The Cradle of Humankind: Evolutionary Approaches to Technology and Parenting

Abstract

This chapter explores the relevance of evolutionary theory for understanding the relationship between technology and parenting. It does this by elaborating two examples -- one related to childbearing and one to childrearing -- for each of the three major paradigms in the application of evolutionary theory to human behaviour: human behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology, and dual-inheritance theory. The examples range from a cross-cultural test of the idea that heavier female contribution to subsistence will lead to the development of more elaborate baby-carrying technology, to the demonstrated role tv-broadcasted soap operas have played in lowering fertility rates in some developing countries.

Proximate and Ultimate Perspectives on Romantic Love

“…Sex is intrinsically pleasurable and reinforcing, and promotes bonding (Meltzer et al, 2017). In times before the advent of contraception, repeated sex with a partner would usually result in pregnancy and childbirth (Goetz et al, 2019;Kushnick, 2019). This is still the case in many parts of the world.…”

Care of Infants in the Past: Bridging evolutionary anthropological and bioarchaeological approaches

“…Technologies related to childcare, so important for our way of parenting today, were probably used to some degree by humans in populations studied by bioarchaeologists and palaeoanthropologists. Kushnick ( 2020 ) examines how the three major evolutionary approaches to human behaviour – human behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary approaches – can inform our understanding of the relationship between parenting behaviour and technology. Behavioural ecology approaches emphasise how parents behave in ways that balance the fitness costs and benefits of childcare and competing activities.…”

“…Similarly, baby-carrying devices might arise as the result of a woman's need to free her hands for subsistence work. Kushnick ( 2020 ) showed that, in an initial analysis of 77 societies from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, baby-carrying technology was present in around 75% of societies where women had high levels of responsibility for subsistence work, but only 50% where women had lower levels of responsibility in this domain. Sturdier varieties of carrying devices, such as cradleboards, may leave archaeological traces (Mattori et al, 1987 ), while cloth-based ones, such as slings, may not.…”