Investment by maternal grandmother buffers children against the impacts of adverse early life experiences.

Exogenous shocks during sensitive periods of development can have long-lasting effects on adult phenotypes including behavior, survival and reproduction. Cooperative breeding, such as grandparental care in humans and some other mammal species, is believed to have evolved partly in order to cope with challenging environments. Nevertheless, studies addressing whether grandparental investment can buffer the development of grandchildren from multiple adversities early in life are few and have provided mixed results, perhaps owing to difficulties drawing causal inferences from non-experimental data. Using population-based data of English and Welsh adolescents (sample size ranging from 817 to 1197), we examined whether grandparental investment reduces emotional and behavioral problems in children resulting from facing multiple adverse early life experiences (AELEs), by employing instrumental variable regression in a Bayesian structural equation modeling framework to better justify causal interpretations of the results. When children had faced multiple AELEs, the investment of maternal grandmothers reduced, but could not fully erase, their emotional and behavioral problems. No such result was observed in the case of the investment of other grandparent types. These findings indicate that in adverse environmental conditions the investment of maternal grandmothers can improve child wellbeing.

Parental Investment by Birth Fathers and Stepfathers : Roles of Mating Effort and Childhood Co-residence Duration.

This study investigates the determinants of paternal investment by birth fathers and stepfathers. Inclusive fitness theory predicts higher parental investment in birth children than stepchildren, and this has consistently been found in previous studies. Here we investigate whether paternal investment varies with childhood co-residence duration and differs between stepfathers and divorced birth fathers by comparing the investment of (1) stepfathers, (2) birth fathers who are separated from the child's mother, and (3) birth fathers who still are in a relationship with her. Path analysis was conducted using cross-sectional data from adolescents and younger adults (aged 17-19, 27-29, and 37-39 years) from the German Family Panel (pairfam), collected in 2010-2011 (n = 8326). As proxies of paternal investment, we used financial and practical help, emotional support, intimacy, and emotional closeness, as reported by the children. We found that birth fathers who were still in a relationship with the mother invested the most, and stepfathers invested the least. Furthermore, the investment of both separated fathers and stepfathers increased with the duration of co-residence with the child. However, in the case of financial help and intimacy, the effect of childhood co-residence duration was stronger in stepfathers than in separated fathers. Our findings support inclusive fitness theory and mating effort theory in explaining social behavior and family dynamics in this population. Furthermore, social environment, such as childhood co-residence was associated with paternal investment.

Sexual Selection and the Treatment of Predecessors' Progeny by Replacement Mates.

Darwin's theory of sexual selection provides a useful framework for understanding the behavior of stepparents. A non-human animal whose new mate has dependent young may kill, ignore, or adopt the predecessor's progeny. The third option has been interpreted as courtship ("mating effort"), and whether selection favors such investment over killing or ignoring the young apparently depends on aspects of the species-typical ecology and demography. The tripartite categorization of responses is a simplification, however, There is variability both within and between species along a continuum from rejection to "full adoption." The average stepparent invests less than the average birth parent, but more than nothing. Human stepparents have often been found to kill young children at higher rates than birth parents, but stepparental infanticide cannot plausibly be interpreted as a human adaptation, both because it is extremely rare and because it is almost certainly more likely to reduce the killer's fitness than to raise it. How sexual selection theory remains relevant to human stepparenting is by suggesting testable hypotheses about predictors of the variability in stepparental investment.

In-Law Relationships in Evolutionary Perspective: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

In-laws (relatives by marriage) are true kin because the descendants that they have in common make them "vehicles" of one another's inclusive fitness. From this shared interest flows cooperation and mutual valuation: the good side of in-law relationships. But there is also a bad side. Recent theoretical models err when they equate the inclusive fitness value of corresponding pairs of genetic and affinal (marital) relatives-brother and brother-in-law, daughter and daughter-in-law-partly because a genetic relative's reproduction always replicates ego's genes whereas reproduction by an affine may not, and partly because of distinct avenues for nepotism. Close genetic relatives compete, often fiercely, over familial property, but the main issues in conflict among marital relatives are different and diverse: fidelity and paternity, divorce and autonomy, and inclinations to invest in distinct natal kindreds. These conflicts can get ugly, even lethal. We present the results of a pilot study conducted in Bangladesh which suggests that heightened mortality arising from mother-in-law/daughter-in-law conflict may be a two-way street, and we urge others to replicate and extend these analyses.

Grandparental partnership status and its effects on caring for grandchildren in Europe.

Grandparents are important childcare providers, but grandparental relationship status matters. According to several studies, caregiving is reduced after grandparental divorce, but differential responses by grandmothers versus grandfathers have often been glossed over. To explore the effects of relationship status on grandparental care, we analysed data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) comparing four grandparental relationship statuses (original couple, widowed, divorced, and repartnered) with respect to grandmothers' and grandfathers' provision of care to their birth children's children. When proximity, kinship laterality, and grandparents' age, health, employment, and financial status were controlled, divorced grandmothers without current partners provided significantly more childcare than grandmothers who were still residing with the grandfather, those who had new partners unrelated to the grandchildren, and widows without current partners. Grandfathers exhibited a very different pattern, providing substantially less grandchild care after divorce. Grandfathers in their original partnerships provided the most grandchild care, followed by widowers, those with new partners and finally those who were divorced. Seemingly contradictory findings in prior research, including studies using SHARE data, can be explained partly by failures to distinguish divorce's effects on grandmothers versus grandfathers, and partly by insufficient controls for the grandmother's financial and employment statuses.

A model explaining the matrilateral bias in alloparental investment.

Maternal grandmothers invest more in childcare than paternal grandmothers. This bias is large where the expression of preferences is unconstrained by residential and lineage norms, and is detectable even where marriage removes women from their natal families. We maintain that the standard evolutionary explanation, paternity uncertainty, is incomplete, and present an expanded model incorporating effects of alloparents on the mother as well as on her children. Alloparenting lightens a mother's load and increases her residual nepotistic value: her expected fitness from later investments in personal reproduction and in her natal relatives. The mother's mother derives fitness from all such investments, whereas her mother-in-law gains only from further investment in children sired by her son, and thus has less incentive to assist the mother even if paternity is certain. This logic extends to kin other than grandmothers. We generate several hypotheses for future research.

Going Home : How Mothers Maintain Natal Family Ties in a Patrilocal Society.

Humans have been called "cooperative breeders" because mothers rely heavily on alloparental assistance, and the grandmother life stage has been interpreted as an adaptation for alloparenting. Many studies indicate that women invest preferentially in their daughters' children, but little research has been conducted where patrilocal residence is normative. Bangladesh is such a place, but women nevertheless receive substantial alloparental investment from the matrilateral family, and child outcomes improve when maternal grandmothers are alloparents. To garner this support, women must maintain contact with their natal families. Here, the visiting behavior of 151 interviewed mothers was analyzed. Despite the challenges of patrilocality and purdah, almost all respondents visited their own mothers, and mothers-in-law were visited far less. This contrast persists in analyses controlling for proximity, respondent age, postmarital residence, family income, and marital status. These results affirm the importance women place on matrilateral ties, even under a countervailing ideology.

The behavioural constellation of deprivation: Compelling framework, messy reality.

Pepper & Nettle's (P&N's) argument is compelling, but apparently contradictory data are easily found. Associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and substance abuse are sometimes positive, the poor are sometimes eager to educate their children, and perceptions of local mortality risk can be so distorted as to constitute an implausible basis for contextually appropriate responding. These anomalies highlight the need for more psychological work.

Has the child welfare profession discovered nepotistic biases?

A major trend in foster care in developed countries over the past quarter century has been a shift toward placing children with "kin" rather than with unrelated foster parents. This change in practice is widely backed by legislation and is routinely justified as being in the best interests of the child. It is tempting to interpret this change as indicating that the child welfare profession has belatedly discovered that human social sentiments are nepotistic in their design, such that kin tend to be the most nurturant alloparents. Arguably, however, the change in practice has been driven by demographic, economic, and political forces rather than by discovery of its benefits. More and better research is needed before we can be sure that children have actually benefitted.