I’m no expert on evolution or psychology, but I’ve encountered some popular accounts of evolutionary psychology. As I understand it, this theory attempts to explain our psychological qualities by how they affect the reproductive success of our genes. So, it’s easy to understand why we love our children. The more resources we expend on our children, the more likely they are to survive to reproductive age and pass on our genes. Our love for our siblings is also understandable. My sister shares a large portion of my genes, so if I spend resources on her, I am helping (copies of) my own genes reproduce.
But what about our parents, or anyone past reproductive age? For example, in the “selfish gene” model, what benefit is there in caring for one’s elderly mother? From our knowledge of human nature, it’s easy to understand why we help our parents: because we love them and because they did so much for us when we were growing up. But how can this behavior be accounted for in terms of a selfish gene maximizing reproductive success?
One explanation I think doesn’t work is this. If our parents know that we will help them when they are old, they will help us more when we are young. Well, it’s easy to see that a mother might be less inclined to be generous with her children if she knew that they would abandon her once she was too old to produce more copies of their genes, but why should her selfish genes care? From the perspective of a selfish gene in the mother, its interests are better served if the children spend all of their resources on themselves and their own children. Any resources spent on the mother are wasted. In fact, such expense of resources can only be a bad thing to the selfish gene, for those resources are being diverted from potentially more reproductively profitable applications.
So how do evolutionary psychologists, or at least those the subscribe to the selfish gene account, explain people helping their parents.
When’s the last time you got your parents to babysit your kid/s while you did something else?
Seeing as we’re social animals (more or less), teamwork and group cohesiveness help a lot, especially when it takes so long for our young to mature, and if you alienate yourself from your social group, you’re left to do all the litter raising yourself.
Older people like grandparents make very good surrogate parents as they’ve obviously raised viable young of their own, and they usually have the time and resources to help you out while you hunt your gazelle, dig your roots, and piss on all four coners of your new-found territory once a day :D.
To bring even more of a human side into it, grand parents often have more available resources like money, time, and willingness to raise kids than you may; you’re busy working, learning how to be a parent, paying down the mortgage, and trying to make a future for yourself in addition to raising the pups. The amount of resources it takes to keep your parents on good terms is far outweighed by the benefit they can be to you and specifically your young. Also remember the inheritance thing… we humans often get additional goodies when our parents die, so it would be counter-productive to chase off such golden geese as grandparents as soon as our own kids are born.
Of course this applies to good grandparents; some rightfully are shunned.
I would venture that love, in and of itself, aids in the survivability of our species.
It’s of obvious benefit to love (read: trust and respect) our parents when we are young. Nature, being imperfect, either hasn’t figured out how to turn it off when you reach 18, or hasn’t found a good reason to stop loving your parents.
Interesting thread! I would subscribe less to an evolutionary psychology and more to what is called an epigenetic position. That is, there are many things determined or contributed to by our genetic make-up, but we can also rise above (or dive below, depending on your bent) those biological influences through learning. I mean let’s face it… not everyone is cut out to be a parent, and many fail miserably, even to the point of killing their own children. So that kind of blasts a big hole in looking exclusively at the genetics of parenting.
Caring for one’s elderly parent would probably fall into that epigenetic category. From an evolutionary standpoint, there is no real benefit in caring for an elderly, infirm parent. However, there are benefits from another perspective, as long as Mom or Dad is still emotionally and cognitively functional, if not physically to some degree. Much deep emotional sharing can take place in such a setting, if both parties are open to it. Grandchildren have a great deal to learn from grandparents, if they’ll listen. Such elder-care within a family could have the added benefit of teaching the young love and respect for the senior members of the family. Extended families are very well-rounded and functional in numerous societies…why not here in the U.S.?
Aside from that, I think I inherited the selfish gene, in that I am pleased to have my time and my space (with my fiancee, of course). Mom is in another state and son has moved out. I plan to enjoy that time immensely and to the fullest, in case it doesn’t always last.
Interesting thread! I would subscribe less to an evolutionary psychology and more to what is called an epigenetic position. That is, there are many things determined or contributed to by our genetic make-up, but we can also rise above (or dive below, depending on your bent) those biological influences through learning. I mean let’s face it… not everyone is cut out to be a parent, and many fail miserably, even to the point of killing their own children. So that kind of blasts a big hole in looking exclusively at the genetics of parenting.
Caring for one’s elderly parent would probably fall into that epigenetic category. From an evolutionary standpoint, there is no real benefit in caring for an elderly, infirm parent. However, there are benefits from another perspective, as long as Mom or Dad is still emotionally and cognitively functional, if not physically to some degree. Much deep emotional sharing can take place in such a setting, if both parties are open to it. Grandchildren have a great deal to learn from grandparents, if they’ll listen. Such elder-care within a family could have the added benefit of teaching the young love and respect for the senior members of the family. Extended families are very well-rounded and functional in numerous societies…why not here in the U.S.?
Aside from that, I think I inherited the selfish gene, in that I am pleased to have my time and my space (with my fiancee, of course). Mom is in another state and son has moved out. I plan to enjoy that time immensely and to the fullest, in case it doesn’t always last.
From what I know of Evolutionary Psychology, I would venture an assumption that the reasons that we care for elderly parents would fall more into a knowledge base. We use our parents throughout life as a basic source of knowledge, because they have experienced things that we have not yet. We rely on them to pass knowledge on to us, and without knowledge there is a fear of certain failure.
Caring for parents may be a grounding point for survival through knowledge and emotions. Human evolution needs to be looked at from a standpoint of how others may effect our emotions, and strength comes from a strong emotional basis. To fully evolve and survive as humans we need to have a basic knowledge and strong emotional standing.
The evolution of Memes is far, far faster than the evolution of genes, so anything involving psychology is going to be controlled by memetic forces rather than genetic forces.
Perhaps evolutionary psychology applies more to small-brained critters, not to meme-hosts who support an evolution of mental concepts and thinking techniques which can change over a time span varying from a couple of generations to a matter of minutes. The feedback system of genes acts over centuries, not minutes. Example: if strong beliefs (politics, religion, etc.) cause so much problems, wiping out whole civilizations in brief instants of evolutionary time, why didn’t evolution get rid of them long ago? Simple: the power of the Meme is a recent addition to the mix. Wait a few hundred thousand years and genetic evolution will no doubt have had a much stronger effect on all this new “thinking” stuff.
Or maybe the “thinking” stuff will continue to run rings around the slow evolutionary forces forevermore.
Ummm, I’m not quite following you. Are you saying love is a meme - a unit of cultural selection? “Love” or any of it’s close functional equivalents, “altruism” or “attachment” would have been selected for (originally) on the genetic level. Even Dawkins, the very creator of the term “meme,” describes in “The Selfish Gene” that from the perspective of the group, altruism created an evolutionary stable state. So if you take a hard-wired altruism and a hard-wired fear of abandonment you really don’t need memes to describe the continued practice of caring for elderly. That’s why we don’t need preachers to remind us not to throw our moms off a cliff.
Or, perhaps, evolutionary psychology doesn’t apply at all. Not every behavioral quirk – indeed, not every single phenotypic trait – need be, or even can be, explained solely from an evolutionary (and in particular, natural selection) perspective.
I think this is the answer that makes the most sense to me. Even though people now sometimes live past the point of even being able to care for their grandchildren, that probably wasn’t the case while the conditions under which we evolved prevailed. I suppose that back then, every additional day we kept our parents alive was a day that they were able materially to help out around the cave. It is only now, with modern medicine, that many of us live long enough to require full-time help for everything.
