ABSTRACT
In raising the topic of fathering in different cultures, one typically thinks of a father's relationships with his young children. The importance of mothers and fathers to children is assumed by everyone, regardless of the type of society that is being considered. Everyone knows that chil dren mature slowly and require years of physical support and tutelage before they can be independent. The biology and psychology of our slow release from immaturity have put their imprint on all human social systems with direct implications for the ubiquity of family organization, marriage, and the asymmetries of gender roles. Everyone understands the importance of parents (or their surrogates) to children; but what of the importance of adult children to elderly parents? In this chapter we present normative and demographic data from a study of the IKung San of the Kalahari Desert. The findings indicate the extreme cultural preoc cupation with parent-adult child relationships and the strong empirical association that exists for older people between having more rather than fewer adult offspring and surviving into old age.
