An Evolutionary Analysis of Variation in Parental Effort: Determinants and Assessment

Abstract

SYNOPSIS Utilizing an evolutionary framework can elucidate the causes of variation in parental effort and guide measurement of relevant parenting constructs. The current article presents an evolutionary analysis of the determinants of parental effort and suggests that evolutionarily informed measures are needed to test evolutionary hypotheses. Towards this end, we employ evolutionary theory to guide development of new Parental Effort Scales, which supplement and extend extant methods for assessing coparenting.