A Biological view over parents effort in child grouth in the wild, and how it can help us understand the best way to settle parenting arguments in humans. 

Since the dawn of life, reproduction has been the key factor to existence and the main focus of every living being. As the world is a hostile place, and since every mother and father wants their children to grow and reproduce, animals evolved tecniques to ensure their children’s bright future trough what is called Parental Care. With Parental Care scientist indicate a form of protection performed by one (or both) parents towards their younglings. It is a very wide topic as animals in the same Phylum (the categories in wich different life forms are catalogued into) can have different tipes of care, or even not having one at all. Let's just focus on the animals that have a decent one. Parental care can be shared by both mother and father, and this is called Bi-parental care; or can be saddled to one of the two parents. Every species has it’s own ways to accomplish the same goal (child’s grouth) and for every species the goal is different, as for instance per frogs one surviving child over thousands of eggs is a great example of parenting, while for lions losing one pup can be a great loss. So comparing the ways that different species takle this problem and chosing the best candidate species to fit in human’s is a very important focus in order to talk about Parental Care without wasting eveyone’s time. For sure there is no species that have the same magnitude of complex nervous system as humans, but maybe if we discard all the societal frivolous troubles we can concentrate on the common ground, which is what every parent on the world shares.  

  The struggle is real 

So, parenting is an effortfull exercise: from the simple gametal production (which means producing and keeping the very basic tools to create a child); to the mother’s child bearing period, where she has to grow a new fully functioning life form inside of her; to the feeding and caring of the children after it’s birth. It takes a lot of energies to do all those things, and since energies comes from food and, in nature, it’s a hard work to get your paws on some, giving birth is a very huge decision and it’s consequences are never underestimated by animals. For sure if it’s effective you can keep your lineage alive, but when keeping yourself alive is a huge struggle it is very important to have a plan for it. So, Biparental Care. Theorically, humans should have a biparental care type, where a mother and a father both care for one or more children. Sometimes they might get granny’s help: granny’s Sunday lunch lasagna represent the Extra-Pair Paternity, when a non-parent helps a parenting couple. But most of the time the parents are on their own. In bi-parenting birds, where their only work is to feed the newborns, both parent must work hard to bring caterpillars to the nest. But, their feeding effort is so strong and so energy draining that it might reduce their canches of survival during the next winter. So biologists always tought that parent ride a trade off between working hard for their children to be fat, but not too hard otherwise they die. But since animals are quite tricky themsleves, they figured out that if they work very little, leaving the partner to do most of the effort, they can achieve both a great physical shape and a great brood, all at the exenses of the partner. The truth is that they don’t really care about their partner if they are not monogamous: next year they will find a new one. But the partner is not stupid, or to put it in evolutionary therms, all the stupid partners died a long time ago, and he (ore she) came out with an idea: “if i bring food to the nest, and i see you having the time of your life singing in the branches, i will not bring another one until you start working”. This is called Sexual Conflict, and its the perfect recipe to get yourself an angry bird. So, with this deal, the lazy partner can’t sit for too long but has to work at least a little bit. This kind of interaction between the two induces a positive reinforcment, where both gain from each other’s effort. This is called an Alternation of nest visits, where both partners control each other’s work before committing to the next flight. Usually in nature we find a imperfect alternation, wich means that if one parent is distracted while the other is feeding at the nest and think that he’s the only one working, it will not wait for too long anyway before doing another trip, otherwise the chicks will starve for no reason. So basically natural selection chose the bird’s most efficient behaviour, wich is for sure not pure exploitation but controlled cooperation, where both parent invest a comparable amount of energy for the chicks to grow fat enough to survive.  

What can we learn from mother nature? 

For sure we can learn that mother nature’s rules are shaped trought the death of millions of individuals, and only the fittest of all, or the luckiest, survive. This is a great starting point in shaping a parenting deal because it’s the most efficient and the less energy wasting way to breed. So for example we could just assert that single parenting is an exeptional case, as if the mate dies in the wild most of the widows and widower will simply abandon the nest and it’s inoccupants. Secondly, the aim of an animal before the mating season is purely to feed himself to be the in the best shape it can, or to have the most beautiful nest, or the most beautiful colors in order to attract the mate with the most beautiful color or in the best shape possible so that their children can have the best traits available on the dating market. (Anybody seeing any resemblances with the humans?). Can humans get an alternation of nest visit type of deal? Well of course yes, as per not commited birds or exploiting birds will raise non energyfull chicks, which are less then perfect survivors to the great wilderness. Humans can have the same problems, but those are tipically compensated by society or by granny’s sunday lunch lasagna. 

This is just a brief introduction tofhis topic, and I wrote this article just to add some curiosity in your day. If you appreciated it just let me know, I will write some more.