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Parental favoritism and why step parents tend to be jerks

Scene 1Jenny always felt that her parents favored her younger sister over her. She knew it wasn’t due to the age factor since she was only a few months older than her sister. Also, she was more hardworking, studious, calm-tempered and helping than her younger sister.It seemed to make no sense to her as to why her parents doted more to her younger sister who barely had any good personality traits.Scene 2By the same token, Arun’s parents seemed to prefer his older brother but, on the contrary, it was pretty clear to him why- his elder brother was much more successful than him.Arun would be frequently at the receiving end of his parents’ bashing, pestering him to take his career and life seriously. They compared him to his elder brother, saying things like, “Why can’t you be like him?” “You’re such a disgrace to our family.”Origins of parental favoritismAlthough many would like to believe otherwise, parental favoritism exists. The main reason being that parenting, in and of itself, is a costly affair.Whenever we do something that incurs huge costs on us, we have to make sure that the benefits we gain outweigh them. Take the example of a firm. A firm will only decide to provide specialized costly training to its employees if it knows that it will bring more profits to the organization. Spending a huge amount of money training employees who aren’t delivering is money going down the drain. There has to be a bigger return on investment for the big price paid.Similarly, parents expect a return on their investment from their children. But there’s a catch- they primarily want in the form reproductive success (successful passing of their genes to the next generation). Speaking in terms of biology, offspring are basically the vehicles for parents’ genes. If offspring do what they’re supposed to do (pass on their parents’ genes) without hassles, then parents will benefit from their lifelong investment in their offspring.So it makes sense that parents should favor those offspring who’re likely to contribute to the reproductive success of their genes and press those who’re not to change their ways so that their odds of reproductive success also increase.Jenny’s younger sister (Scene 1) was more beautiful than her. So she was more likely to be reproductively successful than her, at least in the unconscious perception of her parents.Jenny’s mom badgered her to visit salons and parlors to encourage her to improve her looks. Her mother hated the fact that Jenny didn’t maintain herself, and for good evolutionary reasons. (see What do men find attractive in women)On the other hand, resources accrual is the key determinant of reproductive success in men and so, instead of pestering him to change his looks, Arun’s parents wanted him to take his career seriously. They favored their elder son because he was likely to yield a good reproductive return on their parental investment.parents favoring a childWhy step-parents tend to be jerksIt is well-known that biological parents typically provide more love, care and affection than substitute parents. A child raised by step parents is at a greater risk of physical and emotional abuse. As I mentioned before, parenting is costly. Not only in terms of the resources invested, but also in terms of time and energy devoted into raising children. It makes no evolutionary sense to raise offspring that do not carry your genes. If you invest in such offspring, you’re incurring unnecessary costs on yourself.So to motivate step parents to avoid investing in genetically unrelated children, evolution has programmed them to resent their step-children, and this resentment often rears its ugly head in ugly ways in the form physical and emotional abuse.   Of course, this doesn’t mean that all step parents are abusive, just that the chances of them being jerks are more; unless some other belief or need overrides this evolutionary tendency.The mystery of adoptionSay a couple were unable to have kids on their own and decided to go for adoption. They loved and cared for their adopted child as much as its biological parents would. How does evolutionary theory explain this behavior?It depends on the unique case that one may be considering but the simplest explanation could be that ‘our evolutionary behaviors are not fixed in stone’. A person can, in his lifetime, acquire beliefs that make him act contradictorily to what his evolutionary programming demands.We contain multitudes. We’re a product of both our genetic programming and past life experiences. There are numerous forces battling it out in our psyche to produce a single behavioral output.The important thing to remember, however, is that no matter what the behavior, the economic principle of costs v/s benefits still holds i.e. a person will only do a behavior if its perceived benefit outweighs its perceived cost.It could be that the couple mentioned above, by adopting a child, are trying to save their relationship. Because the news of not being able to have kids can be distressing and a strain on the relationship, the couple can adopt and pretend that they have a child. This not only saves the relationship but keeps alive the hope that if they keep trying, one day they might have kids of their own.Since parenting is costly we’re programmed to enjoy it to offset the costs. Parents get a deep sense of satisfaction and contentment when they care for their young. It could be that parents who adopt are primarily satisfying this pre-programmed need for satisfaction and contentment.Claiming that parents who adopt violate the principles of evolutionary theory is like claiming that having sex with contraceptives goes contradictory to the fact that sex has the biological function of passing on genes.We humans are cognitively advanced enough to make the decision of hacking into that function to just go for the feeling part. In this case, pleasure.   

Reasons why mothers are more caring than fathers

Mike wanted to buy a new bike and was short of cash. He decided to ask his parents for money. He first thought of going to his father, but, on a second thought, he dropped the idea. He went to his mother instead who happily complied with his request.For a large part of his life, Mike had thought that his dad loved him slightly less than his mom. He knew that his father loved and cared for him, but not as much as his mom. Initially, he thought only he felt this way but after talking to many of his friends he came to realize that most dads are just like that.Mothers typically love, care, support and provide for their children more than fathers. This is the general trend, unless there’s an exceptionally strong relationship between a father and his child. Still, many would think twice before claiming that a father’s love is equivalent, let alone greater, than a mother’s love.But why is it so?mother carrying babyParental care is costlyMull over the phenomenon of parental care for a while. Two people come together, bond, mate and devote most of their time, energy and resources to raising their offspring. By investing in offspring, parents lose out on resources that could be as well devoted to themselves. For example, these resources could instead be channeled toward finding additional mates or increasing reproductive output (i.e. number of offspring).Also, parents who protect their young jeopardize their own survival. They’re more likely to get wounded or even die while fending off predators. Due to such high costs, parental care is not universal in the animal kingdom. Oysters, for example, release their sperm and eggs into the ocean, leaving their offspring adrift devoid of any parental care. For every oyster that manages to survive, thousands die.Thankfully, we’re not oysters and natural selection has programmed us humans to care for our young, at least till they reach puberty. The costs of parental care are, more often than not, outweighed by its reproductive benefits.….and more costly to malesParental care is more costly to human males than to human females. This stems from the fact that males have more to lose reproductively than females if they engage in parental care.Effort directed toward parenting cannot be directed toward mating. Since men can produce much more offspring than women, if they engage in parental care they miss out on additional mating opportunities that could have increased their reproductive output.Women, on the other hand, can produce a limited number of children throughout their lifetime and raising those children carries its own costs. So they generally cannot afford to increase their reproductive output by capitalizing on additional mating opportunities.Plus, beyond a certain age (menopause), women become incapable of producing children at all. This physiological strategy probably evolved to ensure that women take good care of the few children that they do bear.  When they reach menopause, other avenues of reproduction become practically non-existent for women. So their existing children are their only hope- their only vehicles for passing on their genes. Like it or not, this is perhaps the fundamental biological basis for a mother’s exceptional love.On the contrary, men can continue to produce offspring as long as they can live. Hence, their additional mating avenues don’t necessarily disappear.Men have built-in psychological programs that lure them away from parental care to seek out additional mating opportunities because it could mean more reproductive success. As a result, men tend to invest less in offspring, at least lesser than women, possibly with the unconscious hope that they could use these resources to gain more reproductive success.Paternity certaintyAnother reason why a woman invests her resources, time, effort, heart and soul into her offspring is because she can be 100% sure that she’s the mother of her child. After all, she’s the one who gave birth to her child. The child is essentially a part of her body. She’s 100% sure that her offspring contains 50% of her genes. Men don’t enjoy this sort of certainty. From a male’s perspective, there can always be some probability that another male has impregnated the female.Males suffer tremendous costs by channeling their resources to other men’s descendants. Resources devoted to a rival’s children are resources taken away from one’s own. Therefore, they have a subconscious tendency to be stingy when it comes to investing in their children.ConclusionLost additional mating opportunities coupled with paternity uncertainty have shaped the human male psyche to invest slightly less in their offspring than the females. However, thanks to education, cultural values and other forms of social conditioning, some males are able to rise above this biological tendency.