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Parental Investment Is Biased toward Children Named for Their Fathers

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Abstract

Namesaking (naming a child after a parent or other relative) can be viewed as a mechanism to increase perceived parent-child similarity and, consequently, parental investment. Male and, to a lesser extent, firstborn children are more frequently namesakes than female and later-born children, respectively. However, a direct link between namesaking and parental investment has not been examined. In the present study, 632 participants (98 men and 534 women) from Central Europe indicated their first name, sex, birth order, number of siblings, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, paternal and maternal first names, as well as relationship quality with, and time and financial investment they received from, both parents during childhood. Mixed-effects models revealed associations between namesaking and parental investment. However, the effect of namesaking often appeared significant only in interaction with specific predictors, such as sex and primogeniture. It suggests instead that namesaking has an additive effect—it enhances the effect of biological factors on parental investment. In general, we found evidence for the bias in parental investment linked to name similarity among both parents, and support for the hypothesis that namesaking serves as a mechanism to increase paternity confidence and, thus, paternal investment. The effect of namesaking influences only certain types of parental investment—namely, those at the level of relationship quality. In addition, nonheterosexual orientation was the strongest negative predictor of paternal investment. Our study extends the research on parental investment by showing that cultural mechanisms, such as namesaking, can also exert some influence on parental rearing behavior.

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Data Availability

https://github.com/gabrielsaffa/namesakes.git

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank to Martina Konečná and Petr Tureček for improving the statistical design and Alexander Barton and Carolina Hierro Yap for English proofreading. GŠ was supported by the University of South Bohemia Grant Agency (GAJU 04-048/2019/P); ZŠ was supported by the Czech Science Foundation project (GAČR 18-15168S) and by the Sustainability for the National Institute of Mental Health project (LO1611), with financial support from the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic under the NPU I program; PP was partly funded by the Scientific Grant Agency (VEGA 1/0286/20).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Branišovská 1760, 370 05, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Gabriel Šaffa

  2. Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Celetná 20, 116 42, Prague, Czech Republic

    Zuzana Štěrbová

  3. National Institute of Mental Health, Topolová 748, 250 67, Klecany, Czech Republic

    Zuzana Štěrbová

  4. Department of Environmental Ecology and Landscape Management, Comenius University, Mlynská dolina B2 418, 842 15, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Pavol Prokop

  5. Institute of Zoology, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dúbravská cesta 9, 845 06, Bratislava, Slovakia

    Pavol Prokop

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  1. Gabriel Šaffa
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Correspondence to Gabriel Šaffa.

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Šaffa, G., Štěrbová, Z. & Prokop, P. Parental Investment Is Biased toward Children Named for Their Fathers. Hum Nat 32, 387–405 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-021-09396-7

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