ABSTRACT
According to Parkes (1972, 1986, 1996), grief represents ‘the cost of commitment’. If you are unloved, you will-like uncle Unwin-be unmourned. In evolutionary terms, grief represents the trade-off for being able to maintain stable relationships (Chapter 4). As indicated in Chapter 9, a general consequence of this would be for the intensity of grief to follow the strength of the relationship which was lost, which in turn should follow adaptive aspects of that relationship. But, in view of the indirect way in which grief is related to fitness, the question was raised as to what extent there is detailed shadowing of adaptive aspects of the relationship such as kinship and reproductive value.
