ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a Nikolas Tinbergenian look at the family, how it developed the way it did over the species’ phylogeny, the functions it serves, and how it is strengthened or weakened by various ecological and sociocultural contexts. The family is literally the nursery of human nature. Human infants arrive in this world with all the biological equipment they need to be human beings, but it is the family that first takes hold of their potential and begins the process of actualizing it. The extremely long period of dependency of human infants places a heavy burden on parents requiring evolutionary adaptions to assure that caregivers both can and want to shoulder the burden of extended investment. Mother-infant bonding is the prototypical human attachment. The constellation of mechanisms responsible for mother-infant bonds depends on the permutation of several environmental factors, probably organized by the birthing process itself, and consolidated by mother-infant contact and interaction during the immediate postpartum period.
