Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T22:08:35.821Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The evolutionary versus socio-economic view on grandparenthood: What are the grandparents' underlying motivations?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2010

Alexander Pashos
Alexander Pashos
Affiliation:
Institute of Biology, Human Biology and Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin, 14195 Berlin, Germany. [email protected]://www.biologie.fu-berlin.de/humanbio/alexander-pashos.htm
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Coall & Hertwig (C&H) give an ambitious review about the broad range of grandparenting literature from the perspective of different disciplines. They aim to show, how evolutionary theory, sociology, and economics can mutually enrich each other. However, the differences between the evolutionary and the socio-economic perspective should be more clearly pointed out, because they usually deal with different research questions. Grandparents' well-being could be divided into its underlying components.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , February 2010 , pp. 33 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

King, V., Silverstein, M., Elder, G. H. Jr., Bengtson, V. L. & Conger, R. D. (2003) Relations with grandparents: Rural Midwest versus urban Southern California. Journal of Family Issues 24:1044–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Korchmaros, J. D. & Kenny, D. A. (2001) Emotional closeness as a mediator of the effect of genetic relatedness on altruism. Psychological Science 12:262–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lancaster, J. B. (1971) Play-mothering: The relations between juvenile females and young infants among free-ranging vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops). Folia Primatologica 15:161–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michalski, R. L. & Shackelford, T. K. (2005) Grandparental investment as a function of relational uncertainty and emotional closeness with parents. Human Nature 16:293–305.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pashos, A. (2000) Does parental uncertainty explain discriminative grandparental solicitude? A cross-cultural study in Greece and Germany. Evolution and Human Behavior 21:97–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pashos, A. (2009) Ergebnisse – Deutscher Alterssurvey. NAR-Kolleg zu Heidelberg. Zwischenberichte Januar–Juni 2009 [Results—German Aging Survey. Network Aging Research Kolleg of Heidelberg. Progress reports, January–June 2009], pp. 66–69. Unpublished research report.Google Scholar
Pashos, A. & McBurney, D. H. (2008) Kin relationships and the caregiving biases of grandparents, aunts and uncles: A two-generational questionnaire study. Human Nature 19:311–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Steinbach, I. & Henke, W. (1998) Grosselterninvestment – eine empirische interkulturelle Vergleichsstudie [Grandparental investment – An empirical cross-cultural comparative study]. Anthropologie 36:293–301.Google Scholar
Suomi, S. J. (2003) Gene-environment interactions and the neurobiology of social conflict. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1008:132–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tesch-Römer, C., Wurm, S., Hoff, A. & Engstler, H. (2002) Die zweite Welle des Alterssurveys. Erhebungsdesign und Instrumente [The second wave of the Ageing Survey: Research design and instruments]. Deutsches Zentrum für Altersfragen Diskussionspapiere, Nr. 35. DZA. Available at: http://www.dza.de/nn_12036/SharedDocs/Publikationen/Alterssurvey__Instrumente,templateId=raw,property=publicationFile.pdf/Alterssurvey_Instrumente.pdf Google Scholar