Full Description
Research on parenting through the life course has developed around two separate approaches. Evolutionary biology provides fresh perspectives from life history theory using behavioral ecology and parental investment theory. At the same time, the social and behavioral sciences integrates research from long-term studies of individual development and from the collection of life histories.This path-breaking book advances evolutionary, life history research by integrating perspectives of these two approaches into a biosocial science of the life course. It examines parenthood as a commitment extending throughout life and focuses on the impact on parental and child behavior of changes in the timing, distribution, and intensity of parental investment. This perspective is particularly appropriate for research on parenting since the family is the universal human institution within which the bearing and rearing of children has been based and which transmits traditions, beliefs, and values to the young.
Contents
1: Introduction; I: Parenthood and the Life Span; 2: Life Span Aspects of Reproduction and Parental Care in Anthropoid Primates; 3: Parenthood in Transition: From Lineage to Child to Self-Orientation; II: Biosocial Perspectives and Parental Investment; 4: Somatic Aspects of Parent-Offspring Interactions; 5: A Biosocial Perspective on Paternal Behavior and Involvement; 6: Parental Supplements and Surrogates Among Primates: Cross-Species and Cross-Cultural Comparisons; III: Human Variation Through Time and Space: Historic Change in Human Parenthood; 7: The Watershed: Change in Parental-Investment and Family-Formation Strategies in the Course of Human Evolution; 8: Parent Investment and the Child's Environment; 9: Socialization for Parenthood in Sibling Caretaking Societies; 10: Parenthood in Social Transformation; 11: Historical Perspectives on the Development of the Family and Parent-Child Interactions; IV: The Life Span and Parental Investment in Modern Society; 12: Demographic Trends in Human Fertility, and Parenting Across the Life Span; 13: Differential Parental Investment: Its Effects on Child Quality and Status Attainment; 14: Children in Their Contexts: A Goodness-of-Fit Model; 15: Parent—Child Relations in Later Life: Trends and Gaps in Past Research; 16: Parenting, Grandparenting, and Intergenerational Continuity
