Definition
Caregiving by nonparental caregivers, who provide direct and/or indirect investments to a child
Introduction
Who helped you develop into the person you are today? Most of us may think about a parent or parents, but many of us would also recognize the important role of other people. Perhaps it’s a teacher, a grandparent, or a neighborhood friend. The fact that we are supported by many people in our childhood is, in fact, very unusual: In nonhuman mammals, support – or investments – for juveniles are typically and solely provided by the biological mother. Only 9–10% of mammals display parental care, where biological fathers are additionally involved in raising offspring, without the support of other helpers (Kleiman and Malcolm 1981). In humans, we see a notably different system of facultative fathering, where biological fathers may or may not provide investments into their...
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Emmott, E.H., Page, A.E. (2021). Alloparenting. In: Shackelford, T.K., Weekes-Shackelford, V.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_2253
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