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Jealousy and the Terrible Twos

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Evolutionary Perspectives on Infancy

Part of the book series: Evolutionary Psychology ((EVOLPSYCH))

Abstract

In this chapter, nascent jealousy is theorized as a psychological adaptation to the threat of usurpation by a newborn sibling that ancestral infants could have encountered by the age of 9 months. This nature of threat is explained in terms of ancestral infants’ dependence on their mothers as their sole sources of breast milk, which was required for survival. We discuss how the need for exclusive access to mother for breast milk coevolved with expectations of exclusivity in the infant-maternal relationship and with exquisite sensitivity to violations of those expectations that, over deep time, shaped nascent jealousy and its expression through jealousy protest as a mechanism for protecting against usurpation. Next, jealousy protest is discussed in relation to separation protest. Commonality between the two patterns of protest and the overlap in timing are interpreted as the basis for conceptualizing infant-maternal attachment as an adaptation to usurpation. Distinctions are informed in terms of the adaptive advantages of exclusive (vs. nonexclusive) proximal contact with mother. Finally, we address milestones in socioemotional, social cognitive, and motor development that occur at 9 months. We explain how jealousy protest was enabled, not only by attachment formation for its role in establishing a valued relationship but also by skills in cognition and locomotion that facilitated infants’ abilities to recognize and manage usurpation. We propose that these milestones originated in tandem at 9 months to help prepare infants for potential challenges of usurpation as they entered toddlerhood.

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  1. Department of Human Development & Family Studies, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA

    Sybil L. Hart

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    Sybil L. Hart

  2. Department of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA

    David F. Bjorklund

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Hart, S.L. (2022). Jealousy and the Terrible Twos. In: Hart, S.L., Bjorklund, D.F. (eds) Evolutionary Perspectives on Infancy. Evolutionary Psychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76000-7_15

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