Abstract
After a long period of relative neglect, the role of the male in child-rearing is at last getting some attention in the social-behavioral and biological sciences (e.g., Mackey, 1985,1986; Taub, 1984). One reason for this new interest is the powerful concept of parental investment of Robert L. Trivers (Trivers, 1972,1985), which implies that under some circumstances males should invest substantially in their offspring.1 Patricia Draper and Henry Harpending (1982) have recently applied the parental investment concept to human reproductive strategies. They hypothesize that the young child’s experience of receiving (or not receiving) male parental investment in effect “sets” the reproductive strategy that individual will follow once he or she has reached puberty. Thus, for Draper and Harpending, early childhood is a sensitive period for reproductive strategies, and father’s role in early child-rearing in part determines adolescent sexual behavior.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ball, R.E. (1983). Family and friends: A supportive network for low income American black families. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 14, 51–65.
Barkow, J.H. (1984). The distance between genes and culture. Journal of Anthropological Research, 37, 367–379.
Barry, H., III, & Paxson, L.M. (1985). Infancy and early childhood. World cultures electronic journal, 1. (Codes reprinted from Ethnology, 10, 466–508, 1971).
Biller, H.B. (1971). The mother-child relationship and the father-absent boy’s personality development. Merill-Palmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development, 17,227–241.
Biller, H.B. (1981). The father and sex role development. In M.E. Lamb (Ed.), The role of the father in child development (2nd ed.). New York: Plenum Press.
Blain, J.M.M. (1984). Family structure and reproductive strategies: An application of the sensitive period approach to a clinical population of children and adolescents. Unpublished master’s thesis. Dept. of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S.
Blumberg, R.L. (1976). Fairy tales and facts: Economy, family, fertility and the female. In I. Tinker & M.B. Bramsen (Eds.), Women and world development, Washington, DC: Overseas Development Council.
Bohannan, L. [E. Smith Bowen] (1964). Return to laughter. New York: Double-day.
Briggs, J. I. (1970). Never in anger. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Brown, J. (1981). Cross-cultural perspectives on the female life-cycle. In R.L. Munroe, R.H. Munroe, & B.B. Whiting (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural human development. New York and London: Garland STPM Press.
Brown, S.E. (1975). Love unites them and hunger separates them: Poor women in the Dominican Republic. In R.R. Reiter (Ed.), Toward an anthropology of women. New York and London: Monthly Review Press.
Carlsmith, L. (1973). Some personality characteristics of boys separated from their fathers during World War II. Ethos, 1(4), 466–477.
Chomsky, N. (1980). Rules and representations. New York: Columbia University Press.
Clignet, R. (1970). Many wives, many powers. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Clignet, R., & Sween, J.A. (1981). For a revisionist theory of human polygyny. Signs, 6, 445–468.
Cosmides, L., & Tboby, J. (in press). Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, II. Case study: A computational theory of social exchange. Ethology and Sociobiology.
D’Andrade, R.G. (1966). Sex differences and cultural institutions. In E. Maccoby (Ed.), The development of sex differences. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
D’Andrade, R.G. (1973). Father-absence, identification, and identity. Ethos, 1(4), 440–455.
Draper, P. (1975). Cultural pressure on sex differences. American Ethnologist, 2, 602–616.
Draper, P. (in press). African marriage systems: The perspective from evolutionary ecology. Ethology and Sociobiology.
Draper, P., & Harpending, H. (1982). Father absence and reproductive strategy: An evolutionary perspective. Journal of Anthropological Research, 38, 225–273.
Fallers, L.A., & Fallers, M.C. (1976). Sex roles in Edremit. In J.G. Peristiany (Ed.), Mediterranean family structures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fein, R.A. (1982). Research on fathering: Social policy and an emergent perspective. In A.S. Skolnick & J.H. Skolnick (Eds.), Family in transition. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company.
Fodor, J.A. (1983). The modularity of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Frisch, R.E., & McArthur, J.W. (1974). Menstrual cycles: Fatness as a determinant of minimum weight for height necessary for their maintenance or onset. Science, 185, 949–951.
Gonzalez, N.L. (1984). Rethinking the consanguineal household and matrifocality. Ethnology, 23, 1–12.
Hetherington, E.M. (1972). Effects of father absence on personality development in adolescent daughters. Developmental Psychology, 7, 313–326.
Hunt, J.G., & Hunt, L.L. (1977). Race, daughters and father loss: Does absence make the girl grow stronger? Social Problems, 25, 89–102.
Jones, B., Leeton, J., McLeod, I., & Wood, C. (1972). Factors influencing the age of menarche in a lower socioeconomic group in Melbourne. Medical Journal of Australia, 2, 533–535.
Lamb, M.E. (1981). Fathers and child development: An integrative review. In M.E. Lamb (Ed.) The role of the father in child development (2nd ed.). New York: Plenum Press.
Lamb, M.E. (1984). Observational studies of father-child relationships in humans. In D.M. Taub (Ed.), Primate paternalism. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Langness, L.L. (1967). Sexual antagonism in the New Guinea highlands: A Bena-Bena example. Oceania, 37, 161–177.
Leacock, E.B. (Ed.). (1971). The culture of poverty: A critique. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Lee, R.B. (1979). The !Kung san. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
LeVine, R.A. & LeVine, B.B. (1966). Nyansongo: A Gusii community in Kenya. New York and London: John Wiley.
Lewis, O. (1966). The culture of poverty. Scientific American, 215, 21–29.
Mackey, W. (1985). Fathering behaviors: The dynamics of the man-child bond. New York: Plenum Press.
Mackey, W. (1986). A facet of the man-child bond: The teeter-totter effect. Ethology and Sociobiology, 7, 117–134.
McClelland, D.C. (1981). Child-rearing versus ideology and social structure as factors in personality development. In R.L. Munroe, R.H. Munroe, & B.B. Whiting (Eds.), Handbook of cross-cultural human development New York and London: Garland STPM Press.
Meggitt, M.J., (1964). Male-female relationships in the highlands of Australian New Guinea. American Anthropologist, 66, 204–224.
Mitchell, WE. (1978). The bamboo fire, New York: WW. Norton.
Montare, A., & Boone, S.L. (1980). Aggression and paternal absence: Racial-ethnic differences among inner-city boys. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 137, 223–232.
Murdock, G.R, & White, D.R. (1969). The standard cross-cultural sample. Ethnology, 8, 329–369.
Murphy, Y, & Murphy, R. (1974). Women of the forest. New York: Colombia University Press.
Nance, J. (1975). The gentle Tasaday. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch.
Njaka, M.E.N. (1974). Igbopolitical culture. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
O’Leary, K.D. (1984). Marital discord and children: Problems, strategies, methodologies, and results. In A. Doyle, D. Gold & D.S. Moskowitz (Eds.), Children in families under stress. New Directions in Child Development, 24, 35–46.
Parker, S., Smith, J. & Ginat, J. (1975). Father absence and cross-sex identity: The puberty rites controversy revisited. American Ethnologist, 2, 287–706.
Reiter, R.R., (1975). Men and women in the south of France: Public and private domains. In R.R. Reiter (Ed.). Toward an anthropology of women. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Rohner, R.P (1975). They love me, they love me not. New Haven: HRAF Press.
Rutter, M., & Madge N. (1976). Cycles of disadvantage. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd.
Sanday, PR. (1985). Female power and male dominance. World cultures electronic journal, 3. (Codes previously unpublished.)
Spires R.C., & Robin, M.W. (1982). Father absence cross-culturally: A review of the literature. In L.L. Adler (Ed.), Cross-cultural research at issue. New York: Academic Press.
Shostak, M. (1981). Nisa, the life and words of a !Kung woman. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Strathern, M. (1972). Women in between. New York: Seminar Press.
Tanner, N. (1974). Matrifocality in Indonesia and Africa and among black Americans. In M.Z. Rosaldo & L. Lamphere (Eds.), Women, culture and society. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Taub, D.M. (Ed.). (1984). Primate paternalism. New York: Van Nostrand Rein-hold.
Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (in press). Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture, I. Theoretical considerations. Ethology and Sociobiology.
Trivers, R.L. (1972). Parental investment and sexual selection. In B. Campbell (Ed.), The descent of man. Chicago: Aldine.
Trivers, R.L. (1985). Social evolution. Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin/Cummings.
Uchendu, V.C. (1968). The Igbo of southeast Nigeria. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Whiting, B.B. (Ed.). (1963). Six cultures: Studies of child rearing. New York and London: John Wiley.
Whiting, J. & Whiting, B.B. (1975). Aloofness and intimacy of husbands and wives: A cross-cultural study. Ethos, 3, 183–207.
Whiting, J., & Whiting, B.B. (1978). A strategy for psychocultural research. In G. Spindler (Ed.), The making of psychological anthropology. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Whyte, M.K. (1985). Cross-cultural codes dealing with the relative status of women. World cultures electronic journal, 3. (Codes reprinted from Ethnology, 17:211–237, 1978).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1988 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Blain, J., Barkow, J. (1988). Father Involvement, Reproductive Strategies, and the Sensitive Period. In: MacDonald, K.B. (eds) Sociobiological Perspectives on Human Development. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3760-0_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3760-0_13
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-8338-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-3760-0
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive