647–670]. All the results surveyed here lead to the conclusion that girls from dysfunctional families mature not later but even earlier than girls from normal families, though the standard of living of the former is much lower, on average. This fact is confronted with the very well established finding that in Poland there is a strong correlation between the low standard of living of a family and delayed maturation of the children. This supports the hypothesis that stressful childhood life events accelerate maturation of girls. This acceleration has been observed and discussed by many authors; see Kim, Smith & Palermiti [(1997) Conflict in childhood and reproductive development, Evolution and Human Behaviour, 18, 109–142] for a comprehensive bibliography.
Explanations offered by social scientists for the effects of father absence on children are reviewed; certain aspects of these interpretations are found wanting. Another explanation using theory from evolutionary biology is suggested: children show evolved, sensitive-period learning in early childhood which is linked to mother's pair-bond status or to mother's attitude toward males. As a result of children's perceptions a developmental track is established, which influences expression of reproductive strategy in adulthood. Male children born into matrifocal households exhibit at adolescence a complex of aggression, competition, low male parental investment, and derogation of females and feminity, while females show early expression of sexual interest and assumption of sexual activity, negative attitudes toward males, and poor ability to establish long-term relation- ships with one male. Male children reared in father9resent or nuclear households show less interest in competitive dominance with other males and more interest in manipulation of nonhuman aspects of the environment, while females show delayed sexual interest and activity and a mating strategy directed at locating a male who will invest in her and her offspring.
The aim of the study was to investigate biobehavioural organisation in infants with different qualities of attachment. Quality of attachment (security and disorganisation), emotional expression, and adrenocortical stress reactivity were investigated in a sample of 106 infants observed during Ainsworth’s Strange Situation at the age of 12 months. In addition, behavioural inhibition was assessed from maternal reports. As expected, securely attached infants did not show an adrenocortical response. Regarding the traditionally defined insecurely attached groups, adrenocortical activation during the strange situation was found for the ambivalent group, but not for the avoidant one. Previous ndings of increased adrenocortical activity in disorganised infants could not be replicated. In line with previous ndings, adrenocortical activation was most prominent in insecure infants with high behavioural inhibition indicating the function of a secure attachment relationship as a social buffer against less adaptive temperamental dispositions. Additional analyses indicated that adrenocortical reactivity and behavioural distress were not based on common activation processes. Biobehavioural associations within the different attachment groups suggest that biobehavioural processes in securely attached infants may be different from those in insecurely attached and disorganised groups. Whereas a coping model may be applied to describe the biobehavioural organisation of secure infants, an arousal model explanation may be more appropriate for the other groups.
This paper examines the effects of childhood family disruption on adult family experience by applying proportional hazard models to data from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). The results provide strong evidence that women who spend part of their childhoods in one-parent families are more likely to marry and bear children early, give birth before marriage, and have their own marriages break up. The major exception is that, among blacks, early marriage is unrelated to family background. Several explanations for intergenerational consequences are tested, including the economic-deprivation hypothesis, the socialization hypothesis, and the stress hypothesis. The results are most consistent with the socialization explanation, which argues that parental role models and parental supervision are the major factors in determining offspring's future family-formation behavior.
Addresses the issue of whether children are better off when their unhappily married parents divorce by reviewing studies of the long-term consequences of parental divorce after children reach adulthood. Focusing on long-term consequences is a direct way of assessing conservative claims that divorce is eroding the success and well-being of future generations. The frameworks explored in this chapter are the life course perspective (circumstances and events in the family of origin affect and follow children long after they have left the parental home) and the risk and resiliency perspective (stressing the importance of numerous risk factors in and the resilient nature of the developing child to social maladjustment). Other variables studied are socioeconomic and educational attainment, marital quality in adults whose parents had divorced, quality of parent–child relationships and measures of well-being. Research suggests that the consequences of parental divorce persist into adulthood. Adult offspring from divorced families of origin enter adulthood with less education, earn less money, have fewer financial assets, have poorer quality marriages, are more likely to divorce, have less affection for their parents and have lower levels of subjective well being. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Comments on the article by W. D. Manning (see record
2002-00741-008) which presents a clear and comprehensive summary of the available research on the nature and characteristics of cohabiting unions and the potential effects of cohabitation on children's development. Although the author of this commentary concur's with Manning's assertion that "the implications of cohabiting for children's lives should depend on whether they are living with two biological parents or one biological parent and their parent's partner" the fact is that most cohabiting-parent families are not biologically intact families. Thus, children in cohabiting families are at an increased risk of biological father absence and stepfather presence. In this chapter, the author discusses some possible consequences of biological father absence, stepfather presence, and father involvement on daughter's pubertal development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The relations among measures of attachment, spouse behavior, and marital satisfaction were assessed in a broad sample of 193 married couples, using both questionnaire and diary methods. Insecure attachment was associated with less favorable reports of spouse behavior, as assessed by diary checklists. Marital satisfaction was predicted by attachment measures and reports of spouse behavior. The relation between attachment security and marital satisfaction was moderated, but not mediated, by reported spouse behavior. Specifically, insecure individuals’ evaluations of their relationships were more reactive to recent spouse behavior, an effect that was especially marked for fearful participants and for those in longer-term marriages. Some gender differences in patterns of prediction were obtained. The results are discussed in terms of the working models associated with attachment styles, and the processes by which relationship satisfaction may be eroded over time.
Variations in pubertal timing, specifically age at menarche, have been associated with several antecedents, both genetic and environmental. Recent research has considered a broader range of environmental stressors and their influence on the development of the reproductive system. In this investigation, the following possible antecedents were considered: (a) hereditary transmission, (b) weight and weight for height, (c) stressful life events, (d) family relations, (e) absence or presence of an adult male in the household, and (f) psychological adjustment. Subjects were 75 premenarcheal girls between the ages of 10 and 14 drawn from a larger longitudinal investigation of adolescent development. Girls were from white, well-educated, middle- to upper-middle-class families and attended private schools in a northeastern urban area. While breast development, weight, family relations, and depressive affect were predictive of age at menarche, family relations predicted age at menarche above the influence of breast development or weight. A trend for maternal age at menarche to predict adolescent's age at menarche was found. Weight for height, presence of an adult male in the household, and stressful events were not predictive of age at menarche. These complex interactions of biological and psychosocial development demonstrated here may account to some extent for the inter- and intraindividual variation observed in pubertal development.
Several evolutionary theorists have linked early rearing context to later reproductive strategy, hypothesizing that strategies differentiate during development as functional responses to ecological characteristics, by individuals or through parental manipulation. Attachment security has been proposed as a mediator. In this study, 40 young adults were given a multidimensional assessment, including the Hazen and Shaver Adult Attachment Questionnaire. Twenty-four subjects were classified as having secure attachment styles, 16 as nonsecure. The magnitude and predictability of parental investment during childhood was classified as lower if there was a brief intersibling interval, parental divorce, fewer economic resources, or less nurturing parents (i.e., more childhood adversity). Several such indicators were present for 17 people, 12 of whom were nonsecure, compared to only 4 of the 23 others. The nonsecurely attached subjects were less likely to have attained enduring marriages. The 6/16 nonsecure who had a marriage or cohabitation began them at a younger age and after a shorter courtship period than did the 15/24 secure with such relationships. Separations or divorces had already occurred in the relationships of 4/6 nonsecure versus 5/15 secure. Attachment security was associated with childhood adversity and adult relationships for both men and women, when analyzed separately. A retrospective study cannot address cause and effect, because poor adult relationship outcomes might bias recall of parental behavior. However, results are consistent with theories that unpredictable early environments foster short-term rather than long-term mating strategies, possibly through affecting attachment styles.
We tested predictions about psychosocial factors in the onset of menarche using data from a longitudinal study of 16-year-old girls. Belsky, Steinberg, and Draper have proposed a model that seeks to explain individual differences in maturational timing in terms of stressful childhood experiences. Their model hypothesizes that (1) individuals who grow up under conditions of family stress (2) experience behavioral and psychological problems which (3) provoke earlier reproductive readiness. In this study, the effect of family stressors on menarche was mediated by neither behavior problems nor weight, contrary to the predictions. However, the most provocative proposition advanced by Belsky et al. received empirical support. Family conflict and father absence in childhood predicted an earlier age of menarche, and these factors in combination with weight showed some evidence of an additive influence on menarche. A genetic inheritance model may provide a more parsimonious account of these data than does a conditional adaptation model derived from sociobiology.
The concept of "reproductive strategy" drawn from the field of behavioral ecology is applied to the study of childhood experience and interpersonal development in order to develop an evolutionary theory of socialization. The theory is presented in terms of 2 divergent development pathways considered to promote reproductive success in the contexts in which they have arisen. One is characterized, in childhood, by a stressful rearing environment and the development of insecure attachments to parents and subsequent behavior problems; in adolescence by early pubertal development and precocious sexuality; and, in adulthood, by unstable pair bonds and limited investment in child rearing, whereas the other is characterized by the opposite. The relation between this theory and prevailing theories of socialization, specifically, attachment, social-learning, and discrete-emotions theory, is considered and research consistent with our evolutionary theory is reviewed. Finally, directions for future research are discussed.
Homicide is an extreme manifestation of interpersonal conflict with minimal reporting bias and can thus be used as a conflict "assay." Evolutionary models of social motives predict that genetic relationship will be associated with mitigation of conflict, and various analyses of homicide data support this prediction. Most "family" homicides are spousal homicides, fueled by male sexual proprietariness. In the case of parent-offspring conflict, an evolutionary model predicts variations in the risk of violence as a function of the ages, sexes, and other characteristics of protagonists, and these predictions are upheld in tests with data on infanticides, parricides, and filicides.
This paper uses a representative national sample of adolescents to study the interrelationships among family structure, patterns of family decision making, and deviant behavior among adolescents. Mother-only households are shown to be associated with particular patterns of family decision making and adolescent deviance, even when family income and parental education are controlled. In contrast to adolescents in households with 2 natural parents, youth in mother-only households are perceived as more likely to make decisions without direct parental input and more likely to exhibit deviant behavior. The presence of an additional adult in a mother-only household, especially for males, is associated with increased parental control and a reduction in various forms of adolescent deviance. Finally, patterns of family decision making and family structure both make independent contributions to adolescent deviance, and the impact of family structure on deviance of adolescent males is hardly affected by controlling for patterns of family decision making.
Variations in pubertal timing, specifically age at menarche, have been associated with several antecedents, both genetic and environmental. Recent research has considered a broader range of environmental stressors and their influence on the development of the reproductive system. In this investigation, the following possible antecedents were considered: (a) hereditary transmission, (b) weight and weight for height, (c) stressful life events, (d) family relations, (e) absence or presence of an adult male in the household, and (f) psychological adjustment. Subjects were 75 premenarcheal girls between the ages of 10 and 14 drawn from a larger longitudinal investigation of adolescent development. Girls were from white, well-educated, middle- to upper-middle-class families and attended private schools in a northeastern urban area. While breast development, weight, family relations, and depressive affect were predictive of age at menarche, family relations predicted age at menarche above the influence of breast development or weight. A trend for maternal age at menarche to predict adolescent's age at menarche was found. Weight for height, presence of an adult male in the household, and stressful events were not predictive of age at menarche. These complex interactions of biological and psychosocial development demonstrated here may account to some extent for the inter- and intraindividual variation observed in pubertal development.
To investigate breast-feeding patterns and factors encouraging early weaning, a survey was conducted in Tonalá and Tlaquepaque, two suburbs within Guadalajara's metropolitan area, in 1991. For this purpose a multiphase probabilistic sample of infants born in these areas from May 1990 through April 1991 was selected. This was done by choosing at random primary health care units in the study areas, health posts associated with these units, and all infants meeting the above criteria at each selected post. A total of 166 homes was visited and interviews were conducted with 141 mothers (91% of the 155 predicted) in June and July 1991. These interviews made use of a 33-item questionnaire developed for the purpose; the interviewers were social workers previously trained in such activities. Logistic regression models were used to calculate the relative risk (RR) and probability of early weaning being associated with certain variables. To help ensure the validity of the results, several regression models were constructed for the purpose of selecting the one best fitting the data. In addition, the attributable population risk (APR) was calculated. The results indicate that failure to breast-feed and early weaning were prevalent in the study population, 34.8% of the study infants being breast-fed less than 1 month. Three risk factors were associated statistically (P < 0.05) with early weaning, these being maternal age < 20 years (RR = 3.75; 95% CI = 1.53-9.19), maternal marital status single (RR = 2.88; 95% CI = 1.08-7.69), and social status of the main family provider other than "worker"--i.e., employee, professional (RR = 2.72; 95% CI = 1.17-6.28). The likelihood that a study infant would have been breast-fed less than a month was 0.84 if the infant was exposed to all three of these identified risk factors and 0.15 if he or she was exposed to none of them. The high percentages of study mothers less then 20 years old and with a social status other than "worker" were reflected in high attributable population found for these variables. In general, the findings point up a need to reduce the influence of these risk factors and to prolong maternal breast-feeding in the study population.
Chart review and direct observation were used to study the relationship between social status, mother-infant time together, and breastfeeding duration among 138 mothers who were breastfeeding at hospital discharge. Overall breastfeeding rate was 73 percent for patients with private insurance and 37 percent for patients without private insurance. Breastfeeding duration to six months was not related to social status. Mother-infant time together from birth through 48 hours was 3 hours greater for private insurance mothers. These three hours, which were statistically significantly different, did not correlate with breastfeeding duration in any way. Ancillary findings were that married mothers were more likely that unmarried mothers to be breastfeeding at six months, and that mothers who received epidurals were less likely to be breastfeeding at six months than mothers who did not receive epidurals.
A cohort of 1192 consecutive newborn infants was followed prospectively for factors possibly affecting the length of time they were breastfed. Following the procedure of a double-blind test, one-third of the cohort received Credé prophylaxis at age 2 h. The duration of breastfeeding (sole or partial) was recorded up to age 6 months and there was a 100% follow-up. Multivariate proportional hazards regression analysis (Cox) of the whole cohort showed that babies being delivered between 21.00 and 24.00 h were associated with a shorter duration of breastfeeding (rate ratio = 1.37, 99% confidence interval = 1.05-1.78). Mother's age (under 21 years), marital status (unmarried) and birthweight (inversely) were factors also independently associated with shorter breastfeeding duration. Boys were breastfed for a shorter time than girls (p < 0.05). In univariate analyses only, the first-born babies had a significantly shorter breastfeeding time, and purulent eyes in the first 24 h was a factor of borderline significance (p < 0.05). Educational level, socioeconomic status and smoking habits of the mothers were not investigated in this study. Owing to the lack of regulations in place at the time of the study (1981-82), it was possible to differentiate between the mothers who responded spontaneously to the self-completion questionnaire (primary responders, 68.5%) and those who required one or two reminders. Short breastfeeding time was the strongest predictor of being a secondary responder, followed by being very young or unmarried. Approaching the secondary responders reduced the prevalence of breastfeeding at 6 months by 5% (from 53.8% to 48.8%).
In comparisons among Chicago neighbourhoods, homicide rates in 1988-93 varied more than 100-fold, while male life expectancy at birth ranged from 54 to 77 years, even with effects of homicide mortality removed. This "cause deleted" life expectancy was highly correlated with homicide rates; a measure of economic inequality added significant additional prediction, whereas median household income did not. Deaths from internal causes (diseases) show similar age patterns, despite different absolute levels, in the best and worst neighbourhoods, whereas deaths from external causes (homicide, accident, suicide) do not. As life expectancy declines across neighbourhoods, women reproduce earlier; by age 30, however, neighbourhood no longer affects age specific fertility. These results support the hypothesis that life expectancy itself may be a psychologically salient determinant of risk taking and the timing of life transitions.
This report shows data on a wide range of topics from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), including: pregnancy and birth, marriage, divorce, cohabitation, sexual intercourse, contraception, infertility, use of family planning and other medical services, and health conditions and behavior.
The data in this report are based on in-person interviews with a national sample of 10,847 women 15-44 years of age. The interviews lasted an average of 103 minutes. The response rate was 79 percent. The sample data are adjusted for nonresponse and are national estimates.
Following large increases in the 1970's and 1980's, the proportion of teenagers who have ever had sexual intercourse decreased slightly between 1990 and 1995; condom use, both at first intercourse and currently, has increased markedly since the 1970's. These changes may have contributed to the decreases in the teen birth rate observed in the 1990's. For all women 15-44 years of age, the number whose partner was currently using the condom (at the date of interview) increased from 3.6 million in 1982 to 5.1 million in 1988 and 7.9 million in 1995. About 8 percent of women reported that their first intercourse was not voluntary. This result is consistent with an earlier national survey. About 20 percent reported that they had been forced by a man to have intercourse at some time in their lives. About 10 percent of births in 1990-95 were unwanted by the mother compared with 12 percent in 1984-88. The decrease in unwanted births was particularly large for black women. It appears that the prevalence of pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) and vaginal douching have both decreased since 1988.