Fathers Fostering Families

For John, BLUF:  This suggests, to me, that there is a balance between going it alone (no Father) and an overlarge family like organization (too many Uncles and Aunts) in making families and communities work and advance.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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A new explanation for the origins of human fatherhood

More information:  Ingela Alger el al., "Paternal provisioning results from ecological change," PNAS (2020).  https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/1 … 1073/pnas.1917166117

From Science X, an uncredited article from Boston College, 27 April 2020.

Here is the lede plus one:

Humans differ from other primates in the types and amounts of care that males provide for their offspring.  The precise timing of the emergence of human "fatherhood" is unknown, but a new theory proposes that it emerged from a need for partnership in response to changing ecological conditions, U.S. and French researchers report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new theory was developed using tools of economists and knowledge of the economic and reproductive behavior of human foragers.  The theory focuses on the benefits of a "fit" between exclusive partners that enabled the strengths of males and females to provide for one another and their offspring, according to researchers from Boston College, Chapman University, University of New Mexico, and the University of Toulouse in France.

Scientists have long tried to explain how human fatherhood emerged.  Paternal care—those investments in offspring made by a biological father—is rare among mammals but widespread across modern human subsistence societies.  Much of men's parental investment consists of provisioning relatively helpless children with food for prolonged periods of time—for as long as two decades among modern hunter-gatherers.  This is a sharp break with other great apes, whose observed mating systems do not encourage paternal provisioning.

That paternal provisioning arose in humans seems remarkable and puzzling and has revolved around a discussion about two groups of males dubbed "Dads" and "Cads".

With promiscuous mating, a would-be Dad who provides food for a mate and their joint offspring without seeking additional mates risks being outcompeted in terms of biological fitness by a Cad, who focuses only on promiscuous mating instead of investing in offspring.  Such a competitive disadvantage creates a formidable barrier for Dads to emerge when Cads abound.

The explanation is ecological change.  Ecological change requiring increased cooperation to maximize food production.

I see this as a good thing, since cooperation in society is more valuable than competition.  That said, there are limits to cooperation.  Family is that limit and at its outer fringes it works to destroy economic development, especially as a society moves onto having small shops and businesses.  At some point the boundary of family must shrink or the idea of the little shop keeper never takes off.  Instead the extended family sucks away the profits  Rather than paying or providing exchange labor, they expect a free ride.  That view crashes the family business.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff