parental care essay

Parenting Matters: Supporting Parents of Children Ages 0-8 (2016)

Chapter: 1 introduction, 1 introduction.

Parents are among the most important people in the lives of young children. 1 From birth, children are learning and rely on mothers and fathers, as well as other caregivers acting in the parenting role, to protect and care for them and to chart a trajectory that promotes their overall well-being. While parents generally are filled with anticipation about their children’s unfolding personalities, many also lack knowledge about how best to provide for them. Becoming a parent is usually a welcomed event, but in some cases, parents’ lives are fraught with problems and uncertainty regarding their ability to ensure their child’s physical, emotional, or economic well-being.

At the same time, this study was fundamentally informed by recognition that the task of ensuring children’s healthy development does not rest solely with parents or families. It lies as well with governments and organizations at the local/community, state, and national levels that provide programs and services to support parents and families. Society benefits socially and economically from providing current and future generations of parents with the support they need to raise healthy and thriving children ( Karoly et al., 2005 ; Lee et al., 2015 ). In short, when parents and other caregivers are able to support young children, children’s lives are enriched, and society is advantaged by their contributions.

To ensure positive experiences for their children, parents draw on the resources of which they are aware or that are at their immediate disposal.

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1 In this report, “parents” refers to the primary caregivers of young children in the home. In addition to biological and adoptive parents, main caregivers may include kinship (e.g., grandparents), foster, and other types of caregivers.

However, these resources may vary in number, availability, and quality at best, and at worst may be offered sporadically or not at all. Resources may be close at hand (e.g., family members), or they may be remote (e.g., government programs). They may be too expensive to access, or they may be substantively inadequate. Whether located in early childhood programs, school-based classrooms, well-child clinics, or family networks, support for parents of young children is critical to enhancing healthy early childhood experiences, promoting positive outcomes for children, and helping parents build strong relationships with their children (see Box 1-1 ).

The parent-child relationship that the parent described in Box 1-1 sought and continues to work toward is central to children’s growth and

development—to their social-emotional and cognitive functioning, school success, and mental and physical health. Experiences during early childhood affect children’s well-being over the course of their lives. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when children’s brains are developing rapidly and when nearly all of their experiences are created and shaped by their parents and by the positive or difficult circumstances in which the parents find themselves. Parents play a significant role in helping children build and refine their knowledge and skills, as well as their learning expectations, beliefs, goals, and coping strategies. Parents introduce children to the social world where they develop understandings of themselves and their place and value in society, understandings that influence their choices and experiences over the life course.

PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY

Over the past several decades, researchers have identified parenting-related knowledge, attitudes, and practices that are associated with improved developmental outcomes for children and around which parenting-related programs, policies, and messaging initiatives can be designed. However, consensus is lacking on the elements of parenting that are most important to promoting child well-being, and what is known about effective parenting has not always been adequately integrated across different service sectors to give all parents the information and support they need. Moreover, knowledge about effective parenting has not been effectively incorporated into policy, which has resulted in a lack of coordinated and targeted efforts aimed at supporting parents.

Several challenges to the implementation of effective parenting practices exist as well. One concerns the scope and complexity of hardships that influence parents’ use of knowledge, about effective parenting, including their ability to translate that knowledge into effective parenting practices and their access to and participation in evidence-based parenting-related programs and services. Many families in the United States are affected by such hardships, which include poverty, parental mental illness and substance use, and violence in the home. A second challenge is inadequate attention to identifying effective strategies for engaging and utilizing the strengths of fathers, discussed later in this chapter and elsewhere in this report. Even more limited is the understanding of how mothers, fathers, and other caregivers together promote their children’s development and analysis of the effects of fathers’ parenting on child outcomes. A third challenge is limited knowledge of exactly how culture and the direct effects of racial discrimination influence childrearing beliefs and practices or children’s development ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2000 ). Despite acknowledgment of and attention to the importance of culture in

the field of developmental science, few studies have explored differences in parenting among demographic communities that vary in race and ethnicity, culture, and immigrant experience, among other factors, and the implications for children’s development.

In addition, the issue of poverty persists, with low-income working families being particularly vulnerable to policy and economic shifts. Although these families have benefited in recent years from the expansion of programs and policies aimed at supporting them (discussed further below), the number of children living in deep poverty has increased ( Sherman and Trisi, 2014 ). 2 Moreover, the portrait of America’s parents and children has changed over the past 50 years as a result of shifts in the numbers and origins of immigrants to the United States and in the nation’s racial, ethnic, and cultural composition ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ; Migration Policy Institute, 2016 ). Family structure also has grown increasingly diverse across class, race, and ethnicity, with fewer children now being raised in households with two married parents; more living with same-sex parents; and more living with kinship caregivers, such as grandparents, and in other household arrangements ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ). Lastly, parenting increasingly is being shaped by technology and greater access to information about parenting, some of which is not based in evidence and much of which is only now being studied closely.

The above changes in the nation’s demographic, economic, and technological landscape, discussed in greater detail below, have created new opportunities and challenges with respect to supporting parents of young children. Indeed, funding has increased for some programs designed to support children and families. At the state and federal levels, policy makers recently have funded new initiatives aimed at expanding early childhood education ( Barnett et al., 2015 ). Over the past several years, the number of states offering some form of publicly funded prekindergarten program has risen to 39, and after slight dips during the Great Recession of 2008, within-state funding of these programs has been increasing ( Barnett et al., 2015 ). Furthermore, the 2016 federal budget allocates about $750 million for state-based preschool development grants focused on improved access and better quality of care and an additional $1 billion for Head Start programs ( U.S. Department of Education, 2015 ; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015 ). The federal budget also includes additional funding for the expansion of early childhood home visiting programs ($15 billion over the next 10 years) and increased access to child care for low-income working families ($28 billion over 10 years) ( U.S. Department

2 Deep poverty is defined as household income that is 50 percent or more below the federal poverty level (FPL). In 2015, the FPL for a four-person household was $24,250 ( Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, 2015 ).

of Health and Human Services, 2015 ). Low-income children and families have been aided as well in recent years by increased economic support from government in the form of both cash benefits (e.g., the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit) and noncash benefits (e.g., Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), and millions of children and their families have moved out of poverty as a result ( Sherman and Trisi, 2014 ).

It is against this backdrop of need and opportunity that the Administration for Children and Families, the Bezos Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Health Resources and Services Administration, the U.S. Department of Education, the Foundation for Child Development, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine empanel a committee to conduct a study to examine the state of the science with respect to parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices tied to positive parent-child interactions and child outcomes and strategies for supporting them among parents of young children ages 0-8. The purpose of this study was to provide a roadmap for the future of parenting and family support policies, practices, and research in the United States.

The statement of task for the Committee on Supporting the Parents of Young Children is presented in Box 1-2 . The committee was tasked with describing barriers to and facilitators for strengthening parenting capacity and parents’ participation and retention in salient programs and services. The committee was asked to assess the evidence and then make recommendations whose implementation would promote wide-scale adoption of effective strategies for enabling the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Given the multi- and interdisciplinary nature of the study task, the 18-member committee comprised individuals with an array of expertise, including child development, early childhood education, developmental and educational psychology, child psychiatry, social work, family engagement research, pediatric medicine, public and health policy, health communications, implementation science, law, and economics (see Appendix D for biosketches of the committee members).

WHAT IS PARENTING?

Conceptions of who parents are and what constitute the best conditions for raising children vary widely. From classic anthropological and human development perspectives, parenting often is defined as a primary mechanism of socialization, that is, a primary means of training and preparing children to meet the demands of their environments and take advantage

of opportunities within those environments. As Bornstein (1991, p. 6) explains, the “particular and continuing task of parents and other caregivers is to enculturate children . . . to prepare them for socially accepted physical, economic, and psychological situations that are characteristic of the culture in which they are to survive and thrive.”

Attachment security is a central aspect of development that has been

defined as a child’s sense of confidence that the caregiver is there to meet his or her needs ( Main and Cassidy, 1988 ). All children develop attachments with their parents, but how parents interact with their young children, including the extent to which they respond appropriately and consistently to their children’s needs, particularly in times of distress, influences whether the attachment relationship that develops is secure or insecure. Young chil-

dren who are securely attached to their parents are provided a solid foundation for healthy development, including the establishment of strong peer relationships and the ability to empathize with others ( Bowlby, 1978 ; Chen et al., 2012 ; Holmes, 2006 ; Main and Cassidy, 1988 ; Murphy and Laible, 2013 ). Conversely, young children who do not become securely attached with a primary caregiver (e.g., as a result of maltreatment or separation) may develop insecure behaviors in childhood and potentially suffer other adverse outcomes over the life course, such as mental health disorders and disruption in other social and emotional domains ( Ainsworth and Bell, 1970 ; Bowlby, 2008 ; Schore, 2005 ).

More recently, developmental psychologists and economists have described parents as investing resources in their children in anticipation of promoting the children’s social, economic, and psychological well-being. Kalil and DeLeire (2004) characterize this promotion of children’s healthy development as taking two forms: (1) material, monetary, social, and psychological resources and (2) provision of support, guidance, warmth, and love. Bradley and Corwyn (2004) characterize the goals of these investments as helping children successfully regulate biological, cognitive, and social-emotional functioning.

Parents possess different levels and quality of access to knowledge that can guide the formation of their parenting attitudes and practices. As discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2 , the parenting practices in which parents engage are influenced and informed by their knowledge, including facts and other information relevant to parenting, as well as skills gained through experience or education. Parenting practices also are influenced by attitudes, which in this context refer to parents’ viewpoints, perspectives, reactions, or settled ways of thinking with respect to the roles and importance of parents and parenting in children’s development, as well as parents’ responsibilities. Attitudes may be part of a set of beliefs shared within a cultural group and founded in common experiences, and they often direct the transformation of knowledge into practice.

Parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices are shaped, in part, by parents’ own experiences (including those from their own childhood) and circumstances; expectations and practices learned from others, such as family, friends, and other social networks; and beliefs transferred through cultural and social systems. Parenting also is shaped by the availability of supports within the larger community and provided by institutions, as well as by policies that affect the availability of supportive services.

Along with the multiple sources of parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices and their diversity among parents, it is important to acknowledge the diverse influences on the lives of children. While parents are central to children’ development, other influences, such as relatives, close family friends, teachers, community members, peers, and social institutions, also

contribute to children’s growth and development. Children themselves are perhaps the most essential contributors to their own development. Thus, the science of parenting is framed within the theoretical perspective that parenting unfolds in particular contexts; is embedded in a network of relationships within and outside of the family; and is fluid and continuous, changing over time as children and parents grow and develop.

In addition, it is important to recognize that parenting affects not only children but also parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents’ lives; generate stress or calm; compete for time with work or leisure; and create combinations of any number of emotions, including happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger.

STUDY CONTEXT

As attention to early childhood development has increased over the past 20 years, so, too, has attention to those who care for young children. A recent Institute of Medicine and National Research Council report on the early childhood workforce ( Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, 2015 ) illustrates the heightened focus not only on whether young children have opportunities to be exposed to healthy environments and supports but also on the people who provide those supports. Indeed, an important responsibility of parents is identifying those who will care for their children in their absence. Those individuals may include family members and others in parents’ immediate circle, but they increasingly include non-family members who provide care and education in formal and informal settings outside the home, such as schools and home daycare centers.

Throughout its deliberations, the committee considered several questions relevant to its charge: What knowledge and attitudes do parents of young children bring to the task of parenting? How are parents engaged with their young children, and how do the circumstances and behaviors of both parents and children influence the parent-child relationship? What types of support further enhance the natural resources and skills that parents bring to the parenting role? How do parents function and make use of their familial and community resources? What policies and resources at the local, state, and federal levels assist parents? What practices do they expect those resources to reinforce, and from what knowledge and attitudes are those practices derived? On whom or what do they rely in the absence of those resources? What serves as an incentive for participation in parenting programs? How are the issues of parenting different or the same across culture and race? What factors constrain parents’ positive relationships with their children, and what research is needed to advance agendas that can help parents sustain such relationships?

The committee also considered research in the field of neuroscience,

which further supports the foundational role of early experiences in healthy development, with effects across the life course ( Center on the Developing Child, 2007 ; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009 ; World Health Organization, 2015 ). During early childhood, the brain undergoes a rapid development that lays the foundation for a child’s lifelong learning capacity and emotional and behavioral health (see Figure 1-1 ). This research has provided a more nuanced understanding of the importance of investments in early childhood and parenting. Moreover, advances in analyses of epigenetic effects on early brain development demonstrate consequences of parenting for neural development at the level of DNA, and suggest indirect consequences of family conditions such as poverty that operate on early child development, in part, through the epigenetic consequences of parenting ( Lipinia and Segretin, 2015 ).

This report comes at a time of flux in public policies aimed at supporting parents and their young children. The cost to parents of supporting their children’s healthy development (e.g., the cost of housing, health care, child care, and education) has increased at rates that in many cases have offset the improvements and increases provided for by public policies. As noted above, for example, the number of children living in deep poverty has grown since the mid-1990s ( Sherman and Trisi, 2014 ). While children represent approximately one-quarter of the country’s population, they make up 32 percent of all the country’s citizens who live in poverty ( Child Trends Databank, 2015a ). About one in every five children in the United States is now growing up in families with incomes below the poverty line, and 9 percent of children live in deep poverty (families with incomes below 50%

of the poverty line) ( Child Trends Databank, 2015a ). The risk of growing up poor continues to be particularly high for children in female-headed households; in 2013, approximately 55 percent of children under age 6 in such households lived at or below the poverty threshold, compared with 10 percent of children in married couple families ( DeNavas-Walt and Proctor, 2014 ). Black and Hispanic children are more likely to live in deep poverty (18 and 13%, respectively) compared with Asian and white children (5% each) ( Child Trends Databank, 2015a ). Also noteworthy is that child care policy, including the recent increases in funding for low-income families, ties child care subsidies to employment. Unemployed parents out of school are not eligible, and job loss results in subsidy loss and, in turn, instability in child care arrangements for young children ( Ha et al., 2012 ).

As noted earlier, this report also comes at a time of rapid change in the demographic composition of the country. This change necessitates new understandings of the norms and values within and among groups, the ways in which recent immigrants transition to life in the United States, and the approaches used by diverse cultural and ethnic communities to engage their children during early childhood and utilize institutions that offer them support in carrying out that role. The United States now has the largest absolute number of immigrants in its history ( Grieco et al., 2012 ; Passel and Cohn, 2012 ; U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ), and the proportion of foreign-born residents today (13.1%) is nearly as high as it was at the turn of the 20th century ( National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2015 ). As of 2014, 25 percent of children ages 0-5 in the United States had at least one immigrant parent, compared with 13.5 percent in 1990 ( Migration Policy Institute, 2016 ). 3 In many urban centers, such as Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City, the majority of the student body of public schools is first- or second-generation immigrant children ( Suárez-Orozco et al., 2008 ).

Immigrants to the United States vary in their countries of origin, their reception in different communities, and the resources available to them. Researchers increasingly have called attention to the wide variation not only among but also within immigrant groups, including varying premigration histories, familiarity with U.S. institutions and culture, and childrearing

3 Shifting demographics in the United States have resulted in increased pressure for service providers to meet the needs of all children and families in a culturally sensitive manner. In many cases, community-level changes have overwhelmed the capacity of local child care providers and health service workers to respond to the language barriers and cultural parenting practices of the newly arriving immigrant groups, particularly if they have endured trauma. For example, many U.S. communities have worked to address the needs of the growing Hispanic population, but it has been documented that in some cases, eligible Latinos are “less likely to access available social services than other populations” ( Helms et al., 2015 ; Wildsmith et al., 2016 ).

strategies ( Crosnoe, 2006 ; Fuller and García Coll, 2010 ; Galindo and Fuller, 2010 ; Suárez-Orozco et al., 2010 ; Takanishi, 2004 ). Immigrants often bring valuable social and human capital to the United States, including unique competencies and sociocultural strengths. Indeed, many young immigrant children display health and learning outcomes better than those of children of native-born parents in similar socioeconomic positions ( Crosnoe, 2013 ). At the same time, however, children with immigrant parents are more likely than children in native-born families to grow up poor ( Hernandez et al., 2008 , 2012 ; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2015 ; Raphael and Smolensky, 2009 ). Immigrant parents’ efforts to raise healthy children also can be thwarted by barriers to integration that include language, documentation, and discrimination ( Hernandez et al., 2012 ; Yoshikawa, 2011 ).

The increase in the nation’s racial and ethnic diversity over the past several decades, related in part to immigration, is a trend that is expected to continue ( Colby and Ortman, 2015 ; Taylor, 2014 ). Between 2000 and 2010, the percentage of Americans identifying as black, Hispanic, Asian, or “other” increased from 15 percent to 36 percent of the population ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ). Over this same time, the percentage of non-Hispanic white children under age 10 declined from 60 percent to 52 percent, while the percentage of Hispanic ethnicity (of any race) grew from about 19 percent to 25 percent ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ); the percentages of black/African American, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Asian children under age 10 remained relatively steady (at about 15%, 1%, and 4-5%, respectively); and the percentages of children in this age group identifying as two or more races increased from 3 percent to 5 percent ( U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 ).

The above-noted shifts in the demographic landscape with regard to family structure, including increases in divorce rates and cohabitation, new types of parental relationships, and the involvement of grandparents and other relatives in the raising of children ( Cancian and Reed, 2008 ; Fremstad and Boteach, 2015 ), have implications for how best to support families. Between 1960 and 2014, the percentage of children under age 18 who lived with two married parents (biological, nonbiological, or adoptive) decreased from approximately 85 percent to 64 percent. In 1960, 8 percent of children lived in households headed by single mothers; by 2014, that figure had tripled to about 24 percent ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ; U.S. Census Bureau, 2016 ). Meanwhile, the proportions of children living with only their fathers or with neither parent (with either relatives or non-relatives) have remained relatively steady since the mid-1980s, at about 4 percent (see Figure 1-2 ). Black children are significantly more likely to live in households headed by single mothers and also are more likely to live in households where neither parent is present. In 2014, 34 percent of black

children lived with two parents, compared with 58 percent of Hispanic children, 75 percent of white children, and 85 percent of Asian children ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ).

From 1996 to 2015, the number of cohabiting couples with children rose from 1.2 million to 3.3 million ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ). Moreover, data from the National Health Interview Survey show that in 2013, 30,000 children under age 18 had married same-sex parents and 170,000 had unmarried same-sex parents, and between 1.1 and 2.0 million were being raised by a parent who identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual but was not part of a couple ( Gates, 2014 ).

More families than in years past rely on kinship care (full-time care of children by family members other than parents or other adults with whom children have a family-like relationship). When parents are unable to care for their children because of illness, military deployment, incarceration, child abuse, or other reasons, kinship care can help cultivate familial and community bonds, as well as provide children with a sense of stability and belonging ( Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012 ; Winokur et al., 2014 ). It is estimated that the number of children in kinship care grew six times the rate of the number of children in the general population over the past decade ( Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012 ). In 2014, 7 percent of children lived in households headed by grandparents, as compared with 3 percent in 1970 ( Child Trends Databank, 2015b ), and as of 2012, about 10 percent of American children lived in a household where a grandparent was present ( Ellis and Simmons, 2014 ). Black children are twice as likely as the overall population of children to live in kinship arrangements, with about 20 percent of black children spending time in kinship care at some point

during their childhood ( Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012 ). Beyond kinship care, about 400,000 U.S. children under age 18 are in foster care with about one-quarter of these children living with relatives ( Child Trends Databank, 2015c ). Of the total number of children in foster care, 7 percent are under age 1, 33 percent are ages 1-5, and 23 percent are ages 6-10 ( Child Trends Databank, 2015c ). Other information about the structure of American families is more difficult to come by. For example, there is a lack of data with which to assess trends in the number of children who are raised by extended family members through informal arrangements as opposed to through the foster care system.

As noted earlier, fathers, including biological fathers and other male caregivers, have historically been underrepresented in parenting research despite their essential role in the development of young children. Young children with involved and nurturing fathers develop better linguistic and cognitive skills and capacities, including academic readiness, and are more emotionally secure and have better social connections with peers as they get older ( Cabrera and Tamis-LeMonda, 2013 ; Harris and Marmer, 1996 ; Lamb, 2004 ; Pruett, 2000 ; Rosenberg and Wilcox, 2006 ; Yeung et al., 2000 ). Conversely, children with disengaged fathers have been found to be more likely to develop behavioral problems ( Amato and Rivera, 1999 ; Ramchandani et al., 2013 ). With both societal shifts in gender roles and increased attention to fathers’ involvement in childrearing in recent years, fathers have assumed greater roles in the daily activities associated with raising young children, such as preparing and eating meals with them, reading to and playing and talking with them, and helping them with homework ( Bianchi et al., 2007 ; Cabrera et al., 2011 ; Jones and Mosher, 2013 ; Livingston and Parker, 2011 ). In two-parent families, 16 percent of fathers were stay-at-home parents in 2012, compared with 10 percent in 1989; 21 percent of these fathers stayed home specifically to care for their home or family, up from 5 percent in 1989 ( Livingston, 2014 ). At the same time, however, fewer fathers now live with their biological children because of increases in nonmarital childbearing (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015).

In addition, as alluded to earlier, parents of young children face trans-formative changes in technology that can have a strong impact on parenting and family life ( Collier, 2014 ). Research conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that, relative to other household configurations, married parents with children under age 18 use the Internet and cell phones, own computers, and adopt broadband at higher rates ( Duggan and Lenhart, 2015 ). Other types of households, however, such as single-parent and unmarried multiadult households, also show high usage of technology, particularly text messaging and social media ( Smith, 2015 ). Research by the Pew Research Center (2014) shows that many parents—25 percent in

one survey ( Duggan et al., 2015 )—view social media as a useful source of parenting information.

At the same time, however, parents also are saturated with information and faced with the difficulty of distinguishing valid information from fallacies and myths about raising children ( Aubrun and Grady, 2003 ; Center on Media and Human Development, 2014 ; Dworkin et al., 2013 ; Future of Children, 2008 ). Given the number and magnitude of innovations in media and communications technologies, parents may struggle with understanding the optimal use of technology in the lives of their children.

Despite engagement with Internet resources, parents still report turning to family, friends, and physicians more often than to online sources such as Websites, blogs, and social network sites for parenting advice ( Center on Media and Human Development, 2014 ). Although many reports allude to the potentially harmful effects of media and technology, parents generally do not report having many concerns or family conflicts regarding their children’s media use. On the other hand, studies have confirmed parents’ fears about an association between children’s exposure to violence in media and increased anxiety ( Funk, 2005 ), desensitization to violence ( Engelhardt et al., 2011 ), and aggression ( Willoughby et al., 2012 ). And although the relationship between media use and childhood obesity is challenging to disentangle, studies have found that children who spend more time with media are more likely to be overweight than children who do not (see Chapter 2 ) ( Bickham et al., 2013 ; Institute of Medicine, 2011 ; Kaiser Family Foundation, 2004 ).

The benefits of the information age have included reduced barriers to knowledge for both socially advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Yet despite rapidly decreasing costs of many technologies (e.g., smartphones, tablets, and computers), parents of lower socioeconomic position and from racial and ethnic minority groups are less likely to have access to and take advantage of these resources ( Center on Media and Human Development, 2014 ; File and Ryan, 2014 ; Institute of Medicine, 2006 ; Perrin and Duggan, 2015 ; Smith, 2015 ; Viswanath et al., 2012 ). A digital divide also exists between single-parent and two-parent households, as the cost of a computer and monthly Internet service can be more of a financial burden for the former families, which on average have lower household incomes ( Allen and Rainie, 2002 ; Dworkin et al., 2013 ).

STUDY APPROACH

The committee’s approach to its charge consisted of a review of the evidence in the scientific literature and several other information-gathering activities.

Evidence Review

The committee conducted an extensive review of the scientific literature pertaining to the questions raised in its statement of task ( Box 1-2 ). It did not undertake a full review of all parenting-related studies because it was tasked with providing a targeted report that would direct stakeholders to best practices and succinctly capture the state of the science. The committee’s literature review entailed English-language searches of databases including, but not limited to, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Medline, the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), PsycINFO, Scopus, and Web of Science. Additional literature and other resources were identified by committee members and project staff using traditional academic research methods and online searches. The committee focused its review on research published in peer-reviewed journals and books (including individual studies, review articles, and meta-analyses), as well as reports issued by government agencies and other organizations. The committee’s review was concentrated primarily, although not entirely, on research conducted in the United States, occasionally drawing on research from other Western countries (e.g., Germany and Australia), and rarely on research from other countries.

In reviewing the literature and formulating its conclusions and recommendations, the committee considered several, sometimes competing, dimensions of empirical work: internal validity, external validity, practical significance, and issues of implementation, such as scale-up with fidelity ( Duncan et al., 2007 ; McCartney and Rosenthal, 2000 ; Rosenthal and Rosnow, 2007 ).

With regard to internal validity , the committee viewed random-assignment experiments as the primary model for establishing cause- and-effect relationships between variables with manipulable causes (e.g., Rosenthal and Rosnow, 2007 ; Shadish et al., 2001 ). Given the relatively limited body of evidence from experimental studies in the parenting literature, however, the committee also considered findings from quasi-experimental studies (including those using regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, and difference-in-difference techniques based on natural experiments) ( Duncan et al., 2007 ; Foster, 2010 ; McCartney et al., 2006 ) and from observational studies, a method that can be used to test logical propositions inherent to causal inference, rule out potential sources of bias, and assess the sensitivity of results to assumptions regarding study design and measurement. These include longitudinal studies and limited cross-sectional studies. Although quasi- and nonexperimental studies may fail to meet the “gold standard” of randomized controlled trials for causal inference, studies with a variety of internal validity strengths and weaknesses can collectively provide useful evidence on causal influences ( Duncan et al., 2014 ).

When there are different sources of evidence, often with some differences in estimates of the strength of the evidence, the committee used its collective experience to integrate the information and draw reasoned conclusions.

With regard to external validity , the committee attempted to take into account the extent to which findings can be generalized across population groups and situations. This entailed considering the demographic, socioeconomic, and other characteristics of study participants; whether variables were assessed in the real-world contexts in which parents and children live (e.g., in the home, school, community); whether study findings build the knowledge base with regard to both efficacy (i.e., internal validity in highly controlled settings) and effectiveness (i.e., positive net treatment effects in ecologically valid settings); and issues of cultural competence ( Bracht and Glass, 1968 ; Bronfenbrenner, 2009 ; Cook and Campbell, 1979 ; Harrison and List, 2004 ; Lerner et al., 2000 ; Rosenthal and Rosnow, 2007 ; Whaley and Davis, 2007 ). However, the research literature is limited in the extent to which generalizations across population groups and situations are examined.

With regard to practical significance , the committee considered the magnitude of likely causal impacts within both an empirical context (i.e., measurement, design, and method) and an economic context (i.e., benefits relative to costs), and with attention to the salience of outcomes (e.g., how important an outcome is for promoting child well-being) ( Duncan et al., 2007 ; McCartney and Rosenthal, 2000 ). As discussed elsewhere in this report, however, the committee found limited economic evidence with which to draw conclusions about investing in interventions at scale or to weigh the costs and benefits of interventions. (See the discussion of other information-gathering activities below.) Also with respect to practical significance, the committee considered the manipulability of the variables under consideration in real-world contexts, given that the practical significance of study results depend on whether the variables examined are represented or experienced commonly or uncommonly among particular families ( Fabes et al., 2000 ).

Finally, the committee took into account issues of implementation , such as whether interventions can be brought to and sustained at scale ( Durlak and DuPre, 2008 ; Halle et al., 2013 ). Experts in the field of implementation science emphasize not only the evidence behind programs but also the fundamental roles of scale-up, dissemination planning, and program monitoring and evaluation. Scale-up in turn requires attending to the ability to implement adaptive program practices in response to heterogeneous, real-world contexts, while also ensuring fidelity for the potent levers of change or prevention ( Franks and Schroeder, 2013 ). Thus, the committee relied on both evidence on scale-up, dissemination, and sustainability from empirically based programs and practices that have been implemented and

evaluated, and more general principles of implementation science, including considerations of capacity and readiness for scale-up and sustainability at the macro (e.g., current national politics) and micro (e.g., community resources) levels.

The review of the evidence conducted for this study, especially pertaining to strategies that work at the universal, targeted, and intensive levels to strengthen parenting capacity (questions 2 and 3 from the committee’s statement of task [ Box 1-2 ]), also entailed searches of several databases that, applying principles similar to those described above, assess the strength of the evidence for parenting-related programs and practices: the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices (NREPP), supported by SAMHSA; the California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare (CEBC), which is funded by the state of California; and Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, which has multiple funding sources. Although each of these databases is unique with respect to its history, sponsors, and objectives (NREPP covers mental health and substance abuse interventions, CEBC is focused on evidence relevant to child welfare, and Blueprints describes programs designed to promote the health and well-being of children), all are recognized nationally and internationally and undergo a rigorous review process.

The basic principles of evaluation and classification and the processes for classification of evidence-based practices are common across NREPP, CEBC, and Blueprints. Each has two top categories—optimal and promising—for programs and practices (see Appendix B ; see also Burkhardt et al., 2015 ; Means et al., 2015 ; Mihalic and Elliot, 2015 ; Soydan et al., 2010 ). Given the relatively modest investment in research on programs for parents and young children, however, the array of programs that are highly rated remains modest. For this reason, the committee considered as programs with the most robust evidence not only those included in the top two categories of Blueprints and CEBC but also those with an average rating of 3 or higher in NREPP. The committee’s literature searches also captured well-supported programs that are excluded from these databases (e.g., because they are recent and/or have not been submitted for review) but have sound theoretical underpinnings and rely on well-recognized intervention and implementation mechanisms.

Other reputable information sources used in producing specific portions of this report were What Works for Health (within the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps Program, a joint effort of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin); the What Works Clearinghouse of the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Services; and HHS’s Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness (HomVEE) review.

In addition, the committee chose to consider findings from research using methodological approaches that are emerging as a source of innovation and improvement. These approaches are gaining momentum in parent-

ing research and are being developed and funded by the federal government and private philanthropy. Examples are breakthrough series collaborative approaches, such as the Home Visiting Collaborative Innovation and Improvement Network to Reduce Infant Mortality, and designs such as factorial experiments that have been used to address topics relevant to this study.

Other Information-Gathering Activities

The committee held two open public information-gathering sessions to hear from researchers, practitioners, parents, and other stakeholders on topics germane to this study and to supplement the expertise of the committee members (see Appendix A for the agendas of these open sessions). Material from these open sessions is referenced in this report where relevant.

As noted above, the committee’s task included making recommendations related to promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective strategies for supporting parents and the salient knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Cost is an important consideration for the implementation of parenting programs at scale. Therefore, the committee commissioned a paper reviewing the available economic evidence for investing in parenting programs at scale to inform its deliberations on this portion of its charge. Findings and excerpts from this paper are integrated throughout Chapters 3 through 6 . The committee also commissioned a second paper summarizing evidence-based strategies used by health care systems and providers to help parents acquire and sustain knowledge, attitudes, and practices that promote healthy child development. The committee drew heavily on this paper in developing sections of the report on universal/preventive and targeted interventions for parents in health care settings. Lastly, a commissioned paper on evidence-based strategies to support parents of children with mental illness formed the basis for a report section on this population. 4

In addition, the committee conducted two sets of group and individual semistructured interviews with parents participating in family support programs at community-based organizations in Omaha, Nebraska, and Washington, D.C. Parents provided feedback on the strengths they bring to parenting, challenges they face, how services for parents can be improved, and ways they prefer to receive parenting information, among other topics. Excerpts from these interviews are presented throughout this report as “Parent Voices” to provide real-world examples of parents’ experiences and to supplement the discussion of particular concepts and the committee’s findings.

4 The papers commissioned by the committee are in the public access file for the study and can be requested at https://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/ManageRequest.aspx?key=49669 [October 2016].

TERMINOLOGY AND STUDY PARAMETERS

As specified in the statement of task for this study ( Box 1-2 ), the term “parents” refers in this report to those individuals who are the primary caregivers of young children in the home. Therefore, the committee reviewed studies that involved not only biolofical and adoptive parents but also relative/kinship providers (e.g., grandparents), stepparents, foster parents, and other types of caregivers, although research is sparse on unique issues related to nontraditional caregivers. The terms “knowledge,” “attitudes,” and “practices” and the relationships among them were discussed earlier in this chapter, and further detail can be found in Chapter 2 ).

The committee recognized that to a certain degree, ideas about what is considered effective parenting vary across cultures and ecological conditions, including economies, social structures, religious beliefs, and moral values ( Cushman, 1995 ). To address this variation, and in accordance with its charge, the committee examined research on how core parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices differ by specific characteristics of children, parents, and contexts. However, because the research on parenting has traditionally underrepresented several populations (e.g., caregivers other than mothers), the evidence on which the committee could draw to make these comparisons was limited.

The committee interpreted “evidence-based/informed strategies” very broadly as ranging from teaching a specific parenting skill, to manualized parenting programs, to policies that may affect parenting. The term “interventions” is generally used in this report to refer to all types of strategies, while more specific terms (e.g., “program,” “well-child care”) are used to refer to particular types or sets of interventions. Also, recognizing that nearly every facet of society has a role to play in supporting parents and ensuring that children realize their full potential, the committee reviewed not only strategies designed expressly for parents (e.g., parenting skills training) but also, though to a lesser degree, programs and policies not designed specifically for parents that may nevertheless affect an individual’s capacity to parent (e.g., food assistance and housing programs, health care policies).

As noted earlier in this chapter, this report was informed by a life-course perspective on parenting, given evidence from neuroscience and a range of related research that the early years are a critical period in shaping how individuals fare throughout their lives. The committee also aimed to take a strengths/assets-based approach (e.g., to identify strategies that build upon the existing assets of parents), although the extent to which this approach could be applied was limited by the paucity of research examining parenting from this perspective.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

A number of principles guided this study. First, following the ideas of Dunst and Espe-Sherwindt (2016) , the distinction between two types of family-centered practices—relational and participatory—informed the committee’s thinking. Relational practices are those focused primarily on intervening with families using compassion, active and reflective listening, empathy, and other techniques. Participatory practices are those that actively engage families in decision making and aim to improve families’ capabilities. In addition, family-centered practices focused on the context of successful parenting are a key third form of support for parenting. A premise of the committee is that many interventions with the most troubled families and children will require all these types of services—often delivered concurrently over a lengthy period of time.

Second, many programs are designed to serve families at particular risk for problems related to cognitive and social-emotional development, health, and well-being. Early Head Start and Head Start, for example, are means tested and designed for low-income families most of whom are known to face not just one risk factor (low income) but also others that often cluster together (e.g., living in dangerous neighborhoods, exposure to trauma, social isolation, unfamiliarity with the dominant culture or language). Special populations addressed in this report typically are at very high risk because of this exposure to multiple risk factors. Research has shown that children in such families have the poorest outcomes, in some instances reaching a level of toxic stress that seriously impairs their developmental functioning ( Shonkoff and Garner, 2012 ). Of course, in addition to characterizing developmental risk, it is essential to understand the corresponding adaptive processes and protective factors, as it is the balance of risk and protective factors that determines outcomes. In many ways, supporting parents is one way to attempt to change that balance.

From an intervention point of view, several principles are central. First, intervention strategies need to be designed to have measurable effects over time and to be sustainable. Second, it is necessary to focus on the needs of individual families and to tailor interventions to achieve desired outcomes. The importance of personalized approaches is widely acknowledged in medicine, education, and other areas. An observation perhaps best illustrated in the section on parents of children with developmental disabilities in Chapter 5 , although the committee believes this approach applies to many of the programs described in this report. A corresponding core principle of intervention is viewing parents as equal partners, experts in what both they and their children need. It is important as well that multiple kinds of services for families be integrated and coordinated. As illustrated earlier

in Box 1-1 , families may be receiving interventions from multiple sources delivered in different places, making coordination all the more important.

A useful framework for thinking about interventions is described in the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (2009) report Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders among Young People . Prevention interventions encompass mental health promotion: universal prevention, defined as interventions that are valuable for all children; selected prevention, aimed at populations at high risk (such as children whose parents have mental illness); and indicated prevention, focused on children already manifesting symptoms. Treatment interventions include case identification, standard treatment for known disorders, accordance of long-term treatment with the goal of reduction in relapse or occurrence, and aftercare and rehabilitation ( National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2009 ).

The committee recognizes that engaging and retaining children and families in parenting interventions are critical challenges. A key to promoting such engagement may be cultural relevance. Families representing America’s diverse array of cultures, languages, and experiences are likely to derive the greatest benefit from interventions designed and implemented to allow for flexibility.

Finally, the question of widespread implementation and dissemination of parenting interventions is critically important. Given the cost of testing evidence-based parenting programs, the development of additional programs needs to be built on the work that has been done before. Collectively, interventions also are more likely to achieve a significant level of impact if they incorporate some of the elements of prior interventions. In any case, a focus on the principles of implementation and dissemination clearly is needed. As is discussed in this report, the committee calls for more study and experience with respect to taking programs to scale.

REPORT ORGANIZATION

This report is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 2 examines desired outcomes for children and reviews the existing research on parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices that support positive parent-child interactions and child outcomes. Based on the available research, this chapter identifies a set of core knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Chapter 3 provides a brief overview of some of the major federally funded programs and policies that support parents in the United States. Chapters 4 and 5 describe evidence-based and evidence-informed strategies for supporting parents and enabling the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices, including universal and widely used interventions ( Chapter 4 ) and interventions targeted to parents of children with special needs and parents who themselves face adversities

( Chapter 5 ). Chapter 6 reviews elements of effective programs for strengthening parenting capacity and parents’ participation and retention in effective programs and systems. Chapter 7 describes a national framework for supporting parents of young children. Finally, Chapter 8 presents the committee’s conclusions and recommendations for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective intervention strategies and parenting practices linked to healthy child outcomes, as well as areas for future research.

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Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the family—which includes all primary caregivers—are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger.

Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting.

Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

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• v.4(12); 2014 Jun

What are the benefits of parental care? The importance of parental effects on developmental rate

1 Department of Biological & Environmental Sciences, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 215 Holt Hall, Dept 2653 615 McCallie Aven, Chattanooga, 37403, Tennessee

Michael B Bonsall

2 Mathematical Ecology Research Group, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3PS, U.K

3 St Peter's College, Oxford, OX1 2DL, U.K

The evolution of parental care is beneficial if it facilitates offspring performance traits that are ultimately tied to offspring fitness. While this may seem self-evident, the benefits of parental care have received relatively little theoretical exploration. Here, we develop a theoretical model that elucidates how parental care can affect offspring performance and which aspects of offspring performance (e.g., survival, development) are likely to be influenced by care. We begin by summarizing four general types of parental care benefits. Care can be beneficial if parents (1) increase offspring survival during the stage in which parents and offspring are associated, (2) improve offspring quality in a way that leads to increased offspring survival and/or reproduction in the future when parents are no longer associated with offspring, and/or (3) directly increase offspring reproductive success when parents and offspring remain associated into adulthood. We additionally suggest that parental control over offspring developmental rate might represent a substantial, yet underappreciated, benefit of care. We hypothesize that parents adjust the amount of time offspring spend in life-history stages in response to expected offspring mortality, which in turn might increase overall offspring survival, and ultimately, fitness of parents and offspring. Using a theoretical evolutionary framework, we show that parental control over offspring developmental rate can represent a significant, or even the sole, benefit of care. Considering this benefit influences our general understanding of the evolution of care, as parental control over offspring developmental rate can increase the range of life-history conditions (e.g., egg and juvenile mortalities) under which care can evolve.

Introduction

Patterns of parental care are hugely diverse (Ridley 1978 ; Baylis 1981 ; Tallamy 1984 ; Clutton-Brock 1991 : Rosenblatt 2003 ; Balshine 2012 ; Royle et al. 2012 ; Trumbo 2012 ), and parental care is thought to have emerged independently multiple times (Rosenblatt and Snowdon 1996 ; Mank et al. 2005 ). A large amount of work has focused on identifying the conditions under which some form of parental care from an ancestral state of no care will evolve (e.g., Sargent et al. 1987 ; Clutton-Brock 1991 ; Winemiller and Rose 1992 ; Webb et al. 2002 ; Mank et al. 2005 ; Kokko and Jennions 2008 ; Klug and Bonsall 2010 ; Klug et al. 2012 , 2013 ). Most generally, the evolution of parental care is expected to be favored when the fitness benefits to the caring parent(s) outweigh the costs associated with care (e.g., reduced parental survival or future reproduction).

Parental care is beneficial to parents if it increases offspring survival, growth and/or quality (i.e., offspring performance), and ultimately offspring lifetime reproductive success (Clutton-Brock 1991 ; Rauter and Moore 2002 ; Alonso-Alvarez and Velando 2012 ; Klug et al. 2012 ; Royle et al. 2012 ). There are several general and nonmutually exclusive ways in which parental care can be beneficial, which we review in Table ​ Table1. 1 . In summarizing and categorizing the benefits of care, we focus on (1) the specific life-history stage(s) in which care is beneficial and (2) the specific way in which care benefits offspring, as both of these factors have been shown to influence the conditions under which care can originate (Alonso-Alvarez and Velando 2012 ; Klug et al. 2012 ).

Benefits of parental care. We summarize four general types of parental care benefits, list mechanisms that might give rise to such benefits, and provide empirical examples from recent work on benefits of care. In categorizing benefits of care, we focus on (1) the specific life-history stage(s) in which care is beneficial and (2) the specific way in which care benefits offspring, as these factors have been shown to influence the conditions under which care can originate. Additionally, we primarily use empirical examples from studies that have documented benefits of care since the publication of Clutton-Brock's book ( 1991 ) on the evolution of parental care. It is important to note that this is not an exhaustive list of possible benefits of parental care, and many forms of care are likely to be associated with more than one type of benefit

Parental care can improve offspring performance in several ways. First, parents can increase offspring survival during the stage in which they are associated with offspring. This is a particularly well-documented benefit of parental care that can arise through a variety of mechanisms (reviewed in Clutton-Brock 1991 ; Alonso-Alvarez and Velando 2012 ; and Table ​ Table1). 1 ). For example, guarding, provisioning, and protection from parasites during particular life-history stages increases offspring survival in numerous species (Table ​ (Table1). 1 ). Second, parental care can improve some aspect of offspring quality, which in turn leads to a subsequent increase in offspring survival and/or reproductive success when parents and offspring are no longer associated in close proximity (reviewed in Clutton-Brock 1991 and Alonso-Alvarez and Velando 2012 ). Such carryover effects have also been well documented in a number of animals, although they are often ignored in parental investment theory for simplicity (Clutton-Brock 1991 ; Alonso-Alvarez and Velando 2012 ; Table ​ Table1). 1 ). In great tits, for example, paternal presence at the nest increases offspring immune function and the likelihood of offspring breeding during the following year (Tinne et al. 2005 ). Likewise, parents can in some cases alter offspring phenotype to cope with particular environmental conditions that offspring are likely to experience in the future (reviewed in Alonso-Alvarez and Velando 2012 ). For example, in sticklebacks, maternal exposure to a predator during egg laying leads to increased antipredator behavior in offspring posthatching (Giesing et al. 2011 ). Third, if parent(s) and offspring remain in close contact into adulthood, parents can directly increase their offspring's reproductive success (and hence their inclusive fitness) during the stage in which parents and offspring are associated and in close proximity by either aiding their offspring in mating, reproduction, or by providing resources to grandchildren. Extended family living is relatively rare, and thus, this benefit is likely to be less common than the previous two types of benefits (but see Lee 2003 and Johnstone and Cant 2010 ). However, mothers have been found to increase their offspring's reproductive success in some mammals (Fairbanks and McGuire 1986 ; Hofer and East 2003 ; East et al. 2009 ). For example, female vervet monkeys are subjected to less aggression, have a greater pregnancy rate, and higher production of surviving infants if their mothers are present in the same troop versus the case in which their mothers are absent (Fairbanks and McGuire 1986 ).

In general, these three types of benefits have been relatively well studied, and numerous mechanisms have been found to give rise to such benefits (reviewed in Table ​ Table1). 1 ). A fourth benefit, which has received less attention (Table ​ (Table1), 1 ), involves parental control over offspring development rate across multiple life-history stages. Offspring developmental rate is a key component of overall offspring performance, and as such, it is likely that parents can improve offspring fitness by manipulating offspring development. Specifically, parents potentially increase overall offspring survival by adjusting the relative amount of time offspring spend in various life-history stages in response to expected offspring mortality. Such a benefit could act alone or in combination with the other general benefits described previously. We outline this hypothesis below.

Natural selection is expected to favor spending relatively little time in life-history stages that are associated with high mortality (Williams 1966 ; Shine 1978 , 1989 ; Werner and Gilliam 1984 ; Werner 1986 ; Remeš and Martin 2002 ; Warkentin 2007 ). Empirical evidence supports this prediction. For example, numerous studies have demonstrated plasticity in hatching time in amphibians, reptiles, fishes, and invertebrates in response to perceived mortality risk (e.g., predation or pathogens; reviewed in Warkentin 2007 ). Similarly, a comparative study of passerine birds found a positive relationship between predation rates and growth rates, and species with higher predation rates fledged at a lighter mass (Remeš and Martin 2002 ). Such plasticity in hatching time suggests that embryos of many animals can assess current environmental conditions via chemical or physical cues (e.g., mechanical stimulation by predators; Warkentin 2007 ). There are, however, constraints on how well embryos can assess environmental conditions and/or alter development rate (discussed in Warkentin 2007 ). In some animals, it is likely that parents are better able to assess current environmental conditions than embryos and may have direct control over offspring developmental rate (see also Wells 2007 ). Such control would potentially allow parents to retain offspring in relatively safe stages if the environment is currently unfavorable for later developmental stages, or speed up the development of offspring if the environment is favorable for later stages. Such effects on developmental rate could be associated with other benefits of care (e.g., those associated with increased provisioning or guarding; see e.g., Lock et al. 2004 ). Alternatively, in some cases, parental control of offspring developmental rate might represent the sole benefit of parental care.

The four general benefits of care that we have summarized are similar in that they all potentially increase the lifetime reproductive success of offspring. However, the benefits differ with respect to (1) which life-history stage they influence (e.g., the stage in which parents and offspring are associated or subsequent stages) and (2) the specific effect that they have on offspring (i.e., increased survival, quality, or altered developmental rate). As mentioned earlier, a given form of care might result in multiple benefits. However, stage-specific life-history conditions (e.g., survival, maturation, and reproductive rates) affect the fitness associated with care (Klug and Bonsall 2010 ). Thus, it is thus important to consider how the benefits of care that occur in different or multiple life-history stages influence the evolution of parental care. In particular, we argue that it is critical to understand how parental manipulation of offspring developmental rate can influence the origin of care, as this benefit is rarely considered in empirical and theoretical studies (see Table ​ Table2 2 ).

Life-history trade-offs associated with parental care ( c ) and initial investment in eggs (1 -d Eo and 1 -d Emo ). Initial investment in eggs is assumed to be costly; as initial investment in eggs increases, parental death increases and parental reproductive rate decreases. Providing parental care is also costly, such that as care increases, parental death rate increases and parental reproductive rate decreases. We consider 11 parental care strategies that are associated with various benefits to offspring.

Despite being poorly studied, there is some evidence suggesting that parents can control offspring developmental rate. In burying beetles, Nicrophorus vespilloides , parental provisioning is associated with a decrease in the duration of the larval stage (i.e., faster larval development), and there is strong selection for faster larval development (Lock et al. 2004 ). In this species, removal of the parental female during the first 48 h of development significantly reduces larval growth (Smiseth et al. 2003 ). Likewise, in the egg-carrying spider Scytodes pallida mothers adjust hatching time of eggs in response to the threat of predation (Li 2002 ). Both females and offspring potentially benefit from earlier hatching of eggs due to the decreased risk of predation. However, it is unclear if this translates into a net benefit for offspring, as there are also potential costs of hatching at a smaller size (Li 2002 ). Likewise, paternal presence in the social group of immature yellow baboons increases offspring maturation rate (Charpentier et al. 2008 ), and increased maternal provisioning in the Gouldian finch results in offspring fledging earlier (Pryke and Griffith 2010 ). In many species, offspring of malnourished mothers who are provisioned less have reduced growth rates (Wells 2007 and references therein). Such early growth restriction is often viewed as a parental and/or offspring adaptation to poor environments (thrifty phenotype hypothesis: reviewed in Wells 2003 , 2007 ). Regardless, these findings suggest that there is typically plasticity in offspring developmental rate, and it is likely, at least in part, that this is under parental control in many species (Smiseth et al. 2003 ; Lock et al. 2004 ).

The hypothesis that parental control of offspring development can represent a major benefit of care is a more general form of the ‘safe-harbor’ hypothesis proposed by Shine ( 1978 ). Shine ( 1978 ) noted that there is a positive correlation between propagule size and the presence of parental care in animals. As an explanation for this pattern, Shine ( 1978 , 1989 ) suggested that parents can (1) make the egg stage relatively safe for offspring by providing parental care, (2) increase the amount of time offspring spend in the egg stage by producing large eggs, and in doing so, (3) decrease the proportion of time offspring spend in the relatively “high risk” juvenile stage. In contrast to Shine's hypothesis, we do not necessarily assume that parental care is what makes the egg stage relatively safe. Parental care is one factor that might reduce mortality of eggs; however, the egg stage will sometimes be associated with relatively high survival simply because of environmental and ecological factors (e.g., reduced competition or predation, more favorable environmental conditions). Likewise, under some conditions, subsequent stages of development will be associated with relatively high survival. Also in contrast to Shine ( 1978 ), we argue that parental manipulation of offspring developmental rate can be the primary benefit of parental care in some cases. We suggest that parents can potentially alter offspring developmental rate through a range of mechanisms, including increased egg provisioning (as suggested by Shine 1978 ; see also Wells 2007 ), and through various chemical or behavioral cues or mechanisms during the egg stage (e.g., increased waste removal, oxygenation, or physical stimulation of young).

Manipulation of offspring developmental rate is rarely included in models of the evolution of care and it is thus unclear if it can potentially represent a major, or even the, sole benefit of parental care. As such, it is unknown whether accounting for this benefit can alter our understanding of the evolution of care. In this study, we use a mathematical model to evaluate whether parental control over offspring developmental rate increases offspring and parental fitness. Specifically, we consider the scenarios in which parental care of eggs serves to (1) increase egg survival, (2) increase development rate during a life-history stage with relatively high mortality, and (3) both increase egg survival and increase development rate during a life-history stage with relatively high mortality. As mentioned earlier, parental care is likely associated with multiple benefits in nature. However, considering each benefit in isolation allows us to explore the life-history conditions under which each type of benefit will favor parental care. For each case, we explore the life-history conditions (stage-specific mortality rates) under which the form of care will be favored. This, in turn, allows us to address two broad questions: (1) does the general benefit of care received influence the conditions under which care originates, and (2) if so, can considering beneficial parental manipulation of offspring development rate alter our more general understanding of the evolution of parental care? In answering these questions, our theoretical analyses provide a set of novel and testable predictions regarding when the evolution of parental care is most likely to be favored in relation to benefits of parental care.

Using an evolutionary ecology modeling approach (Metz et al. 1992 , 1996 ; Dieckmann and Law 1996 ; Vincent and Brown 2005 ; Otto and Day 2007 ), we allow a rare mutant that exhibits parental care of eggs to invade a resident population in which parental care is absent. While we focus on parental care of eggs, our general approach and findings are applicable to any system in which parental care is provided during some early life-history stage. We assume that the resident strategy is in equilibrium and the alternative parental care strategy attempts to invade from rare into the population. Specifically, we model a stage-structured system in which individuals pass through egg and juvenile stages (although, again, this framework is applicable to any organisms that pass through multiple early life-history stages) and then mature and reproduce as adults. The modeling framework described herein is an extension of our previous work (Klug and Bonsall 2007 , 2010 ; Bonsall & Klug 2011a ,b 2011b ; Klug et al. 2013 ), and using this framework is ideal in that it allows us to compare the predictions of this model to our previous findings on this topic. This framework also allows us to account explicitly for dynamics associated with various life-history stages.

We focus only on parental care of eggs in this study. We assume that residents and mutants who provide parental care experience the same baseline conditions (i.e., the same death, maturation, and reproductive rates when no care is provided). Parental care is then assumed to be associated with (1) potential benefits to offspring (i.e., either increased survival beyond the baseline survival rate in the absence of care and/or altered developmental rate during the egg and juvenile stages) and (2) costs to the parent providing it (i.e., decreased parental survival and future reproduction relative to the no care scenario; costs and benefits of care described in detail below). For a series of benefits and costs of parental care (described below), we explore the conditions under which parental care is most likely to be able to invade a resident strategy of no care.

Model dynamics

Individuals pass through an egg ( E ), juvenile, and adult stage ( A ). Eggs increase as adults reproduce and decrease as eggs mature or as eggs die, such that

where r represents the rate of egg fertilization (i.e., mean reproductive rate of adults), d E represents death rate of eggs, and M ( t ) is the stage-specific maturation term. We assume logistic population growth, where K represents population carrying capacity, and density dependence associated with resource competition affects adult reproduction. Eggs mature after they survive and pass through the stage, such that

where τ E is a time delay representing the duration of the egg stage. Adults in the population increase as eggs mature and pass through the juvenile stage, and decrease as adults die, such that

where τ J is a time delay representing the length of the juvenile stage, d J is juvenile death rate, and d A is the density-independent death rate of adults. Total development time of the resident strategy is assumed to have some fixed duration (i.e., τ E + τ J = τ total ).

At equilibrium, the densities of the resident are

Costs and benefits of parental care and initial allocation into eggs

Parents can affect offspring survival and quality by (1) investing energy and nutrients into eggs (which we refer to as initial egg allocation) and (2) providing postfertilization or postoviposition parental care behavior to offspring in a given life-history stage (which we refer to as parental care). Both initial egg allocation and parental care can be associated with benefits to offspring and costs to parents. In the model, such costs and benefits are represented mathematically through the incorporation of trade-off constraints on the resident and mutant dynamics (described below and in Table ​ Table2; 2 ; see also Klug and Bonsall 2010 ) and as noted, we focus only on parental care associated with the egg stage in this manuscript.

Egg death rate in the absence of care is used as our proxy of initial egg allocation. Thus, by definition, egg death rate is assumed to decrease as initial investment in eggs increases. Initial egg allocation is expected to be costly to both resident and mutant parents, such that as initial egg allocation increases, adult death rate increases and reproductive rates decrease (Table ​ (Table2). 2 ). Likewise, providing parental care is assumed to be costly to parents. The level of parental care is approximated by a fixed value, c (Table ​ (Table2), 2 ), and can be thought of as some average level of care that a mutant adult provides to its own offspring. Providing care is assumed to be costly to parents who exhibit care (i.e., adult mutants), and as the level of care increases, adult survival declines (i.e., death rate increases), and reproductive rate decreases (Table ​ (Table2 2 ).

We consider two general benefits of parental care: (1) parental care of eggs decreases egg death rate (i.e., mutant egg death rate decreases as c increases; Table ​ Table2) 2 ) and/or (2) parental care increases or decreases the proportion or absolute amount of time spent in the egg stage (i.e., the proportion or absolute amount of time mutant offspring spend in the egg stage increases or decreases as c increases; Table ​ Table2). 2 ). As mentioned earlier, while we focus on the egg stage, this approach is consistent with parental care that influences any early life-history stage. There are eleven possible parental care scenarios (Tables ​ (Tables2 2 and ​ and3). 3 ). The first six scenarios focus on the case in which overall maturation time is fixed. When maturation time is fixed ( τ E + τ J = τ total ), increasing or decreasing time spent in the egg stage will have the opposite effect on the juvenile stage, such that total maturation time is unchanged. For this case, we explored the following scenarios in which care serves to increase offspring egg survival and/or alter relative developmental rates: parental care (1) decreases egg death rate, (2) increases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage and decreases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage, (3) decreases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage and increases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage, (4) decreases egg death rate, increases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage and decreases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage, and (5) decreases egg death rate, decreases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage, and increases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage. It is also plausible that maturation time is not fixed. As such increasing or decreasing the duration of the egg stage will have no effect on the duration of the juvenile stage. For this case, we consider four scenarios: parental care (6) increases the time spent in the egg stage but has no effect on time spent in the juvenile stage, (7) decreases the time spent in the egg stage but has no effect on time spent in the juvenile stage, (8) decreases egg death rate and increases the time spent in the egg stage (but has no effect on time spent in the juvenile stage), and (9) decreases egg death rate and decreases the time spent in the egg stage (but has no effect on time spent in the juvenile stage). It is also possible that altering development rate in the egg stage is positively related to development rate in the juvenile stage, and as such we also consider two additional scenarios: parental care (10) decreases the total time spent in the egg and juvenile stages, and (11) increases total time spent in the egg and juvenile stages.

The life-history conditions (egg and juvenile mortality in the absence of any parental) care that favor the evolution of eleven parental care scenarios

The trade-offs associated with each scenario are outlined in Table ​ Table2. 2 . All of the trade-offs in Table ​ Table2 2 are nonlinear, as nonlinear trade-offs are often more biologically realistic (Clutton-Brock 1991 ; Alonso-Alvarez and Velando 2012 ). However, we also consider linear trade-offs and present those results in the Appendix A . Regardless, it is important to note for the case in which parents are able to manipulate offspring development rate, we implicitly assume that the offspring allow the parent to manipulate their development (i.e., there is no parent–offspring conflict over development). Additionally, in order to isolate the direct effects of parental manipulation of offspring development rate on the fitness associated with parental care, we assume no additional costs or benefits of egg or juvenile developmental rate to parents or offspring (e.g., we assume no trade-off between development rate and future offspring survival; see also Discussion).

The trade-off functions described in Table ​ Table2 2 provide some insight into the costs and benefits associated with care; however, these trade-off functions alone do not provide information on whether parental care will be able to invade a resident strategy of no care given the stage-structured life-history conditions and the ecological dynamics of the system. Details on the evolution of parental care from an ancestral state of no care necessitate further analyses and is described below and in Appendix B .

Invasion dynamics and fitness

By incorporating the relevant trade-offs into the mutant and resident populations (Table ​ (Table2), 2 ), the dynamics of the rare mutant are given by:

where A * is the equilibrial abundance of the resident adult population. The other parameters are as described previously, and subscript m denotes the new mutant strategy that exhibits parental care. As mentioned previously, to consider the invasion of parental care from an ancestral state of no care, we consider the case in which a rare adult mutant is present and able to provide parental care to its offspring. Thus, we assume that mutant parents are associated with their offspring (e.g., due to spatial clumping or kin recognition) and remain alive long enough to provide care to young. Parental care is only provided by the mutant parent to the mutant offspring (Table ​ (Table2). 2 ). For simplicity, the model is thus consistent with haploid inheritance. In contrast, competition for resources that limit reproduction (e.g., food, mating opportunities) occurs more globally; the mutant is assumed to be rare in the population, and thus, density dependence operating on adult mutant reproduction occurs through competition with the resident (eqns. 6 , 7 ).

To explore the benefits that are likely to allow the invasion of parental care, we calculate the fitness of the mutant strategy relative to that of the resident strategy for each of the eleven scenarios described above and in Table ​ Table2 2 using standard invasion analysis (see Appendix B for further details).

Fitness of parental care under weak selection

A limiting case for the model can be derived when selection is assumed to be weak (i.e., when the difference between the resident and mutant fitness is small). This scenario provides insight into which life-history traits are most likely to influence the invasion of parental care. When selection is weak, fitness of the mutant strategy is positive when:

Parental manipulation of offspring development can be a major benefit of parental care

We next examined fitness associated with parental care for each of the eleven general care scenarios above (see also Tables ​ Tables2 2 and ​ and3). 3 ). Fitness can be either positive (i.e., the fitness of the mutant is greater than that of the resident), negative (i.e., the fitness of the mutant strategy is less than that of the resident), or zero (i.e., the fitness of the mutant and resident are equal). We would expect parental care to evolve when fitness is positive.

Parental care alters relative time spent in egg and juvenile stages

If parental care decreases the death rate of eggs (Scenario 1), parental care is favored when egg death rate in the absence of care is high (Fig. ​ (Fig.1A). 1 A). Indeed, when egg death rate in the absence of care is high, any level of parental care is expected to evolve (Fig. ​ (Fig.2A 2 A and C, blue lines). In contrast, parental care is never expected to evolve if egg survival in the absence of care is high (Figs ​ (Figs1B 1 B and ​ and2 2 B,D, blue lines).

Parental care that only increases egg survival will be favored when egg death rate in the absence of care is high (A) but not when egg death rate in the absence of care is low (B) regardless of juvenile death rate. Parental care that increases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage and reduces time spent in the juvenile stage results in fitness losses when egg death rate is high (C) but will be favored when egg death rate is low and juvenile death rate is high (D). Parental care that decreases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage and increases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage will be favored when egg death rate is high (E) but not when it is low (F). Parental care that increases egg survival, increases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage, and decreases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage will be favored at both high and low egg death rates and across a broad range of juvenile death rates (G, H). Parental care that increases egg survival, decreases the time spent in the egg stage, and increases time spent in the juvenile stage will be favored when egg death rate in the absence of care is high (I) but not when it is low (J). Unless otherwise noted, r 0 = r m 0 , d A 0 = d Am 0 = 0.5, K = K m , τ E 0 = τ Em 0 = 5, τ J 0 = τ Jm 0 = 5, c = 0.4, d J 0 = d Jm 0 , d E 0 = d Em 0 . High egg death rate: d Em 0 = 0.9; low egg death rate: d Em 0 = 0.1.

Fitness benefits of various levels of parental care ( c ) when A) baseline egg and juvenile mortality are high ( d Em 0 = d Jm 0 = 0.9), B) baseline egg and juvenile mortality ( d Em 0 and d Jm 0 ) are low ( d Em 0 = d Jm 0 = 0.1), C) baseline egg mortality is high and juvenile mortality is low ( d Em 0 = 0.9, d Jm 0 = 0.1), and D) baseline egg mortality is low and juvenile mortality is high ( d Em 0 = 0.1, d Jm 0 = 0.9). We consider the following scenarios: (1) parental care decreases egg death rate (blue line), (2) parental care increases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage (yellow line), (3) parental care increases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage (red line), (4) parental care decreases egg death rate and increases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage (green line), and (5) parental care decreases egg death rate and increases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage (purple line). Unless otherwise noted, r 0 = r m 0 , d A 0 = d Am 0 = 0.5, K = K m , τ E 0 = τ Em 0 = 5, τ J 0 = τ Jm 0 = 5, c = 0.4, d J 0 = d Jm 0 , d E 0 = d Em 0 .

If parental care increases the relative amount of time spent in the egg stage and decreases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage (but has no effect on egg death rate and does not alter total development time; Scenario 2), all levels of parental care will be favored when egg death rate in the absence of care is relatively low and juvenile death rate is relatively high (Fig. ​ (Fig.1D 1 D and yellow line in Fig. ​ Fig.2D). 2 D). In contrast, care that increases relative time spent in the egg stage and decreases relative time spent in the juvenile stage will not evolve when egg and juvenile mortality are equivalent (Fig. ​ (Fig.2A 2 A and B, yellow line) or when egg mortality is relatively high (Fig. ​ (Fig.1C 1 C and yellow line of Fig. ​ Fig.2 2 C).

Parental care that increases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage and decreases the proportion of time in the egg stage (but has no effect on egg death rate and does not alter total offspring development time; Scenario 3) will evolve when juvenile mortality is relatively low and egg mortality is relatively high ( Fig. 1 E). Under such conditions, all levels of parental care can result in fitness gains (Fig. ​ (Fig.2C, 2 C, red line). Parental care that increases the relative duration of the juvenile stage and decreases the relative duration of the egg stage will never occur if juvenile mortality is high (Fig. ​ (Fig.1E 1 E and F and red lines of Fig. ​ Fig.4A 4 A and D) or when egg and juvenile morality are equal (Fig. ​ (Fig.2A 2 A and B, red lines).

Parental care that decreases the total time spent in both the egg and juvenile stage will be favored at high (A) and low (B) egg death rates. Parental care that increases the total time spent in egg and juvenile stages will not be favored at high (C) or low (D) egg death rates.

If parental care decreases offspring mortality, increases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage, and decreases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage (Scenario 4), parental care will be most strongly favored when juvenile death rate is high, regardless of baseline egg death rate (Fig. ​ (Fig.1G 1 G and H and green lines of Fig. ​ Fig.2A 2 A and D). However, when juvenile death rate is low and eggs cannot survive well without care, high levels of parental care may be selected for (Fig. ​ (Fig.2C, 2 C, green lines). Parental care that increases offspring survival, increases the relative duration of the egg stage, and decreases the relative duration of the juvenile stage will never evolve if both egg and juvenile death rates are relatively low (Fig. ​ (Fig.1G 1 G and H).

Parental care that decreases offspring mortality, increases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage, and decreases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage (Scenario 5) will be expected to evolve when egg death rate is high (Fig. ​ (Fig.1I), 1 I), particularly when juvenile mortality is low (Fig. ​ (Fig.2C, 2 C, purple line). Parental care that increases offspring survival and the relative duration of the juvenile stage will never occur if egg death rate is low, regardless of the level of juvenile mortality (Fig. ​ (Fig.1J 1 J and purple lines of Fig. ​ Fig.2B 2 B and D).

Parental care alters absolute amount of time spent in egg stage

We next consider the case in which parental care serves to alter egg developmental rate but has no effect on developmental rate of juveniles (Fig. ​ (Fig.3A–H). 3 A–H). Parental care that decreases the amount of time spent in the egg stage (thereby decreasing overall development time) but has no influence on time spent in the juvenile stage (Scenario 7) will be favored if egg mortality is high (Fig. ​ (Fig.3C) 3 C) but not when egg mortality is low (Fig. ​ (Fig.3D). 3 D). Likewise, parental care will be favored if there are multiple functions of care, such that care increases egg survival and decreases total time spent in the egg stage (Scenario 9), when egg death rate is high (Fig. ​ (Fig.3G) 3 G) but not when it is low (Fig. ​ (Fig.3H). 3 H). In contrast, parental care that increases the total amount of time spent in the egg stage (Scenario 6) is unlikely to be favored, regardless of whether egg death rate is low or high (Fig. ​ (Fig.3A 3 A and B). This remains the case when care both increases egg survival and increases time spent in the egg stage (Scenario 8; Fig. ​ Fig.3E 3 E and F). In other words, care that increases the overall time spent maturing is unlikely to be favored evolutionarily in the absence of other benefits (e.g., increased quality due to longer development, which are not considered in this modeling framework). In hindsight, this is somewhat unsurprising as there is always some risk of mortality in any developmental stage – as such, the longer an individual spends in a stage, the greater their risk of dying in that stage.

Parental care that increases that increases the time spent in the egg stage but has no effect on time spent in the juvenile stage will not be favored at high (A) or low (B) egg death rates. Parental care that decreases the time spent in the egg stage but has no effect on juvenile time will be favored when egg death rate is high (C) but not when it is low (D). Care that both increases egg survival and increases time spent in the egg stage (but has no effect on juvenile time) will not be favored at high (E) or low (F) egg death rates. Care that increases egg survival and decreases time spent in the egg stage (but has no effect on juvenile time) will be favored when egg death rate is high (G) but not when it is low (H). Unless otherwise noted, r 0 = r m 0 , d A 0 = d Am 0 = 0.5, K = K m , τ E 0 = τ Em 0 = 5, τ J 0 = τ Jm 0 = 5, c = 0.4, d J 0 = d Jm 0 , d E 0 = d Em 0 . High egg death rate: d Em 0 = 0.9; low egg death rate: d Em 0 = 0.1

In summary, parental manipulation of offspring development can be a substantial or the only benefit of care even when total development time is not fixed (i.e. when parental manipulation leads to an overall increase or decrease in development time; Fig. ​ Fig.3C 3 C and G), although it is less likely to be beneficial in comparison to the cases above in which care alters the proportion of time spent in each stage. In the absence of additional benefits associated with remaining in a stage (e.g., decreased time spent in a relatively dangerous stage, as discussed in the previous section, or increased quality or size which are not considered herein), evolution is unlikely to favor slower development regardless of the danger associated with a given stage.

Parental care alters egg and juvenile development in similar ways

In some cases, there might be constraints associated with development such that increasing or decreasing time spent in one stage has a similar effect on the subsequent stage (i.e., speeding up or slowing down egg development speeds up or slows down juvenile development). If decreasing time spent in one stage decreases time spent in the other stage (Scenario 10), parental manipulation of offspring development will be most strongly favored when egg death rate in the absence of care is high (Fig. ​ (Fig.4A) 4 A) and when juvenile mortality is high (Fig. ​ (Fig.4A 4 A and B). In contrast, slowing down both egg and juvenile development is unlikely to evolve in the absence of additional benefits ( Fig. 4 C and D). Again, this occurs as there is always some mortality associated with each life-history stage.

Importantly, our model does not incorporate trade-offs associated with developing quicker. If decreasing development time is associated with costs (e.g., due to smaller size at maturation), we would expect parental manipulation of development to be favored only when the benefits of such manipulation (i.e. the survival benefits associated with spending less time in a risky stage) outweigh the costs associated with increased development rate.

Parental manipulation of offspring development can change our understanding of parental care

In the previous section, we have shown that parental manipulation of offspring development rate can alone represent a major benefit of parental care under some conditions. Now, the perhaps more interesting question becomes: does accounting for the benefits associated with parental manipulation of offspring development rate change our general understanding of the evolution of parental care?

In short, accounting for parental manipulation of offspring development does alter our understanding of parental care (summarized in Table ​ Table3). 3 ). When the only benefit of parental care is increased offspring survival (Scenario 1), we find that parental care is only expected to be favored when egg death rate in the absence of care is high (Fig. ​ (Fig.1A; 1 A; Table ​ Table3), 3 ), and care is not expected to result in fitness benefits when offspring survive relatively well in the absence of care (Fig. ​ (Fig.1B; 1 B; Table ​ Table3). 3 ). If, however, parental care decreases the proportion of maturation time spent in relatively unsafe stages, parental care can be favored across a broader range of egg death rates (Table ​ (Table3). 3 ). Specifically, care that only serves to decrease relative time spent in an unsafe stage will result in fitness gains regardless of how well eggs survive in the absence of care (Fig. ​ (Fig.1D 1 D and E). If care increases offspring survival and also decreases the proportion of time spent in a dangerous developmental stage, care has the potential to evolve over a relatively broad range of egg death rates (Fig. ​ (Fig.1G 1 G and I; Table ​ Table3). 3 ). Care also has the potential to evolve across a broad range of egg death rates if increasing developmental rate decreases the time spent in both egg and juvenile stages (Fig. ​ (Fig.4A 4 A and B; Table ​ Table3 3 ).

Likewise, when the only benefit of parental care is increased egg survival, juvenile survival does not influence the fitness benefits associated with care (Fig. ​ (Fig.1A 1 A and B; Table ​ Table3). 3 ). If, however, parents manipulate offspring development to reduce time spent in an unsafe stage and also increase time spent in a safe stage, juvenile survival influences the conditions under which care evolves (Table ​ (Table3). 3 ). If juvenile survival is low, parental care that decreases the relative amount time spent in the juvenile stage will be favored (Figs. ​ (Figs.1D 1 D and ​ and3A 3 A and B; Table ​ Table3 3 ).

In contrast to the cases above in which overall development time is fixed, parental manipulation of offspring development rate that increases overall development rate (and decreases time spent maturing) does not alter the conditions under which care will evolve. Care that decreases time spent in the egg stage but has no effect on juvenile development rate will only be favored when egg death rate is high. This is exactly the condition under which we would expect care that increases egg survival to evolve (Fig. ​ (Fig.1A; 1 A; Table ​ Table3). 3 ). Parental manipulation of offspring development that decreases overall development rate (and increases time spent maturing) is in general unlikely to evolve in absence of additional benefits not considered in this model (Fig. ​ (Fig.3A, 3 A, B, E and F; Table ​ Table3 3 ).

In summary, accounting for potential benefits associated with parental manipulation of offspring development rate broadens the life-history conditions (i.e., egg and juvenile mortality) under which care can evolve (Table ​ (Table3). 3 ). This is particularly the case when total development time is fixed (Scenarios 1-5) and remains true regardless of whether parental manipulation of offspring development rate is the only benefit of care or if parental care is associated with other offspring benefits (i.e., increased egg survival).

These general patterns are robust to different trade-off functions (results associated with linear trade-off functions given in Appendix A ).

Here, we have illustrated that (1) parental control over offspring development rate can represent a substantial or even the single benefit of parental care and (2) considering parental manipulation of offspring development rate can broaden the life-history conditions under which we expect care to evolve. The specific finding that parental control of offspring development rate can alone favor the evolution of parental care and/or alter the life-history conditions under which care will be selected for is, to our knowledge, novel and might help explain natural patterns of care.

Parental behavior that decreases time offspring spend in a dangerous stage should be considered a form of parental care (e.g., Figs. ​ Figs.1D 1 D and E, ​ E,3C), 3 C), regardless of whether parents engage in additional behavior such as guarding or provisioning (as in Figs. ​ Figs.1H 1 H and I and ​ and3G). 3 G). The general idea that parental control over offspring developmental rate can be adaptive is consistent with previous work. For instance, Shine ( 1978 , 1989 ) suggested that parents who provide parental care might increase propagule size to increase the duration of time offspring spend in the relatively safe egg stage. Our findings differs from those of Shine ( 1978 , 1989 ) in that we show that parental manipulation of offspring development that decreases relative time spent in a dangerous stage can be favored even if care is not what makes that stage safe. Also, consistent with our theoretical findings, Lock et al. ( 2004 ) found that parental care increases offspring larval development in burying beetles and that this increased developmental rate is selected for (see also Smiseth et al. 2003 and Lock et al. 2007 ).

Our findings are also consistent with more general life-history theory suggesting that individuals should minimize the time they spend in relatively dangerous life-history stages (Williams 1966 ; Werner and Gilliam 1984 ; Werner 1986 ; Warkentin 2007 ) and work focused on parental effects. Parents affect the development of their offspring in numerous ways (e.g., in relation to predator behavior, pathogens, and other adverse environmental conditions; reviewed in Alonso-Alvarez and Velando 2012 ). Previous work has also found that parents can alter offspring development such that they develop more slowly under poor environmental conditions. According to the thrifty phenotype hypothesis and related theory (Wells 2003 , 2007 ), this can be adaptive for offspring if slower development makes them well-suited to a poor environment later in life and/or for parents if it reduces parental investment in an optimal way. Our work regarding parental manipulation of offspring developmental rate differs from the thrifty phenotype hypothesis as we assume that parental manipulation of developmental rate is itself a benefit of care, and we also focus on the case in which parents speed up (rather than slow down) development when the environment is poor.

Whether parental care increases offspring survival (the most well-studied benefit of care; Table ​ Table1) 1 ) or decreases the time spent in a relatively dangerous life-history stage affects the conditions under which parental care will evolve (Table ​ (Table3), 3 ), particularly when maturation time is fixed (i.e. when increasing time spent in the egg stage decreases time spent in the juvenile stage, and vice versa). When the sole benefit of parental care is increased offspring survival, parental care is expected to be favored when offspring need care the most—i.e. when offspring survival in the absence of care is relatively low (e.g., Fig. ​ Fig.1A 1 A and B; Table ​ Table3). 3 ). This finding is consistent with previous empirical and theoretical work (reviewed in Clutton-Brock 1991 ; Klug and Bonsall 2010 ; Royle et al. 2012 ). In contrast, when care only serves to increase time spent in the egg stage and decreases time spent in the juvenile stage, parental care will be favored when egg mortality is relatively low (e.g., Fig. ​ Fig.1D; 1 D; Table ​ Table3). 3 ). When care both increases egg survival and increases time spent in the egg stage, care is expected to evolve over a range of egg and juvenile death rates (e.g., Fig. ​ Fig.1G–I; 1 G–I; Table ​ Table3 3 ).

These patterns are not predicted by previous theory, which suggests that care is expected to evolve when egg mortality (or mortality in another early life-history stage) in the absence of care is high (Stearns 1976 ; Klug and Bonsall 2010 ). Likewise, the finding that juvenile survival can affect egg-only care is not predicted by previous theory (Klug and Bonsall 2010 ). If parents decrease egg developmental rate and this affects the time spent in the juvenile stage, juvenile survival will influence whether care is favored. Specifically, if care increases time spent in a relatively safe egg stage and decreases time spent in the juvenile stage, care will be favored when the juvenile stage is associated with high mortality. If, on the other hand, care decreases time spent in a relatively dangerous egg stage and increases time spent in the juvenile stage, care will be favored when the juvenile stage is associated with low mortality.

Importantly, our modeling framework does not assume any costs or benefits of the time spent in a particular stage except those associated with survival. This allows us to determine whether parental manipulation of offspring developmental rate can directly favor the origin of parental care. However, in nature, it is likely that development time is associated with other costs and benefits. Specifically, the cost of egg care will often increase if offspring remain eggs for longer. Similarly, there is very likely a cost to offspring of developing more quickly if fast development is associated with smaller size (reviewed in Warkentin 2007 ) when compensatory growth is impossible. Such effects of development can be paid over a long time frame (Metcalfe and Monaghan 2001 ) and set the stage for parent-offspring conflict. Over time, parent/offspring interactions would be expected to co-evolve, and conflict over resource allocation is likely to occur (see, e.g., Royle et al. 2002 ). For example, if there are costs of rapid development related to smaller size, selection might favor offspring attempting to gain control over resource allocation, particularly if parents control development. Exploring the dynamics between resource allocation, development rate, and parent-offspring conflict would be an interesting avenue of future research. In addition, we have not accounted for carry-over effects of care or within clutch dynamics in our model. Interactions among offspring and between parents and offspring can greatly influence the evolution of parental care (Hinde et al. 2010 ; Gardner and Smiseth 2011 ). In the future, it will be key to incorporate such trade-offs in order to determine how the benefits of reducing time spent in a dangerous stage interact with other life-history trade-offs and the costs of care. Regardless, parental manipulation of offspring development that reduces time spent in a dangerous stage is only expected to evolve if the net benefits of such manipulation outweigh any net costs to parents in terms of increased care and any costs to offspring associated with developing quickly.

In summary, parental control over offspring development can independently lead to the origin of parental care when it results in offspring spending less time in relatively dangerous stages. Parental manipulation of offspring developmental rate is a relatively unexplored benefit of care (Table ​ (Table1) 1 ) and it will be interesting to examine whether such a benefit exists in future empirical studies. Considering parental manipulation of offspring developmental rate enhances our understanding of how egg and juvenile mortality can influence the origin of care. In general, beneficial parental manipulation of offspring development broadens the life-history conditions under which care can evolve.

Acknowledgments

The study was supported by NSF International Research Program Fellowship # 0701286 (to HK) and the Royal Society (to MBB). We are grateful to anonymous referees for their thoughtful and constructive feedback on this work.

Appendix A: Linear Trade-Off Scenarios

To evaluate whether our patterns are robust to different trade-off functions, we perform analyses for all scenarios (see Methods of main text) using linear trade-offs (Table ​ (Table4; 4 ; see main text for non-linear trade-off results). In all cases, our qualitative patterns remain unchanged regardless of whether we consider linear (Figs. ​ (Figs.1A 1A – 3A ) or nonlinear (Fig. ​ (Fig.4 4 in main text) trade-off functions.

Parental care that only increases egg survival will be favored when egg death rate in the absence of care is high (A) but not when egg death rate in the absence of care is low (B) regardless of juvenile death rate. Parental care that increases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage and reduces time spent in the juvenile stage results in fitness losses when egg death rate is high (C) but will be favored when egg death rate is low and juvenile death rate is high (D). Parental care that decreases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage and increases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage will be favored when egg death rate is high (E) but not when it is low (F). Parental care that increases egg survival, increases the proportion of time spent in the egg stage, and decreases the proportion of time spent in the juvenile stage will be favored at both high and low egg death rates and across a broad range of juvenile death rates (G, H). Parental care that increases egg survival, decreases the time spent in the egg stage, and increases time spent in the juvenile stage will be favored when egg death rate in the absence of care is high (I) but not when it is low (J). Unless otherwise noted, r 0 = r m 0 , d A 0 = d A m 0 = 0.5, K = K m , τ E 0 = τ Em 0 = 5, τ J 0 = τ Jm 0 = 5, c = 0.4, d J 0 = d J m 0 , d E 0 = d E m 0 . High egg death rate: d E m 0 = 0.9; low egg death rate: d E m 0 = 0.1.

Parental care that increases that increases the time spent in the egg stage but has no effect on time spent in the juvenile stage will not be favored at high (A) or low (B) egg death rates. Parental care that decreases the time spent in the egg stage but has no effect on juvenile time will be favored when egg death rate is high (C) but not when it is low (D). Care that both increases egg survival and increases time spent in the egg stage (but has no effect on juvenile time) will not be favored at high (E) or low (F) egg death rates. Care that increases egg survival and decreases time spent in the egg stage (but has no effect on juvenile time) will be favored when egg death rate is high (G) but not when it is low (H). Unless otherwise noted, r 0 = r m 0 , d A 0 = d A m 0 = 0.5, K = K m , τ E 0 = τ Em 0 = 5, τ J 0 = τ Jm 0 = 5, c = 0.4, d J 0 = d J m 0 , d E 0 = d E m 0 . High egg death rate: d E m 0 = 0.9; low egg death rate: d E m 0 = 0.1

Appendix B: Invasion dynamics and fitness

where E m and A m are the dynamics of the egg and adult strategy and M m is the maturation term from the egg to the adult stage. The subscript m denotes the new mutant strategy that exhibits parental care. Other parameters are defined as follows: r m is the rate of egg fertilization rate, d Em is the death rate of eggs, K m is the population carrying capacity, τ Em is the duration of the egg stage, τ Jm is the duration of the juvenile stage, d Jm is the juvenile death rate and d Am is the density-independent adult death rate. A* is the equilibrial abundance of the resident adult population.

Analysis proceeds by determining when the (fitness) growth rate (λ) of the mutant strategy is positive (λ > 0) and rare ( E m → 0, A m → 0). As the mutant strategy is rare, any intraspecific density dependence will be weak as A m → 0 so the dynamics (S-1–S-3) can be expressed as

As fitness differences are assumed to be small (and with the approximation exp(− x ) = 1 – x ), the lifetime fitness of the mutant (λ) can then be found by taking the determinant of an appropriately formulated Jacobian matrix ( J ):

where the entries in this matrix are the partial derivatives (after taking appropriate Laplace transforms to deal with time lags) associated with the mutant strategy in the presence of the resident strategy (which is at the nontrivial equilibrium, A*).

The determinant is:

By solving this resulting characteristic equation for λ , expressions for fitness under weak and strong selection can be derived (eqn. 10).

Conflict of Interest

None declared.

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When Kids Have to Act Like Parents, It Affects Them for Life

Some people who have to be responsible for their siblings or parents as children grow up to be compulsive caretakers.

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Laura Kiesel was only 6 years old when she became a parent to her infant brother. At home, his crib was placed directly next to her bed, so that when he cried at night, she was the one to pick him up and sing him back to sleep. She says she was also in charge of changing his diapers and making sure he was fed every day. For the majority of her early childhood, she remembers, she tended to his needs while her own mother was in the depths of heroin addiction.

From as early as she can remember, Kiesel says she had to take care of herself — preparing her own meals, clothing herself, and keeping herself entertained. At school, she remembers becoming a morose and withdrawn child whose hair was often dirty and unkempt.

It was a dark time made even bleaker by her mother’s violent outbursts. “During dope sickness, she would unleash a lot of fury onto me,” Kiesel, a 38-year-old freelance writer, told me. “I became the buffer or scapegoat of her rage to divert it [from] my younger (much more defenseless) brother.” (Kiesel’s mother is no longer living.)

At one point, she said she learned to take her small brother and kitten into their bathroom and barricade the door to keep them safe. “I felt a lot of weight on my shoulders, like my brother could die without me there,” Kiesel remembered.

She started breaking out in severe hives for months at a time, which she believes were triggered by the “burden of loneliness and responsibilities at that age.” Becoming responsible for an infant at such a young age came with a toll, she explained. “I sometimes picked on my brother or was quick to shove or slap his arm because I was overwhelmed and didn’t know how to handle the shrieks of a 2-year-old when I was 8.”

Eventually, at age 9, Kiesel and her 3-year-old brother were taken in by their grandparents, but the trauma of their former living situation stayed with the children. By the time Kiesel was 14, she said she suffered from daily panic attacks, OCD, and depression. It wasn’t until she was older, she said, that she began to understand the connection between her childhood experiences and numerous chronic illnesses.

Kiesel’s story is one of what psychologists refer to as destructive parentification — a form of emotional abuse or neglect where a child becomes the caregiver to their parent or sibling. Researchers are increasingly finding that in addition to upending a child’s development, this role reversal can leave deep emotional scars well into adulthood. Many, like Kiesel, experience severe anxiety, depression, and psychological distress. Others report succumbing to eating disorders and substance abuse.

“The symptoms look similar to some extent, from cradle to grave,” Lisa M. Hooper, a professor at the University of Louisville and a prominent parentification researcher, told me. Some of these behaviors start out in childhood and become exacerbated in adulthood, she explained.

“Children’s distrust of their interpersonal world is one of the most destructive consequences of such a process,” writes Gregory Jurkovic in his book Lost Childhoods: The Plight of the Parentified Child .

While there is a large body of literature that focuses on the neglect children experience from their parents, there’s less examination of how this neglect puts kids in roles of parenting each other. And there is virtually no empirical research on how this affects relationship dynamics later in life—both with siblings and others. Scholars agree that there are gaps in sibling research—primarily an incomplete understanding of how these relationships and roles are affected by abusive family environments. Hooper noted that “the literature is very scarce in this area.”

In Kiesel’s case, looking after her brother as a kid has led to a tenuous and chaotic relationship with him over the years, fraught with bouts of estrangement and codependency. Though they remain close,  there were periods where she and her brother didn’t speak for months at a time. “My brother is constantly on the edge of some crisis (a health crisis from his drinking, homelessness, etc.) so it is a worry that never goes completely away,” she told me in an email.

Her brother, Matthew Martin, 32, acknowledges the role their upbringing has played in these dynamics. “She was the only protector that I had,” he recalls. “My mother was a hard-core addict from very early on.” Throughout his childhood and early teens, he says he relied on Kiesel for the emotional support his mother couldn’t provide.

“We’ve had our fair share of arguments about [my addictions] and it’s hard, because she wants me to have some longevity. She wants me to be around for her the way that she was for me.”

From the age of 8 until she left home at 15, Rene, who asked to be identified by only her first name because she was concerned about upsetting her family, says she would pick up her three younger siblings from day care, bring them home, feed and bathe them, read them stories, and put them to bed. “Basically, I played the role of mother,” says the 50-year-old Oregon resident. She remembers standing on a chair as a child and cooking dinner for her entire family. In spite of the enormous burden of responsibility, she recalls it as a role she cherished. “I have really fond memories, particularly of reading them stories in bed at night.”

But Rene’s home life was far from peaceful. She says her mother’s alcoholism prevented her from properly caring for her five children, placing the task of child-rearing on the shoulders of Rene and her older brother. (Rene’s mother is no longer living.) But just as Rene took care of her younger siblings, she and her older brother relied on each other for emotional support.

“I think that it’s important to recognize that a lot of parentification is codependent,” she says. “Perhaps one sibling is the one who does the dishes and cleans the house, and takes care of the mom who is sick or drunk.” She explains that the other sibling might be the one who provides more emotional support, either by listening to problems or comforting.

Just as Wendy assumed the role of “mother” for the Lost Boys in Peter Pan , parentified siblings often forge symbiotic relationships, where they meet each others’ needs for guardians in a lot of different ways.

“We know that siblings can buffer each other from the impacts of stressful relationships with parents,” Amy K. Nuttall, an assistant professor in human development and family studies at Michigan State University, told me. This may account for why some parentified siblings who come from abusive homes end up maintaining close, albeit complex, bonds into adulthood, with some “continuing to attempt to fill parental needs at the expense of their own.”

Still, Nuttall adds, others may distance themselves from their families altogether in order to escape the role.

Rene found herself homeless after she was kicked out of her mother’s house when she was 15 years old. She says her siblings still blame her for leaving them behind. “When you think about it, if you’re parentified and you leave your younger siblings, it’s like having a parent abandon them,” Rene says. For years after, she was plagued by feelings of guilt — a common experience among people who have been parentified.

Sibling relationships usually generate a lifelong bond, yet for Rene, freedom from caretaking responsibilities came at a cost: the loss of her family. “I don’t have a relationship with my siblings anymore,” she says.

Unpredictable childhood trauma has long-lasting effects on the brain. Studies have shown that people with adverse childhood experiences are more likely to suffer from mental- and physical-health disorders, leading people to experience a chronic state of high stress reactivity. One study found that children exposed to ongoing stress released a hormone that actually shrank the size of their hippocampus, an area of the brain that processes memory, emotion, and stress management. Individuals who have experienced emotional or physical neglect by a parent are also at a greater risk of suffering from chronic illness as adults.

“Chronic, unpredictable stress is toxic when there’s no reliable adult,” Donna Jackson Nakazawa, the author of Childhood Disrupted and a science journalist who focuses on the intersection of neuroscience and immunology, told me.

Nakazawa has conducted extensive research on the body-brain connection, with a focus on studies initiated by the physicians Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda. Their work on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) has since grown into a burgeoning field with hundreds of peer-reviewed studies. The findings show that people who experienced four categories of childhood adversity —neglect and physical, sexual, and emotional abuse—were twice as likely to be diagnosed with cancer and depression as adults.

More links have been found between childhood stressors and adult heart disease , diabetes, migraines , and irritable bowel syndrome .

Jordan Rosenfeld, a 43-year-old author from California, attributes her own digestive issues to her childhood. When her mother was in the throes of substance abuse, she says, there were times she didn’t have food to eat. By the time she left home at 18, she began suffering from chronic pain after eating.

In adulthood, Rosenfeld noticed it was hard to regulate her emotions around hunger. “If I’m out with friends and we can’t decide on a restaurant, and I’m hungry — I can actually go into a little bit of a meltdown,” she told me. “And I can trace that back to literally not having been fed as a child at various junctures.”

From an early age, Rosenfeld recalls having to remind her mother when they needed groceries and pulling her out of bed in the mornings to get to school on time. “I did a lot of that kind of parenting her, in a way, because what I was trying to do was get parented myself.” Because of this, she said she often distrusts that other people will take care of things. “That’s why I tend to step up and do it myself.”

Rosenfeld’s mother, Florence Shields, remembers it was a depressing time in both their lives. “I had welfare for a while and I think that my diet—because of drugs and alcohol—wasn’t very good, and she probably got the brunt of that.” As a recovering alcoholic, Shields, who is now retired and lives in Petaluma, California, says she lacked the tools for parenting due to her own upbringing and history of tragedy.

When she became a mother at age 24, Shields was still grieving the loss of her older brother who died unexpectedly when she was 18. Opioids and alcohol were a way of coping with this loss, she says.“It’s like that grief is in there with you because that person is with you for the rest of your life, so when sad things come up, there he is.”

While both Rosenfeld and her mother have since attended therapy sessions together as adults, the effects of parentification continue to this day. Shields recognizes that her earlier struggles with addiction have profoundly influenced her daughter’s behavior. “Jordan is very orderly and in control,” she said by phone. When Rosenfeld’s father later remarried and had more children, Rosenfeld learned to project her role of caretaker onto her siblings. “I spent a lot of time babysitting them as a teenager and I think it’s been a challenge for me to separate out feeling like I’m a parent to them.”

This has often caused rifts between the siblings into adulthood, Rosenfeld said. “I’ve always been somebody who thinks it’s my job to offer help, care, and advice even when it’s not asked for.”

How does someone learn that becoming self-reliant is safer than trusting others? Nakazawa believes that in destructive parentification, “you don’t have a reliable adult to turn to.” And if a child’s early experiences at home consisted of making sure everyone else’s needs were met, then the “child doesn’t feel seen.”

This sense of responsibility and compulsive caretaking can follow them into future relationships as well. “You tend to project it onto other people in your life,” Rosenfeld said. This isn’t surprising, says Jenny Macfie, an associate director of clinical training at the University of Tennessee and another prominent parentification researcher, as “adults who report role confusion in their childhoods may have difficulty with their identity development,” and this, in turn, can affect a person’s romantic relationships.

For the first half of her marriage, Rosenfeld found herself regularly putting her partner’s needs ahead of her own — essentially mirroring her childhood role.

Others echoed this experience; Kiesel said she struggles with learning how to establish firm boundaries with partners and believes this is directly tied to caring for her brother at a young age. Similarly, Rene says finding the right balance between expectation and autonomy has been a constant problem in her relationships. She’d like to find a partner but has doubts. “It’s very easy for me to get into caretaking roles with people who basically exploit my nature.”

But these effects often go beyond the individual — studies by Nuttall and others have found that destructive parentification in a family can carry over to other generations as well. “Mothers who were overburdened by taking care of their parents during childhood have a poorer understanding of their infant’s developmental needs and limitations,” Nuttall explained. This, consequently, “leads to a parenting style that lacks warmth and sensitivity.”

As of today, there is scarce research on treatment or prevention efforts. How can a parentified sibling heal? Nakazawa believes that recognizing how these psychological puzzle pieces all fit together can be a step in the right direction. “Physically and mentally, the architecture of the brain has changed, the immune system has changed, and without that validation, you can’t begin an appropriate healing journey.”

Some people have found community through Al-Anon , a support group for the loved ones of alcoholics. “The group has a really strong focus on explaining what codependency is and offering solutions for learning new behaviors,” Rosenfeld explained. She’s attended the meetings for more than a year now and said she’s noticed a tremendous change in her habits and awareness of how to set boundaries. “I’ve learned that I can’t just blame people in my life with substance-abuse issues for causing me suffering; I have a choice in taking care of myself,” she said.

Despite negative outcomes associated with parentification, researchers say that going through that experience also confers some advantages that can help people later in life. Hooper believes that people who have been parentified as children possess a greater capacity for resiliency and self-efficacy. Nakazawa echoes this. “Current [American] culture thinks of resiliency as gutting it out and getting through, and one foot in front of the other,” she said. “But resiliency is learning and making meaning from what happened.”

A common thread found in people with these shared childhood experiences is a heightened sense of empathy and an ability to more closely connect to others. This is not to say that the negative impacts of their childhood are diminished, Nakazawa says, but that many are able to forge meaning out of their suffering. “People begin to see that their path to well-being must take into account the way in which trauma changed their story,” she explained, “and once they’re able to do that, they can also see how resiliency is also important in their story.”

For Kiesel, the freelance writer who cared for her brother from a young age, counseling and Al-Anon have helped her feel less personally responsible for her brother, though she laments the lack of support networks for siblings who have been parentified and have their own specific needs.

Though her relationship with her brother remains tenuous because of his addictions, she continues to look out for him by regularly calling and checking in on him every month.

Martin admits that to this day, she remains the voice of positivity and reason in his life. “I’m struggling with my own demons, but like my sister says, there is a future there for me.”

As Kiesel explained: “Our mother and grandmother died a few months apart, and our grandfather a little over a year later—so essentially, we’re all we have left.”

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Parents and caregivers are essential to children’s healthy development

Parents, families, and caregivers ensure children are healthy and safe, equip them with skills and resources to succeed, and transmit basic cultural values

Parents and caregivers are the most important people in a child's life. They offer love, acceptance, appreciation, encouragement, and guidance, and provide the most intimate context for the nurturing and protection of children as they develop their personalities and identities and also as they mature physically, cognitively, emotionally, and socially.

Infancy and childhood

Babies whose needs are met quickly and warmly (e.g., feeding, changing, holding/cradling, and soothing them) achieve a crucial developmental task— attachment . This bond of affection between parents and children is necessary for a healthy parent-child relationship, and also extends to relationships between children, their siblings, and other family members (e.g., grandparents, aunts/uncles, etc) and caregivers. When infants attach successfully to their parents and caregivers, they learn to trust that the outside world is a welcoming place and are more likely to explore and interact with their environment. This lays the groundwork for further social, emotional, and cognitive development.

Research has found that relationships between parents and caregivers and youth that:

are warm, open, and communicative;

include appropriate limits; and

provide reasoning for rules for behavior

are associated with higher self-esteem, better performance in school, and fewer negative outcomes such as depression or drug use in children and teenagers.

In addition, cross-cultural differences in parenting are strongly related to the attitudes, beliefs, traditions, and values of the particular culture or ethnic group within which the family belongs. These parenting practices are also related to the social and economic context in which these families are situated. For instance, a recent study comparing the parenting practices of immigrant Chinese-American parents with that of White American parents found that the Chinese-American parents exhibited greater control of their children’s behavior, which was linked to fewer behavior problems in their children.

Adolescence

As children reach adolescence, parents and caregivers face a whole new set of tasks that require new approaches to deal with the changing needs of children. Children are changing on a physical as well as cognitive and social basis. 

Parents and caregivers must prepare for the upcoming changes in the parent-child relationship; teens will begin to detach to a greater degree from existing family bonds and focus more on their peers and the outside world. This quest for greater independence and autonomy is a natural part of the developmental process in adolescence. Parents and caregivers must find the delicate balance between maintaining the familial bond and allowing teens increasing autonomy as they mature. Teenagers who feel connected to yet not constrained by their families tend to flourish. 

Research has found that parents and caregivers that maintain a warm, communicative, and reasoned style of parenting raise teenagers who have higher rates of socially competent behavior, take fewer drugs, and exhibit less anxiety or depression.

Coping with adversity

Parental, family, and caregiver support is very valuable in helping children and youth cope with adversity, especially if they encounter stigma or prejudice associated with factors such as their race/ethnicity, gender, disability, sexuality, weight or socioeconomic status.

For example, research has found protective outcomes for children of color when their parents and caregivers educate them about racism and prejudice and transmit positive cultural values and beliefs to them about their racial and cultural heritage. This process of racial socialization has been shown to boost self-esteem and academic achievement and reduce depression in ethnic minority youth.

In a similar manner, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth who receive caring and acceptance from family members and caregivers are more likely to exhibit healthy development in adolescence, e.g., participating actively with peers, showing personal autonomy, and looking forward to the future.

Grandparents

The role of grandparents in the rearing of healthy and happy children should not be overlooked. A recent study concluded that spending time with a grandparent is linked with better social skills and fewer behavior problems among teenagers, especially those living in single-parent or stepfamily households. This study found that children and teenagers whose parents have separated or divorced see their grandparents as confidants and sources of comfort. In fact, supportive relationships with other family members outside the immediate family may lead to better adjustment for all children and teenagers.

Family rituals

Family rituals are also instrumental in the healthy development of children and teenagers. Family routines and rituals are an important part of contemporary family life. In fact, there is emerging evidence that children’s health and wellbeing is compromised when family members spend less time with each other. For instance, good communication between family members at family mealtimes are associated with reduced anxiety symptoms and respiratory conditions. Family mealtimes may also provide the settings in which to strengthen emotional connections. Lastly, how the family conducts its mealtimes, the regularity of family mealtimes, and the value that the family places on regular family mealtimes may improve nutrition habits and healthy weight in youth.

Families are often the first to notice mental health problems in children due to their intimate involvement in and monitoring of their children’s lives. Parents and caregivers in particular serve as critical advocates and essential partners in the prevention and treatment of children’s mental health concerns. Psychologists treating behavioral problems in children and teenagers always make engagement of the family a priority as this has been shown to boost positive outcomes for children and families as a whole.

American Psychological Association. (2008). Answers to your questions: For a better understanding of sexual orientation and homosexuality (En español) . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved May 29, 2009.

American Psychological Association Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice for Children and Adolescents. (2008). Disseminating evidence-based practice for children and adolescents: A systems approach to enhancing care . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Retrieved May 29, 2009.

American Psychological Association Task Force on Resilience and Strength in Black Children and Adolescents. (2008). Resilience in African American children and adolescents: A vision for optimal development . Washington, DC: Author. Retrieved May 29, 2009.

Attar-Schwartz, S., Tan, J., Buchanan, A., Griggs, J., & Flouri, E. (2009). Grandparenting and adolescent adjustment in two-parent biological, lone-parent, and step-families. Journal of Family Psychology , 23 (1), 67-75.

Fiese, B. H. (2006, Summer). Family mealtimes: Opportunities for child and family health and wellbeing. CYF News (pp. 2-4). Retrieved May 29, 2009.

Ho, C., Bluestein, D., & Jenkins, J. (2008). Cultural differences in the relationship between parenting and children’s behavior. Developmental Psychology , 44 (2), 507–522.

Huntsinger, C. & Jose, P. (2009). Relations among parental acceptance and control and children’s social adjustment in Chinese American and European American families. Journal of Family Psychology , 23 (3), 321–330.

Kreppner, K. (2000). Parent-child relationship: Adolescence. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed). Encyclopedia of psychology , Vol. 6. (pp. 50-55). Washington, DC; New York, NY: American Psychological Association; Oxford University Press.

Lerner, J. V., & Castellino, D. R. (2000). Parent-child relationship: Childhood. In A. E. Kazdin (Ed). Encyclopedia of psychology , Vol. 6. (pp. 46-50). Washington, DC; New York, NY: American Psychological Association; Oxford University Press.

Resources for parents and caregivers

How to help kids understand and manage their emotions

Helping kids cope with anger and frustration

What is child abuse and neglect? Understanding warning signs and getting help

Developing Adolescents (PDF, 800 KB)

Sexualization of Girls: What Parents Can Do

Lesbian and Gay Parenting

Recommendations for Working Families

Staying Connected: A Guide for Parents on Raising an Adolescent Daughter

Parenting: The Teen Years

How to help children and teens manage their stress

Families: Making Stepfamilies Work

Families: Single Parenting and Today's Family

Parenting That Works: Building Skills That Last a Lifetime

Wishing Wellness: A Workbook for Children of Parents with Mental Illness

Solving Your Problems Together: Family Therapy for the Whole Family

Homemade Books to Help Kids Cope: An Easy-to-Learn Technique for Parents and Professionals

Make-Believe: Games & Activities for Imaginative Play: A Book for Parents, Teachers, and the Young Children in Their Lives

• Children, Youth, and Families Office (CYFO)
• CYFO Resources

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1 What is parental care?

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This chapter begins by providing a brief overview of the tremendous diversity among species and higher taxa in the basic forms of care that parents provide to their offspring. It discusses five key terms that are used in the study of the evolution of parental care: parental care, parental expenditure, parental investment, parental effort, and parental effects. It then identifies sources of confusion over the use of these terms and suggests how the terms could be used more consistently in the future to improve translation between theory and empirical work in this field. Next, it considers the difficult issue of how to assign fitness, and fitness benefits and costs of care, to parents and offspring. Finally, the chapter provides a brief discussion of the environmental conditions that are thought to favour the origin and subsequent modifications of parental care.

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Robert Brault once said, ‘A parent’s love is whole no matter how many times divided.’ Our parents mean everything to us. From birth to the day we become financially independent, our parents have always been there for us, formulate our thoughts and make or change the decisions in our lives. Parents play a crucial role in a child’s emotional, social, intellectual, and physical development. We celebrate important days like Mother’s Day and Father’s Day to honour and respect our parents. No words can describe the efforts and the hardships they go through. Therefore, today we will be providing you with an essay on parents to help you understand their importance in our lives and their role in shaping our future.

Table of Contents

• 1 Essay on Parents in 100 Words
• 2 Essay on Parents in 200 Words
• 3 Essay on Parents in 300 Words

Also Read: Parental Pressure: Care But Not Too Much

Essay on Parents in 100 Words

Also Read: Importance of Education in Our Life

Essay on Parents in 200 Words

Also Read: National Parent’s Day 2023

Essay on Parents in 300 Words

Also Read: How to Prepare for UPSC in 6 Months?

Ans: It’s very easy to write an essay on parents, all you need to do is highlight every aspect of your life where your parents have supported you. You can start by mentioning your early school days when you were having difficulties with your classmates or teacher, and how beautifully your parents helped you. Real-life examples will give value to your essay as it will portray the emotional bond between you and your parents.

Ans: Mere words cannot describe the importance of parents in our lives, as they always try to do their best. Our parents offer us the life which they ever dreamed of so that we can have a flourishing future. They are the primary source of moral guidance for us. They impart values, ethics, and principles that shape our understanding of right and wrong, contributing to the development of a strong moral compass.

Ans: Here are 5 lines on parents: Parents are the guiding lights that illuminate the path of a child’s life; They provide unconditional love, which forms the bedrock of our emotional well-being; Through their nurturing presence, parents provide a sense of security and stability; They serve as role models, imparting values and morals that shape our character; Parents are the first teachers, introducing us the wonders of the world.

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Shiva Tyagi

With an experience of over a year, I've developed a passion for writing blogs on wide range of topics. I am mostly inspired from topics related to social and environmental fields, where you come up with a positive outcome.

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Essay on Parents Love

Students are often asked to write an essay on Parents Love in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Parents Love

Introduction.

Parents’ love is a unique kind of love that children receive. It’s a bond that begins even before we are born.

Unconditional Love

Parents’ love is unconditional. They love their children no matter what, without expecting anything in return.

Guidance and Support

Parents guide us through life. They support us in our endeavors and help us grow into better individuals.

Parents’ love also means protection. They always want to keep us safe from harm.

250 Words Essay on Parents Love

The unconditional nature of parental love.

Parental love is an intricate tapestry woven with threads of care, sacrifice, and understanding. It is a unique form of affection that transcends all boundaries, making it an essential pillar in the development of a child’s emotional and psychological well-being.

The Sacrificial Aspect of Parental Love

Parents often sacrifice their needs and desires for the welfare of their children. This sacrifice is not just financial, but also emotional and physical. They give up their time, energy, and sometimes even their dreams, to ensure that their children have the best possible life. This selfless giving forms the bedrock of parental love.

Parental Love as a Guiding Beacon

Parents provide a moral compass to their children, guiding them through life’s labyrinth. Their love is like a beacon, illuminating the path for their children, helping them navigate through the storms of life. They teach by example, instilling values and principles that shape the character of their children.

Parental Love: A Catalyst for Growth

Parental love fosters confidence and self-esteem in children. It acts as a catalyst, promoting their overall growth and development. Children who experience consistent and unconditional love from their parents are more likely to develop into confident, compassionate, and well-rounded individuals.

In conclusion, parental love is a profound and complex emotion that forms the foundation of a child’s life. It is a blend of sacrifice, guidance, and nurturing that fosters growth and shapes the character of the next generation. Despite its challenges, the rewards of parental love are immeasurable and enduring.

500 Words Essay on Parents Love

The unparalleled essence of parental love, unconditional love: the core of parenthood.

The essence of parental love is its unconditional nature. Parents love their children without any prerequisites or expectations. This love is not contingent on the child’s behavior, achievements, or attributes. It is a constant, unwavering force that remains even in the face of the greatest adversities. Parents continue to love their children even when they make mistakes, fail, or disappoint them. This unconditional love provides the child with a sense of security and belonging, which is essential for their emotional well-being.

The Role of Parental Love in Child Development

Parental love plays a pivotal role in the holistic development of a child. It is the foundation upon which a child’s self-esteem, self-worth, and self-confidence are built. Research has consistently shown that children who feel loved and cherished by their parents are more likely to develop healthy relationships, have a positive self-image, and exhibit higher levels of emotional intelligence.

Parental Love: A Catalyst for Resilience

Parental love also acts as a catalyst for resilience in children. It provides them with the strength to face challenges, overcome adversities, and bounce back from failures. The love and support of parents give children the courage to explore the world around them, take risks, and learn from their mistakes. It instills in them the belief that they are capable of achieving their goals, thereby fostering resilience and perseverance.

Conclusion: The Enduring Impact of Parental Love

In conclusion, the love of a parent is a profound and enduring force that has a profound impact on a child’s life. It is a love that is unconditional, selfless, and enduring. It shapes a child’s emotional, psychological, and social development, and fosters resilience and perseverance. The love of a parent is a gift that continues to give, long after the child has grown and left the nest. It is a testament to the enduring power and significance of parental love.

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Adolescent Self-Perception and Parental Care Essay

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Social Pressure and Roles of Adolescents

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Although it is considered that adolescents’ responsibilities are somewhat smaller in scope and significance than those which adults have, the challenges they encounter throughout every single day of their lives may be unbearable. Excess public expectations, parental and peer criticism, necessary to comply with various social roles are just a few reasons contributing to various teenage psychological difficulties. In particularly challenging situations, positive and trustful communication with peers and adults serves as the primary source of support. Thus, its role in the promotion of adolescents’ well-being is critical. Based on this, we will analyze the roles and self-perceptions of teenagers, as well as adults’ perceptions of adolescents, and the parent-child communication styles that are prevalent in the society to understand what communication patterns and contexts of support have greater potential to stimulate the development of sound identities and welfare in teenagers.

In “The Triple Bind,” Hinshaw and Kranz examine how average teenagers are perceived in the modern culture and how various social expectations, mediated via parental, peer, and teachers’ criticism, affect children’s behaviors and overall psychological conditions. The authors state that nowadays teenagers are expected to be ambitious and successful in every area of life, and in the case of failure or even a little mistake they start feeling guilty and unhappy because of the criticism and unacceptance by others. When trying to enrich their academic, personal, and athletic lives, children frequently encounter unmanageable levels of pressure which, at some point, may result in a psychological burnout. Moreover, it is observed that in many cases girls are exposed to greater public pressure and contradictory expectations. They should show excellent results in education and career and, at the same time, fulfill their traditional social roles of wives and mothers, and reveal their innate feminine beauty and qualities in all possible ways 1 . The perceived contradictions and unconformity between social expectation and personal interests is detrimental to individual health and feeling of psychological security.

Parents represent the primary category of caregivers. However, frequently they fail to provide sufficient psychological and emotional support to their children and often do not listen to them. It is possible to say that the paternalist relationship style is prevalent in contemporary society. The given interaction framework excludes collaboration as such and implies interactions built according to the “I win – you lose” principle 2 . The critical distance between the generations is clearly defined in the paternalist relationships whereas parents are placed in the center of these relationships, while children are marginalized, and their interests and needs are suppressed.

The role of a parent implies that caregivers will always guide and lead their children, establish mutual trust, and efficiently manage interpersonal conflicts 3 . However, excess criticism and strict parental orientation towards their children’s achievements serve as the primary source of pressure for adolescents and trigger distress and anxiety in them. Of course, when children’s interests are not considered, and their aspirations are substituted by the parentally approved activities, they likely to see their lives as worthless and insignificant. As a result, there is no engagement and no hope. At the same time, community support may play a substantial role in managing crises and help adolescents cope with life challenges.

In “Nobody Cries When We Die,” Patrick Reyes describes how the relationships with God and the studies in the local all-boys Christian school helped him to withstand domestic violence and other misfortunes he encountered when living in the gang-infested neighborhood during the adolescence 4 . The boy underwent his parents’ divorce. His mother never talked about it with him or his brothers, and when she decided to move in with a new boyfriend, Patrick had to face this as an inevitable fact although he did not like the idea of living with an unfamiliar person who, moreover, turned out to be violent and intolerant. In situations like this, the level of stress experienced by children can be overwhelming, and, in a lot of cases, it reaches the critical point. Moreover, when facing violence and living in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, many children choose the path which is the easiest to ascend on, which is involved in the crime and gangs. The case described in the reading reveals the significance of community and religious support for the teenagers in crises as it helped Patrick to go the other way in life. Such support may help children to develop personal mechanisms of coping with conflicts and problems, as well as provide sufficient information and knowledge needed for building self-awareness and choosing a constructive and positive mode of life.

Despite their social, cultural, and economic backgrounds, all modern teenagers are exposed to significant pressure. The inability to express own opinions and realize personal needs and interests often results in psychological difficulties which can be aggravated if a teenager perceives a high level of criticism and has no sources of support. Moreover, adverse conditions can develop even easier if a person lives in an unfavorable environment. Based on this, teenage problems should be recognized by the family and community members, as well as the society as a whole, because recognition leads to the improvement of communication, dissemination of risk information, and increasing the accessibility to various sources of community assistance. While a certain level of parental authority is right, parents, educators, and other adults who have the power of influencing children should learn to collaborate with young individuals, listen to their voices and take into account their interests. In this way, it will be possible to develop a sense of meaningfulness in their lives and show children that they matter.

Clark, Chap. Hurt 2.0: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers . Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.

Hinshaw, Stephen, and Rachel Kranz. The Triple Bind: Saving our Teenage Girls from Today’s Pressures . New York: Ballantine, 2009.

Nakata, Sana. Childhood Citizenship, Governance and Policy: The Politics of Becoming Adult . New York: Routledge, 2015.

Reyes, Patrick, and Jimmy Santiago Baca. Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, and Surviving to Adulthood . Saint Louis: Chalice Press, 2016.

1 Stephen Hinshaw and Rachel Kranz, The Triple Bind: Saving Our Teenage Girls from Today’s Pressures (New York: Ballantine, 2009), 48.

2 Sana Nakata, Childhood Citizenship, Governance, and Policy: The Politics of Becoming Adult (New York: Routledge, 2015), 30-31.

3, Chap Clark, Hurt 2.0: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011).

4 Patrick Reyes and Jimmy Santiago Baca, Nobody Cries When We Die: God, Community, and Surviving to Adulthood (Saint Louis: Chalice Press, 2016), 4-6.

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IvyPanda. (2020, August 8). Adolescent Self-Perception and Parental Care. https://ivypanda.com/essays/adolescent-self-perception-and-parental-care/

"Adolescent Self-Perception and Parental Care." IvyPanda , 8 Aug. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/adolescent-self-perception-and-parental-care/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Adolescent Self-Perception and Parental Care'. 8 August.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Adolescent Self-Perception and Parental Care." August 8, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/adolescent-self-perception-and-parental-care/.

1. IvyPanda . "Adolescent Self-Perception and Parental Care." August 8, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/adolescent-self-perception-and-parental-care/.

IvyPanda . "Adolescent Self-Perception and Parental Care." August 8, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/adolescent-self-perception-and-parental-care/.

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Social interactions involving the costs and benefits of parental care

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• National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - Physiological mechanisms underlying animal social behaviour
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The costs and benefits of parental care will determine whether parents care for their offspring and the degree to which they are involved. Parental care is expensive in terms of both current and future costs of reproduction , which explains why the majority of animals do not care for their young. Current costs are illustrated by the example of a female guarding a clutch of eggs at the expense of laying another clutch or a male that cares for nestlings rather than attracting additional mates. An example of a future cost is the reduction in postbreeding survival suffered by willow tit ( Poecile montanus ) parents that fledge a large brood of offspring.

The main benefit of parental care is offspring survival, although care can also influence an offspring’s condition and future reproductive success. The simplest form of parental care is guarding or protection of eggs in egg-laying, or oviparous , species. Investment in egg protection ranges from construction of an egg case to guarding exposed eggs, carrying eggs on the body surface, in a brood pouch, or in the mouth, and nest building or active nest defense. In some insects there is a continuum that ranges from laying eggs to retaining eggs inside the female’s body until they hatch and are borne as larvae or live young (ovoviviparity). Parental behaviour can be extended beyond hatching or birth. Examples include treehopper females that stay with nymphs until they mature, emperor penguin ( Aptenodytes forsteri ) parents that feed young for several months after the eggs hatch, and human parents who frequently provide substantial parental care to their children through puberty and beyond.

In animals that provide parental care, females are generally the ones that primarily bear the costs. They spend time laying eggs, creating egg cases, guarding eggs or larvae, building nests, incubating and brooding young, carrying young ( gestation ), nursing ( lactation ), and subsequently feeding and defending offspring. Parental care by both sexes (biparental care) is much less common, however, and exclusive care by the male is rare. For example, in terrestrial arthropods , female-only care occurs in 72 orders, biparental care occurs in 13, and male-only care occurs in just 4. In addition, females in 19 orders bear live young, caring for eggs or for eggs and larvae inside their bodies.

Because parental care is costly, it is expected that a conflict of interest will arise between the sexes over whether to care for offspring and how much care to provide. Frequently one sex or the other is able to “win” this conflict by being first to abandon the offspring, leaving the remaining parent, often the female, with the choice of providing all the necessary care by herself or suffering total reproductive failure.

There are several possible reasons why males are able to abandon more frequently than females. First, because fathers lose opportunities to fertilize additional eggs by caring for young, the costs of parental care may be relatively greater for males than for females. Second, if females engage in extra-pair or multi-male mating, they will experience greater benefits of care because their share of parentage is greater than that of their social mate. For example, in an insect where females mate with multiple males and store sperm for long periods, all eggs will belong to the female, but it is unlikely that all will be sired by a single male. The lower a male’s expected share of paternity, the less likely he should be to provide care for the offspring. Surprisingly, even though over 90 percent of socially monogamous birds have extra-pair fertilizations, this does not appear to result in male desertion in many cases, and sensitivity of male care to loss of paternity is uncommon.

Third, because of physiological constraints, females are sometimes more crucial for offspring survival than males. This is particularly true in placental mammals where the father can desert immediately after fertilization, often with little or no effect on offspring survival. In contrast, the mother cannot desert because she carries the offspring internally through gestation and subsequently provides essential care through lactation after birth.

Timing of gamete release could also be a factor in desertion. A testable hypothesis involves predictions of an association between order of gamete release and which sex deserts in externally fertilizing species. A researcher could then ask: Is the sex that releases gametes first more likely to desert? There is superficial support for this hypothesis to the extent that male parental care is most prevalent in fishes with external fertilization. In such fishes, males often release sperm after females release eggs. A second prediction of this hypothesis, however, is that the frequency of single-parent care by males and females should be equal in species of fishes where males and females release gametes simultaneously. This prediction is not borne out. Instead, males are significantly more likely to provide care in such species than females. Thus, the opportunity to desert does not provide a general explanation for why it is usually the females that provide care. Instead, it is possible that females give care more often because they are more likely to be close to the eggs or offspring at the time when care is required. This hypothesis predicts that males should be more likely to provide care in species whose females lay eggs immediately after copulation than in species that require a period of time between copulation and the egg-laying period. Since such delays tend to occur in fishes with internal fertilization, simple proximity to the young and the suite of factors contributing to a separation of time between fertilization and egg laying probably play important roles in determining which sex provides parental care.

Lions ( Panthera leo ) provide a good example of females doing the majority of parental care. Lionesses not only carry the fetus and lactate, but they perform most of the hunting for the social group , including for the larger, more dominant males. Cases in which males contribute the majority or all of the care are relatively rare; however, since these instances are so unusual, they have attracted wide attention. Well-known examples of male care include giant water bugs (family Belostomatidae), in which the female lays eggs on the male’s back, and sea horses and pipefishes (family Syngnathidae), in which males carry the eggs and brood the young. Other examples include mouth-brooding frogs, fish, and various shorebirds (such as jacanas) in which females lay eggs in the nests of several incubating males. Exactly what has emancipated the females of the relatively few species with male care remains a mystery. Modern research is directed at uncovering the reasons why, in these cases, the ratio of benefits to costs for males is apparently greater than that of females.

Biparental care is almost nonexistent in insects, fish, reptiles , and amphibians . It is rare in mammals and relatively common in birds . In some species of birds with biparental care, the absence of the male results in increased or even complete nestling mortality. In other species, however, male absence has little effect. In addition, male parenting in birds may be favoured by the female’s tendency to divorce males that fail to provide care or by the female’s preference for males that contribute to parenting.

Some forms of parental care (such as the defense of a nest) can be shared among offspring, whereas others (such as providing food ) cannot be partitioned without reducing the average offspring benefit. When parental care cannot be shared, it results in competition among siblings. If resources are scarce, offspring may compete through cannibalism, siblicide, and by directly interfering with each other’s access to food, shelter, or other resources. In great egrets ( Casmerodius albus ), for example, the first-hatched chick typically kills its younger sibling. Younger siblings avoid this fate only in years when food is particularly abundant.

Young birds also compete for food by begging, displaying colourful gapes, or by special plumage signals to induce their parents to deliver food. Within a nest, it is often the loudest, most vigorous beggar or the chick closest to the nest cavity entrance that is fed. Use of these signals will be favoured if they help parents avoid investing in young that are weak, sickly, and less likely to survive.

Social interactions involving the use of space

Although it has been established that many animals group together because it is beneficial for individuals to interact, aggregation may sometimes occur because each individual requires access to a limited resource with a patchy distribution. In such cases, clumped individuals may only appear to form a social group. In fact, each individual is exploiting the resource without interacting socially. In practice, however, the absence of interaction between individuals is difficult to demonstrate. The difficulty of distinguishing aggregations on the basis of interaction is also exemplified by some insect aggregations in which individuals communicate by using chemical or vibrational signals. Often, these signals can be detected only by using specialized equipment. Nevertheless, whether aggregations form through the attraction of individuals to one another or to a site, members experience costs that must be balanced by group benefits if aggregations are to persist.

The stability of aggregations is variable. Group stability ranges from temporary aggregations of bees at watering sites to gull colonies that persist on islands year after year. Among the many names used to refer to animal aggregations are covey (quail), gaggle ( geese ), herd ( ungulates ), pod ( whales ), school (fish), and tribe (humans) and more generalized terms such as colony , den , family , group , or pack . An even greater diversity of names is used to describe human social groups. Names such as class , congregation , platoon , squad , regiment , corps , county , town , state , and nation attest to the importance of social behaviour in virtually all aspects of human life.

The question of how aggregations form is quite different from the question of how they function. For example, use of conventional hilltop mating sites by desert butterflies is thought to involve a mutual attraction to a site, but the function of site affinity is to locate or attract a mate. Even if the proximate cause of aggregation is attraction to the site rather than to each other, this attraction to the site is thought to have arisen from benefits provided by the ultimate cause —that is, the mating opportunities the site provides.

Aggregations form for numerous reasons and in a variety of contexts . Animals benefit by forming groups when they engage in activities such as mating, nesting, feeding, sleeping, huddling, hibernating, and migrating. The plains of sub-Saharan Africa provide many examples, including lions sleeping in groups under thorn acacia trees , packs of hyenas (family Hyaenidae) cooperating to bring down a zebra ( Equus quagga , E. grevyi , or E. zebra ), migrating herds of wildebeest ( Connochaetes ), and lekking male antelopes (family Bovidae).

In order for aggregations to persist , however, the costs of group living must be balanced by the benefits. Such costs include increased competition for resources and mates, increased transmission of disease and parasites, and increased conspicuousness. Costs may increase over evolutionary time as parasites and predators evolve to take advantage of the opportunities group living provides. Nevertheless, group living also gives rise to new behaviours that can potentially counter these increased costs. Examples of such behaviours include nepotism (preferential treatment of kin), the formation of alliances within groups, allogrooming and allopreening (that is, activities that allow another to clean one’s fur or maintain one’s feathers), and communication systems that increase the benefits of group foraging and defense.

• My Parents Essay

500 Words Essay On My Parents

We entered this world because of our parents. It is our parents who have given us life and we must learn to be pleased with it. I am grateful to my parents for everything they do for me. Through my parents essay, I wish to convey how valuable they are to me and how much I respect and admire them.

My Strength My Parents Essay

My parents are my strength who support me at every stage of life. I cannot imagine my life without them. My parents are like a guiding light who take me to the right path whenever I get lost.

My mother is a homemaker and she is the strongest woman I know. She helps me with my work and feeds me delicious foods . She was a teacher but left the job to take care of her children.

My mother makes many sacrifices for us that we are not even aware of. She always takes care of us and puts us before herself. She never wakes up late. Moreover, she is like a glue that binds us together as a family.

Parents are the strength and support system of their children. They carry with them so many responsibilities yet they never show it. We must be thankful to have parents in our lives as not everyone is lucky to have them.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

While my mother is always working at home, my father is the one who works outside. He is a kind human who always helps out my mother whenever he can. He is a loving man who helps out the needy too.

My father is a social person who interacts with our neighbours too. Moreover, he is an expert at maintaining his relationship with our relatives. My father works as a businessman and does a lot of hard work.

Even though he is a busy man, he always finds time for us. We spend our off days going to picnics or dinners. I admire my father for doing so much for us without any complaints.

He is a popular man in society as he is always there to help others. Whoever asks for his help, my father always helps them out. Therefore, he is a well-known man and a loving father whom I look up to.

Conclusion of My Parents Essay

I love both my parents with all my heart. They are kind people who have taught their children to be the same. Moreover, even when they have arguments, they always make up without letting it affect us. I aspire to become like my parents and achieve success in life with their blessings.

FAQ of My Parents Essay

Question 1: Why parents are important in our life?

Answer 1: Parents are the most precious gifts anyone can get. However, as not everyone has them, we must consider ourselves lucky if we do. They are the strength and support system of children and help them out always. Moreover, the parents train the children to overcome challenges and make the best decision for us.

Question 2: What do parents mean to us?

Answer 2: Parents mean different things to different people. To most of us, they are our source of happiness and protection. They are the ones who are the closest to us and understand our needs without having to say them out loud. Similarly, they love us unconditionally for who we are without any ifs and buts.

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