Uncertainty about paternity can destroy a mother’s attachment to her child
Evidence
Another reason parental care is generally provided by females, rather than males, has to do with the certainty of parentage. For many animal species females retain the eggs inside their bodies until after they are fertilized. A female who cares for these eggs can be certain that they are hers, and not those of another female, so energy and time invested are well spent. Males have no such assurance, for precisely the same reason: if fertilization happens inside females then males run the risk that sperm from a rival male actually fertilizes the offspring. Expending resources for the care of unrelated offspring is not cost-effective. Consequently, because females have invested the most already, and because they generally have higher certainty of genetic parentage than their mates, selection favors the evolution of maternal care of offspring more often than it does paternal care. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 684 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
The great risk our mores present for the infant is that the mother to whom he is tied and bound is almost always an unfulfilled woman: sexually she is frigid or unsatisfied; socially she feels inferior to man; she has no hold on the world or the future; she will try to compensate for her frustrations through the child … A mother who beats her child does not only beat the child, and in a way she does not beat him at all: she is taking her vengeance on man, on the world, or on herself; but it is the child who receives the blows. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1515 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Even when both parents care for young, their interests do not coincide. They certainly have a common interest in their offspring’s survival, but they have diverging interests in as much as each one might be able to increase its reproductive success by spending time seeking extra mates elsewhere. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 373 (
#corroborates, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Parentage certainty drives why females, not males, typically provide parental care — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 684; Denied paternity and child support can permanently extinguish a woman’s desire for intimacy. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1429; A mother’s rejection of a child can disguise self-contempt projected outward. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1525 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Parentage certainty drives why females, not males, typically provide parental care
#corroborates(0.82) — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 684 - An unfulfilled mother displaces her frustrated desires onto her child as compensation.
#corroborates(0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1515 - Caring parents still hold divergent reproductive interests
#corroborates(0.78) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 373 - A mother’s rejection of a child can disguise self-contempt projected outward.
#corroborates(0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1525 - Denied paternity and child support can permanently extinguish a woman’s desire for intimacy.
#complicates(0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1429