Parenting across the Life Span: Biosocial Dimensions

Research on parenting through the life course has developed around two separate approaches. Evolutionary biology provides fresh perspectives from life history theory using behavioral ecology and parental investment theory. At the same time, the social and behavioral sciences integrates research from long-term studies of individual development and from the collection of life histories.This path-breaking book advances evolutionary, life history research by integrating perspectives of these two approaches into a biosocial science of the life course. It examines parenthood as a commitment extending throughout life and focuses on the impact on parental and child behavior of changes in the timing, distribution, and intensity of parental investment. This perspective is particularly appropriate for research on parenting since the family is the universal human institution within which the bearing and rearing of children has been based and which transmits traditions, beliefs, and values to the young.Jane B. Lancaster is professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She serves as editor of a major journal in the fi eld, Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective .Jeanne Altmann is Eugene Higgins Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. She is the author of Baboon Mothers and Infants .Alice S. Rossi was professor emerita of sociology at the University of Massachusetts- Amherst. Some of her works include Gender and the Life Course , Feminists in Politics , and Academic Women on the Move .Lonnie R. Sherrod is executive director for the Society for Research in Child Development and professor of psychology at Fordham University. He is the author or editor of numerous books including, most recently, Handbook of Research on Youth Civic Engagement .