An evolutionary perspective on kin care directed up the generations

Abstract

Within evolutionary sciences, care towards younger kin is well understood from an inclusive fitness framework, but why adults would care for older relatives has been less well researched. One existing model has argued that care directed towards elderly parents might be adaptive because of their benefits as carers themselves, with their help freeing up the middle generations’ energy which can then be invested into direct reproduction. However, in this model, elder care is more beneficial to fitness if the carer is fecund. To offer an initial test of this hypothesis, we look at caring behaviour relative to fecundity status in a contemporary dataset from the United Kingdom. If elder care is contingent on possible direct fitness benefits, we would expect women who are still menstruating to care more for their parents than women who can no longer reproduce. Based on this, we also predict that women who are physiologically post-reproductive would invest more in their grandchildren, through whom they can increase their inclusive fitness. After controlling for age and other relevant factors, we find that women who are still menstruating spend more time caring for their parents than those who are not, and the reverse is true when looking at time spent caring for grandchildren. These findings demonstrate that potential inclusive fitness outcomes influence how women allocate care up and down the generations.