Trade-offs in modern parenting: a longitudinal study of sibling competition for parental care

Lawson, David W.; Mace, Ruth

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2008.12.001

Cited by 160 publications

(166 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…This issue is well recognized in life-history research, but often poorly addressed because relevant heterogeneity is difficult to measure effectively [30,51,52]. Failure to adequately account for differences in resource access is especially important as 'wealthier' individuals may invest relatively more in all traits, creating the illusion of a positive association between competing functions [53].…”

Section: (B) Socioecological Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Lawson & Mace [51] demonstrate that family size has a negative influence on both mother's and father's time spent engaged in childcare over the first decade of life (including activities such as helping with homework, reading to or physical play). Number of siblings had a larger influence on this measure of parental investment than any other covariate considered, including socioeconomic indicators and parental age (see also [81,82]).…”

Section: Parental Investment and Fertility Declinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…With parental investment fundamental to modern reproductive strategies, we can also expect the ability of parents to pass on the skills required for children to compete to become key criteria in mating markets [19]. Lawson & Mace [51] show that in contemporary British families some children have all the luck: those children with a high investing mother tend to also have a high investing father; they tend to be the wealthier and better educated parents; and the results of this investment are apparent in a range of measures of child health and educational success (figure 2). There is clearly some kind of assortative mating going on, in which individuals with the potential to invest highly are forming families with those having the potential to invest highly.…”

Section: Parental Investment and Fertility Declinementioning

confidence: 99%

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Parental investment and the optimization of human family size

Lawson

Mace

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Human reproductive behaviour is marked by exceptional variation at the population and individual level. Human behavioural ecologists propose adaptive hypotheses to explain this variation as shifting phenotypic optima in relation to local socioecological niches. Here we review evidence that variation in fertility (offspring number), in both traditional and modern industrialized populations, represents optimization of the life-history trade-off between reproductive rate and parental investment. While a reliance on correlational methods suggests the true costs of sibling resource competition are often poorly estimated, a range of anthropological and demographic studies confirm that parents balance family size against offspring success. Evidence of optimization is less forthcoming. Declines in fertility associated with modernization are particularly difficult to reconcile with adaptive models, because fertility limitation fails to enhance offspring reproductive success. Yet, considering alternative measures, we show that modern low fertility confers many advantages on offspring, which are probably transmitted to future generations. Evidence from populations that have undergone or initiated demographic transition indicate that these rewards to fertility limitation fall selectively on relatively wealthy individuals. The adaptive significance of modern reproductive behaviour remains difficult to evaluate, but may be best understood in response to rising investment costs of rearing socially and economically competitive offspring.

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Section: (B) Socioecological Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Parental Investment and Fertility Declinementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Parental Investment and Fertility Declinementioning

confidence: 99%

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Parental investment and the optimization of human family size

Lawson

Mace

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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149

126

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“…15,16 The negative influence of sibship size on parental investment in the domains of caregiving, cognitive learning, and interpersonal relations has been demonstrated. 17 Similarly, there is evidence that later-born children receive less language input from their parents compared with firstborn children, and that the quality of input is less supportive of language development. 18 A negative relationship between sibship size and measures of children' s attainment has been demonstrated, 15,16,19,20 which appears to persist into adulthood.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sibship Size, Sibling Cognitive Sensitivity, and Children’s Receptive Vocabulary

et al. 2014

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WHAT'S KNOWN ON THIS SUBJECT: Sibship size has been negatively associated with children' s language, cognitive, and academic outcomes. This phenomenon is often explained in terms of resource dilution, wherein more children in the home is associated with fewer parental resources allocated to each child. WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS:The current study identifies a moderator of this relationship. Specifically, if children' s next-inage older siblings exhibit high levels of cognitive sensitivity then sibship size is not significantly related to children' s vocabulary. abstract OBJECTIVES:The aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between sibship size and children' s vocabulary as a function of quality of sibling interactions. It was hypothesized that coming from a larger sibship (ie, 3+ children) would be related to lower receptive vocabulary in children. However, we expected this association to be moderated by the level of cognitive sensitivity shown by children' s next-in-age older siblings.METHODS: Data on 385 children (mean age = 3.15 years) and their nextin-age older siblings (mean age = 5.57 years) were collected and included demographic questionnaires, direct testing of children' s receptive vocabulary, and videos of mother-child and sibling interactions. Sibling dyads were taped engaging in a cooperative building task and tapes were coded for the amount of cognitive sensitivity the older sibling exhibited toward the younger sibling.RESULTS: Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted and showed an interaction between sibship size and sibling cognitive sensitivity in the prediction of children' s receptive vocabulary; children exposed to large sibships whose next-in-age older sibling exhibited higher levels of cognitive sensitivity were less likely to show low vocabulary skills when compared with those children exposed to large sibships whose siblings showed lower levels of cognitive sensitivity. CONCLUSIONS:Children who show sensitivity to the cognitive needs of their younger siblings provide a rich environment for language development. The negative impact of large sibships on language development is moderated by the presence of an older sibling who shows high cognitive sensitivity. Pediatrics 2014;133:e394-e401 AUTHORS:

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“…Downey posited that parents have finite levels of time, energy, and money, and that these resources are diluted among children as sibship size increases (Downey, 1995;Downey, 2001). This pattern is observed in research based on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), finding family size to be the strongest influence on parental investment per child, even in wealthy or well educated families (Lawson & Mace, 2009). If parental investment is important for the acquisition of social or human capital, this could be key to a negative link between larger family size and educational achievement (Becker & Tomes, 1976;Blake, 1981;Coleman, 1988).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 78%

LLCS Vol 1, Issue 1, Full Issue

2013

LLCS

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Trade-offs in modern parenting: a longitudinal study of sibling competition for parental care

Cited by 160 publications

References 59 publications

Parental investment and the optimization of human family size

Parental investment and the optimization of human family size

Sibship Size, Sibling Cognitive Sensitivity, and Children’s Receptive Vocabulary

LLCS Vol 1, Issue 1, Full Issue

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