How might life history theory contribute to life course theory?

Abstract

In this commentary, we consider how evolutionary biology's life history theory (LHT) can be integrated with life course theorizing, to the benefit of both endeavors. We highlight areas where it can add value to existing work in life course theory (LCT), focusing on: how it can add an extra level of explanation, which may be helpful in understanding why individuals focus on their own health and happiness (or why they don't); how insights from comparative work, both across species and across all kinds of human populations, can inform LCT; and how social and biological researchers can come together fruitfully to make progress on the tricky issue of understanding human agency.

The Influence of Kin Proximity on the Reproductive Success of American Couples, 1900–1910

“…Nativity had a sub stan tive asso ci a tion with fer til ity, as for eignborn women gave birth to 18% more chil dren in the inter val than did nativeborn women, all else being equal, but only a mod est asso ci a tion with child mor tal ity. Although evo lu tion ary the ory helps direct research ers' atten tion toward "ulti mate" expla na tions of why repro duc tive behav ior evolved in a way to con trib ute to enhanced evo lu tion ary fit ness (Stulp and Sear 2019), we should not lose sight of prox i mate expla na tions that may have greater sub stan tive influ ence on cou ples' repro duc tion. Fullmodel results are shown in Table A1 in the online appen dix.…”

7. Contextual Effects on Fertility and Mortality

“…Both demographers and evolutionary scholars recognize the importance of the life course in shaping individual health (Ben-Shlomo and Kuh, 2002;Stulp and Sear, 2019), and it will likely continue to be integrated into new work on contextual effects. One question of interest is whether some periods during early development and childhood have more bearing on adult reproductive decision-making and health outcomes than do later periods in the life course.…”

Verständigungsbarrieren zwischen kulturalistischen Sozialwissenschaften und evolutionärer Anthropologie: Ursachen, Argumente und Auswege

“…Schnittstellen dafür gibt es durchaus. Nur beispielhaft sei auf die Konvergenz von K evolutionärer Lebensgeschichts-und sozialwissenschaftlicher Lebenslaufforschung (Bernardi et al 2018;Stulp und Sear 2019) verwiesen, auf innovative Perspektiven zur Variabilität politischer Einstellungen (Aarøe et al 2017) und Ideologien (Claessens et al 2020) sowie auf das interdisziplinäre Schnittstellenpotenzial des Sozialkapitalkonzepts (Meißelbach 2019). Im Übrigen ist in jüngster Zeit die Herausbildung von Forschungsbereichen wie der Evolutionären Soziologie oder der Neurosoziologie zu beobachten.…”