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Motivating grandparental investment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2010

Debra Friedman  and
Michael Hechter
Debra Friedman
Affiliation:
College of Public Programs, Arizona State University, Phoenix, AZ 85004. [email protected]
Michael Hechter
Affiliation:
School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287-5102. [email protected]
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Abstract

What makes the question of grandparental investment so very interesting is trying to tease out the underlying motivations. Grandparental investment is variable and grandparental altruism, if it exists at all, is also variable. Neither evolutionary theory nor rational choice theory has an easy time explaining this variation, and insight is further impeded by the absence of any compelling empirical studies designed for the purpose of testing alternative explanations of variations in grandparental investment.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , February 2010 , pp. 24 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Friedman, D., Hechter, M. & Kanazawa, S. (1994) A theory of the value of children. Demography 31(3):375–401.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Friedman, D., Hechter, M. & Kreager, D. (2008) A theory of the value of grandchildren. Rationality and Society 20(1):31–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar