PSY 544 Lecture 8: Lecture 8 P1
• (8) Problems of Parenting and Kinship
If your parents spank you then you'll turn out to be an aggressive person - an alternative
explanation is: genetics - that if like most characteristics of people, your level of
aggression is influenced by your genes then it's possible that parents who pass on genes to
their children can pass on genes for being aggressive and parents who have genes for
being aggressive are more likely to choose an aggressive parenting style involving physical
punishment and their children are more likely to be aggressive because they have their
parents genes and not necessarily because they have been physically disciplined
For today's class: we'll think about things like the ex above, that there are alternative ways
of thinking about things that we're already familiar with - ex how families work, sibling/
parent-child relationships work and most of us default to culture and social explanations
but it's valuable to think whether there's an evolutionary explanation instead as well
*Jimmy Kimmel video: who do you love more - mom or dad?
Is there an evolutionary reason for why there's a unique tension in a sibling relationship
b/w assistance but also harm and not treating each other the right way. Sibling rivalry also
happens in the animal kingdom
Role of grand parents: human grandparents, evolutionary speaking are weird - we're the
only species that has grand parents actively involved in our lives. Various animal species
have different average reproductive and post reproductive years of the female of that
species. It turns out that in almost every species the female of the species don't stop
reproducing until they die. Only very few species, like ours, in which females have a post-
reproductive life. In humans, we get a few years after women have stopped reproducing
but before they die so post-reproductive life span - the only other two species who do this
are whales: Killer Whales and Short-finned pilot Whales - the only species that get to be
grandmothers - they give up reproducing themselves and devote their resources to raising
their grandchildren - we will look at the evolutionary reason for the existence of
grandparents
• Parenting and family issues
• Can an evolutionary perspective add to our thinking about our family relationships? - why
is there parental care at all why is there a stronger bond with mothers vs fathers
• For instance, is there an evolutionary reason why the bond between mom and child is
typically stronger than between dad and child?
• Is there an evolutionary reason why we often both love and loathe our siblings?
• Is there an evolutionary reason why we are one of the few species with grandparents who
are ever involved in our lives?
• Extended family relationships
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• Human grandparents from an evolutionary perspective are weird
• Various different animal species: average reproductive years of females of the species and
the post reproductive years
• I alost ee othe speies the feales of the speies do’t stop poduig util the
die
• There are very few species like ours where
• We get a few years on average after women have stopped producing children and before
they die
• The only other species who do this are killer whales and pilot whales
• Overview
• Parent-child relationships
• The evolution of parental care
• Paternity uncertainty and parental investment
• Reducing paternity uncertainty
• Step-families
• Sibling relationships
• Parent-child conflict and sibling rivalry
• Extended family relationships
• Inclusive fitness and kin altruism
• The Gadothe Hpothesis ad gadpaetal iestet
• A natural experiment in alternative parenting
• The development is the early 1900s of the Israeli kibbutzim (the word translates to
gathering), these are collective communities in which people work collectively and live
collectively, originally in part inspired by socialist ideas
One of the ideas they had in the name of gender equality was that they wanted to liberate
women from domestic duties and child care, they didn't want the burden of children to
disproportionately fall on women, so they decided that in order to get rid of this they
would raise the children in the community and they also did this because they argued that
it was selfish of parents to want to control their children as children should be allowed to
grow independently from their parents. They were raised in communal children's houses
and their primary care givers were teachers and nurses and not their actual parents.
Parents visited the children before and after work each day but children didn't live with
them and primary care givers were unrelated individuals - here, we've got a natural
experiment going on to see whether or not it's possible to create alternative patterns to
raise children - in this case, pattern of raising children communally by people unrelated to
them which, they hoped, would result in more egalitarian outcomes both for the parents
and also in treating the children of the community equally - this was around the time
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where the dominant perspective in psychology was behaviourism and Watson and Skinner
denied that there are any human instincts and they believed in conditioning which is all
learning so they probably would have thought this experiment would work that if we raise
kids separately people will learn to adapt to it and that this system wouldn't cause
problems. However, overtime the women in this system insisted that their own children
be allowed to live with them so tensions rose over time with this communal childcare
system - it seemed to be unsatisfactory and overtime women began to demand that their
children live with them. There was opposition from men but eventually this practice of
eclectic child rearing was ended in the 1970s and parenting patterns moved back to
patterns where parents live with their own children instead of raising them communally
• Isaeli kiutzi gatheig ae olletie communities, dating back to the early 1900s.
• Originally inspired in part by socialism.
• Wated to lieate oe fo doesti duties ad hild-care in the name of
gede eualit. Also agued that it as selfish fo paets to at to otol thei
children and that they should be allowed to develop independently.
• “o, hilde ee aised i oual hilde’s houses ad the pia ae-givers
were trained nurses and teachers, not parents (who saw children 3-4 hours per day).
• A natural experiment in alternative parenting
• Isaeli kiutzi gatheig ae olletie ouities, datig ak to the eal 9s.
• However, over time, the women in the kibbutzim began to insist that their own
children be allowed to live with them.
• Despite opposition from the men, the practice of collective child-rearing was largely
ended in the 1970s.
• Parenting patterns moved to the pattern seen in every other human culture.
• An evolutionary perspective on child-care
- if we take an evolutionary approach to thinking about the problems with adaptation that
our species would have faced throughout our evolutionary history, you can easily
understand why this experiment didn't work.
• If we think from an evo perspective:
• Any genes that incline parents to take more care of their own children relative to how
much care/attention/love they devote to children of others are likely to spread more
effectively through a population..for the simple reason that:
• If genes promote strong (weak) feelings of care for your own biological children,
then parents with those genes are more (less) likely to act in ways that increase the
survival and reproduction of their those specific biological children. - on the other
hand if there were genes that inclined you to weak feelings towards your own
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