Parenting Effort and the Theory of Allocation

In this chapter I begin the search for strategies relating to parenting effort by examining links between the high parity, Pre-Transitional demographic behavior of rural Gambian populations already referenced in Chapter 1 (Bledsoe and Hill 1998; Bledsoe, Banja, and Hill 1995, 1998; Bledsoe 2002) and evolutionary ecology's Theory of Allocation. This is followed by a discussion of parental strategies predicted by the Trivers – Willard Theory of Sex-Biased Parental Investment (Trivers and Willard 1972, 1973). Subsequent sections focus on parental effort as inheritance strategies, beginning with consideration of the demographic and larger social effects of primogeniture in historic Europe. The concluding section presents the culture–biology debate surrounding infanticide and child abandonment, utilizing historic European and contemporary Asian data.

In Chapter 1, I described Bledsoe and Hill's (1998) study of the resumption of postpartum sexual relationships among Gambian populations as an example of anthropological demography's concern with individual strategies operating within the context of both local and international cultures. Working with data from the same populations, Bledsoe (2002; also see Bledsoe et al. 1998) discovered a small sample of women using Western contraceptives (in this case Depo-Provera injections) immediately following miscarriages or stillbirths. In a population where high fertility is intensely desired, such behavior is highly unusual, clashing with Western concepts of high fertility, natural fertility, or parity-independent populations commonly applied to Pre-Transitional fertility regimes.