Investing in the Next Generation
Parental care is any behavior by a parent that raises offspring fitness, typically at a cost to the parent's ability to invest elsewhere. Its forms include provisioning (feeding), protection, and thermoregulation.
Investment is heavily shaped by paternity certainty. Males are less certain than females that offspring are genetically theirs under internal fertilization, which often correlates with lower male investment.
Parent-Offspring Conflict
Robert Trivers' Parent-Offspring Conflict explains why parents and offspring disagree on resource allocation. Relatedness values drive this:
| Perspective | Relatedness to self | Relatedness to sibling |
|---|---|---|
| The offspring | 1.0 | 0.5 |
| The parent | 0.5 | 0.5 |
Because an offspring values its own gain twice as much as a sibling's, it demands investment longer than the parent should provide.
Common pitfall: Viewing this conflict as moral selfishness. Both sides maximize inclusive fitness; it is a mathematical result of relatedness asymmetry.