ABSTRACT
Child and developmental psychologists, sociologists, educators, and policymakers have long viewed parenting and the family as the most significant influences on the developing child. As such, parenting has traditionally been viewed as an important source of “environmental” variability in the long-debated (and still controversial) nature-nurture dichotomy. At one level, of course, this is correct. An infant’s very survival depends on parents. There is nothing in the external world so critical to a child’s success in life as her or his parents. Yet parenting also straddles the nature side of the traditional continuum. Parenting is important not only to humans, but it is central to the survival of many species of animals, including all mammals and many birds (Rosenblatt, in Vol. 2 of this Handbook). Evolutionary biologists have long recognized this fact, arguing that, in order for individuals to get their genes into the next generation, they must make investments in mating and, following conception, parenting (Hamilton, 1964; Trivers, 1972). How much is invested in mating versus parenting will vary among species and between females and males within a species, depending on characteristics of the developing offspring and ecological conditions. But parenting-the care and nurturing of offspring between conception and independence-is universal among mammals and, depending on the species-typical pattern of such investment, influences how offspring are reared and relationships among the sexes.
