Chapter 17: Human Mate Choice and Parenting

1
Chapter 17 Human Mate Choice and Parenting

• Mate Choice (already covered)
• Child Abuse and Infanticide
• Focus of lecture materials
• Child spacing
• !Kung demands of motherhood

2
Kin-Selection and Child Abuse/Infanticide

• Kin-Selection is this child mine?
• For women, (apart from adoption) a child is
  always related to her by .5
• For men, a child is also related by .5 if he has
  high paternal certainty
• Prediction biological parents are more likely to
  feel more motivation to care for their children
  that will stepparents or other substitute
  caregivers.
•  
• Figures in Homicide pgs 86 87
• Ibid pgs 90, 91 92
•  

3
Who does the killing?

• Websters unabridged dictionary defines
  stepmother as
• The wife of ones father by a subsequent
  marriage.
• One that fails to give proper care or attention.
•  
• Sex differences in infanticide and age of child
•  
• Ibid 81
•  

4

• Evolutionary theory predicts that among
  biological parents, infanticide is more likely to
  be committed by young unmarried women when the
  baby is in the first year of life.
• Children sleeping in parents bed
• Postpartum depression

5
Kinship and Adoption in Oceania
6
Child Spacing

• Optimizing logic
• Lacks optimal clutch size
• !Kung Mothers space their children according to
  their work loads

7
!Kung Mothers work load
8
Work Load by IBI (child spacing)
Optimal IBI is 4 years and the average actual IBI
is 4 years