From a comparative perspective, human life histories are unique and raising offspring is unusually costly: humans have relatively short birth intervals compared to other apes, childhood is long, mothers care simultaneously for many dependent children (other apes raise one offspring at a time), infant mortality is high in natural fertility/mortality populations, and human females have a long post-reproductive lifespan. These features conspire to make child raising very burdensome. Mothers frequently defray these costs with paternal help (not usual in other ape species), although this contribution is not always enough. Grandmothers, elder siblings, paid allocarers, or society as a whole, help to defray the costs of childcare, both in our evolutionary past and now. Studying offspring care in a various human societies, and other mammalian species, a wide range of specialists such as anthropologists, psychologists, animal behaviorists, evolutionary ecologists, economists and sociologists, have contributed to this volume, offering new insights into and a better understanding of one of the key areas of human society.
Inhoudsopgave
Preface
Prologue
Sarah Hardy
Introduction
Gillian R. Bentley and Ruth Mace
PART I: ALLOPARENTAL STRATEGIES
Chapter 1. Biological basis of alloparental behaviour in animals
Nancy G. Solomon and Loren D. Hayes
Chapter 2. Family matters: kin, demography and child health in a rural Gambian population
Rebecca Sear and Ruth Mace
Chapter 3. Does it take a family to raise a child? Cooperative breeding in humans using the example of Maya subsistence agriculturalists
Karen L. Kramer
Chapter 4. Changing times for the Argentine Toba: Who cares for the baby now?
Claudia Valeggia
Chapter 5. Who minds the baby? Beng perspectives on mothers, neighbours, and strangers as caretakers
Alma Gottlieb
Chapter 6. Economic perspectives on alloparenting
Gillian Paull
Chapter 7. The school as parent
Berry Mayall
Chapter 8. The parenting and substitute parenting of young children
Helen Penn
Chapter 9. Adoption, adopters and adopted children
David Howe
Chapter 10. Surrogacy: The experiences of commissioning couples and surrogate mothers
Emma Lycett
PART II: THE EFFECT OF ALLOPARENTING ON CHILDREN
Chapter 11. Alloparenting in the context of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa: Complex strategies for Care
Lorraine van Blerk and Nicola Ansell
Chapter 12. Alloparenting and the ontogeny of HPA stress response among stepchildren
Mark V. Flinn
Chapter 13. Separation stress in early childhood: Harmless side effect of modern caregiving practices or risk factor for development?
Joachim Bensel
Chapter 14. Quality, quantity and type Of child care: Effects on child development in the USA
Jay Belsky
Chapter 15. ‘It feels normal that other people are split up but not YOUR Mum and Dad’: Divorce through the Eyes of Children
Margaret Robinson
Bibliography
Index
Over de auteur
Ruth Mace is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London. She works on the evolutionary ecology of social and subsistence systems. Particular interests include parental investment, mainly in African populations but also in the UK, and also macro-evolutionary studies on the evolution of cultural diversity. Recent publications include The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach, edited with C. Holden and S. Shennan (UCL Press, 2005).
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