Grandmaternal childcare and kinship laterality. Is rural Greece exceptional?

Abstract

Child-care assistance by persons other than the parents is a characteristic feature of human reproduction. This alloparental support has evidently evolved as an essential component of our species' reproductive strategy because interbirth intervals in natural-fertility societies are much shorter than is childhood dependency, with the result that parental attention is routinely divided among young of different ages (Hrdy, 2009;Kramer, 2010). In traditional societies, the most assiduous alloparents tend to be grandmothers, and a strong case can be made that fitness returns from grandmaternal efforts have selected for the human female's exceptional robustness after the completion of her own reproduction (Hawkes et al., 1997;Hawkes, 2003).Many studies indicate that grandmothers care for their daughters' children preferentially in comparison to those of their sons (see Daly & Perry, 2017, for a review). Since Smith (1988), uncertain paternity has been the favored evolutionary explanation for this uterine bias (or, from the child's perspective, this matrilateral bias), and it is often treated, implicitly or explicitly, as the sole explanation (e.g.

A Cinderella effect in the childcare assistance provided by European grandparents

“…Children of a respondent's son were coded (1) and those of a daughter (2). This distinction is a major predictor of differential grandparental care, both in the SHARE data (Danielsbacka et al, 2011;Perry & Daly, 2019) and cross-culturally (review by . Two distinct but complementary evolutionary explanations for this preference for uterine grandchildren is that it is an adaptive response to paternity uncertainty (Smith, 1991;Euler & Weitzel, 1996) and/or to the fact that investments in grandchildren alleviate demands on their mother, thus allowing her to make other contributions to her inclusive fitness and that the grandparent's own inclusive fitness thus profits from helping a daughter more than from helping a daughter-in-law .…”

The impact of kin proximity on net marital fertility and maternal survival in Sweden 1900–1910—Evidence for cooperative breeding in a societal context of nuclear families, or just contextual correlations?

“…Interestingly, Greek rural women today exhibit a strong uterine bias in grandchild childcare, and invest more in the children of their daughters than of their sons. This shift has been interpreted as a response to the financial crisis in 2008-2009 (Daly & Perry, 2019). Based on a sample of 33 sub-Saharan African countries, Schrijner and Smits reported that children who were living with a paternal grandmother had better schooling outcomes than children who were living with a maternal grandmother.…”

Grandparental partnership status and its effects on caring for grandchildren in Europe

“…Moreover, a "yes" response is not necessarily an affirmation of "hands-on" childcare, and it is plausible that a couple who have a grandchild stay overnight with them might both say "yes" on that basis alone, even if only one plays an active caregiving role. This seems a likely explanation for a strong positive contingency between grandmother and grandfather care [ 35 ]. Indeed, it is possible that grandfathers provide substantially less care than grandmothers to a similar degree regardless of partnership status, but that partnered grandfathers often affirmed caregiving when they were merely present while the grandmother provided care.…”

“…The rationale for hypothesis 3a derives partly from evidence that remarried men often “move on” from their first marriages and devote their attention to investment in the new partnership [ 28 , 29 ], and partly from the consideration that grandfathers’ caregiving is often subsidiary to their partners’ caregiving [ 32 – 34 ]. This point is particularly salient to the SHARE data where the question “Have you cared for your grandchildren in the past year?” (see below) does not specify caregiving acts, and is typically answered the same by both members of the couple [ 35 ].…”

“…This point is particularly salient to the SHARE data where the question "Have you cared for your grandchildren in the past year?" (see below) does not specify caregiving acts, and is typically answered the same by both members of the couple [35]. Hypothesis 4.…”