{"id":15765,"date":"2021-01-15T12:05:38","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T12:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/?p=15765"},"modified":"2024-09-27T18:18:17","modified_gmt":"2024-09-27T17:18:17","slug":"nurturing-fatherhood-rooted-male-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/childandfamilyblog.com\/nurturing-fatherhood-rooted-male-biology\/","title":{"rendered":"Caring dads probably came first, before providing dads"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Nurturing fatherhood was embedded in male biology long ago and likely laid evolutionary foundations for other fathering roles.<\/strong><\/h3>\n

How central is hands-on, caring fatherhood to men\u2019s roles in families? We know that many fathers are very capable caregivers. Data show that fathers in many parts of the world are doing more hands-on care than their own fathers did. Many dads warm to the role. And research demonstrates that involved fathering benefits children. But how much is interactive caring at the core of who men are as fathers? Is it a passing development, an aberration from men\u2019s foundational, evolved roles over the history of our species: to be a hunter\/breadwinner?<\/p>\n

New anthropological research offers an intriguing answer. It suggests that caring fatherhood is not only core to men\u2019s parenting, but that it may have come first in human evolution, before fathers provided food for their offspring. Indeed, if humans had not first developed early forms of caring fatherhood, then the provider father might never have arrived: Thus, \u201ccaring dad\u201d may have laid the evolutionary foundations for \u201cprovider dad.\u201d<\/p>\n

This explanation springs from our attempts to understand a very distinctive and unusual feature about humans: We are virtually the only primates who routinely share large quantities of food with one another. Adult males, females, and children benefit from such sharing. Indeed, the pooling of high-energy food resources (such as meat and root vegetables) helps explain how humans evolved large, energetically costly brains that make up only a small percentage (~4%) of our body weight but require nearly 20% of the calories we burn each day. It also helps explain our unique family strategy of raising many very needy, slow-growing children at the same time, which sets us apart from other mammals, including other primates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese findings highlight direct caring for children as an important feature of men\u2019s lives from early in human evolution.\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The advantages of food sharing can be seen in some contemporary societies that practice foraging (or hunting and gathering) to meet their food needs. Hunting can generate large, nutrient-dense food resources, but successful hunts of large animals are also unpredictable. Men\u2019s specialization as hunters is generally possible only with the nutritional assurance provided by women\u2019s more consistent foraging of plants, insects, and other small animals.<\/p>\n

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Photo: Humphrey Muleba<\/a>. Unsplash. <\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Thus, it is clear why humans continued to share food after sharing had become established. The more difficult question is: How and why did it begin in the first place? Food sharing and role specialization can be costly to the sharers; you need reliable partners for it to pay off. Hunting is risky and was probably inconsistent in the deep past, with simple technology and rudimentary communication. So humans would not have hunted routinely \u2013 and would likely not have shared the proceeds widely \u2013 if there was no assured payback.<\/p>\n

The evolution of sharing would have required a history of cooperation, trust, and reliability within communities, including between males and females. What conditions might have enabled such strong, prosocial relationships to have already emerged among early humans and our extinct ancestors? Through observation of non-human primate behaviors, my research team suggests an answer: Low-cost, basic forms of adult male care of infants, aiding mothers, helped pave the way for greater cooperation, including food sharing.<\/p>\n

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