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The evolution of altruistic preferences: mothers versus fathers

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Abstract

What can evolutionary biology tell us about male-female differences in preferences concerning family matters? Might mothers be more solicitous toward offspring than fathers, for example? The economics literature has documented gender differences—children benefit more from money put in the hands of mothers rather than fathers, for example—and these differences are thought to be partly due to preferences. Yet for good reason family economics is mostly concerned with how prices and incomes affect behavior against a backdrop of exogenous preferences. Evolutionary biology complements this approach by treating preferences as the outcome of natural selection. We mine the well-developed biological literature to make a prima facie case for evolutionary roots of parental preferences. We consider the most rudimentary of traits—sex differences in gamete size and internal fertilization—and explain how they have been thought to generate male-female differences in altruism toward children and other preferences related to family behavior. The evolutionary approach to the family illuminates connections between issues typically thought distinct in family economics, such as parental care and marriage markets.

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Notes

  1. An exception is Eswaran and Kotwal (2004).

  2. Since the evolutionary process is not forward-looking, today’s preferences might be better suited to our evolutionary past than for the here and now. However, to the extent that cognitive ability allows humans to adapt to the current environment, it is meaningful to explore the consequences of the assumption that people want to maximize reproductive success.

  3. See, e.g., Frank (1987), Hansson and Stuart (1990), Bergstrom (1995), Robson (2001), Dekel et al. (2007), Heifetz et al. (2007), Rayo and Becker (2007), Netzer (2009), Robson and Samuelson (2011), Alger (2010), Alger and Weibull (2010, 2012).

  4. Cross-species comparisons are standard among biologists interested in parental care (e.g., Clutton-Brock 1991) since the effects of variations in habitat and reproductive physiology can be examined against a backdrop of the universal Darwinian objective of “survive and reproduce.”

  5. We focus on the version of the model in which each parent faces a discrete choice between caring and deserting. Maynard Smith (1977) also studies a continuous variant; see also Grafen and Sibly (1978).

  6. Due to the (largely verbal) model’s complexity we cannot do full justice to it here. Rather, we will seek to give a simplified account of the model’s main ingredients and predictions.

  7. On the other hand Trivers (1972) can be credited with having introduced the concept of opportunity cost to biology by being the first to define parental investment as “any investment by the parent in an individual offspring that increases the offspring’s chance of surviving (and hence reproductive success) at the cost of the parent’s ability to invest in other offspring” (p. 139; original text in italics).

  8. This is not to say that considerations introduced by Trivers would necessarily be the only determinants of participation in a sexual liaison. There are obviously others to consider, such as the availability of birth control or the chances of contracting a sexually transmitted disease.

  9. See, e.g., Becker (1974), Grossbard (1976, 1980, 1986), Bergstrom (1994a, b) , Lagerlöf (2005), and Tertilt (2005).

  10. See, e.g., Becker et al. (1977). Divorce rates in the United States remain quite high despite trending downward in recent years (e.g., Stevenson and Wolfers 2007).

  11. Laumann et al. (1994) report that 25 % of men and 15 % of women report having at least one extramarital affair during the course of their marriages. (The higher figure for men is due in part to visits to prostitutes.) Smith (2012) further finds that infidelity behaviors are correlated with occupation and education.

  12. This may be, e.g., because she may thus get more wealth, or access to better or more compatible genes (e.g., Neff and Pitcher 2005, Akçay and Roughgarden 2007).

  13. It has even been suggested that monogamy may have arisen because of fierce competition among males in the distant past: monogamous behavior, coupled with an increase in paternal investment, may have spread among males, starting with the low-ranked males (Gavrilets 2012). A different and rather intriguing hypothesis, put forward by Wade (1979), states that male-male competition might in fact have led males to invest less at the gamete stage. This argument puts Trivers’s (1972) theory on its head by suggesting that anisogamy might be the result of male-male competition rather than its cause.

  14. To see this, note that the problem at hand is isomorphic to a textbook labor supply model in which the individual cares for the two goods “leisure” and “consumption.” In the model at hand interpret “parental care” as “leisure” and “mating success” as “consumption,” and consider an individual who faces the problem max c,m F(c, m) subject to the budget constraint \(m+pc=pT+\Upomega. \) The Marshallian demand for the good “parental care” is \(c(p,\Upomega), \) and the Slutsky equation is (e.g., Varian 1992)

    $$ \frac{\partial c(p,\Upomega)}{\partial p} = \frac{\partial \overline{c}(p,F)} {\partial p} + (T-c) \frac{\partial c(p,\Upomega)}{\partial \Upomega}, $$
    (3)

    where \(\overline{c}(p,F)\) is the compensated demand for “parental care” (i.e., holding reproductive success F constant). The equation in the text follows immediately from this equation since \(e(p,\Upomega)=T-c(p,\Upomega). \) In the equation in the text we have omitted the terms in brackets for simplicity.

  15. Whether effects similar to these income and substitution effects would remain in a model where the effect of a male’s mating effort also depended on the other males’ mating success, is an open question.

  16. The benchmark sex ratio at birth is 106 boys to 100 girls. By contrast, the corresponding figure in China in 2007 is an estimated 124 boys to 100 girls (Wei and Zhang 2011).

  17. For a model with monogamy and male unfaithfulness, see Bergstrom (1994b). In this model, if some males are unfaithful, depending on the sex ratio some males may end up having no mate at all.

  18. Even maternity uncertainty may arise, due to parasitism; while this can occur among birds (e.g., Friedmann 1928), it is not relevant for humans.

  19. In contrast, male chimpanzees engage in mate guarding only when females are in estrus, and show little interest in guarding during other times.

  20. Mate guarding is not the only evolutionary explanation for paternal care, but it is the leading contender. The alternative hypothesis is household division of labor, whereby male hunters provision their families. A problem with this explanation is that it goes against the grain of evidence for contemporary hunter gatherer societies. Successful hunters direct their largesse toward the community at large and show little favoritism to family members (Balshine 2012).

  21. See Bernheim (2009) for a discussion of these issues in the context of neuroeconomic tests of hypotheses about preferences.

  22. From an endocrinological perspective though, it is striking that the function and workings of hormones tend to be remarkably well conserved through time. Oxytocin- and vasopressin-like neuropeptides have existed and have been implicated in reproductive behavior for at least 700 million years (Donaldson and Young 2008).

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Acknowledgments

Financial support for this work was provided to Donald Cox by a grant from the National Institute on Child Health and Human Development (R01-HD045637) and to Ingela Alger by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) as well as the Agence National de la Recherche (ANR). The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely our own and do not necessarily represent the views, opinions, or policy of the National Institutes of Health, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, or of any other government agency.

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  1. TSE (LERNA, CNRS), IAST, IDEI, Université Toulouse 1 Capitole, 31 015, Toulouse, Cedex 6, France

    Ingela Alger

  2. Department of Economics, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, 02467, USA

    Donald Cox

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Alger, I., Cox, D. The evolution of altruistic preferences: mothers versus fathers. Rev Econ Household 11, 421–446 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-013-9201-1

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