Parenting Across the Life Span: Biosocial Dimensions

This book was first published in 1987, at a time when new theoretical models from evolutionary biology led to integration of concepts from life history theory. Contributors are academics in psychology, biology, anthropology, population research, and sociology. They address major issues in the theory of the evolution of human life history, such as species patterns in parenting, mate choice, and the effect of social and environmental context on parental investment strategies. Chapters on biosocial perspectives and parental investment look at parental surrogates among primates and somatic aspects of parent-offspring interactions. The section on historic changes in human parenthood explores the effects of changes in parental-investment and family-formation strategies in the course of human evolution. The final section, on life span and parental investment in modern society, examines demographic trends in human fertility, and parenting, grandparenting, and intergenerational continuity. This reprint includes a new introduction by editor Lancaster, who teaches anthropology at the University of New Mexico. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)