The Coherence of Individual Development: An Evolutionary Perspective on Children’s Internalization of Parental Values

The thesis of this chapter is that evolutionary theory can make a major contribution to conceptualizing children's internalization of values. The paper is broadly divided into four sections: The first section develops an evolutionary framework in which internalization is a facet of high-investment parenting and is expected to co-vary with a number of other life history variables, including age of puberty, developmental plasticity and intelligence. This section stresses the tendency for intercorrelations among a large number of variables related to internalization and other aspects of parental investment—what I term the coherence of development. The second section discusses adolescent sexual behavior as an example of developmental coherence, stressing its interrelationships with other variables associated with internalization and parental investment. I argue that external cultural supports for adaptive behavior are of less importance for high-investment families than for families that are, for genetic and/or environmental reasons, less inclined toward high-investment parenting. This is because relatively low-investment parents are less able to rely on an internalized motivational system to keep children's behavior " on an adaptive track. " Children from relatively low-investment families are less likely to accept cultural choices valued by adults. As a result, external cultural supports for culturally adaptive behavior are of critical importance for children and families toward the low-investment end of the parental investment distribution. The third section contrasts two theoretical approaches to life history theory. One approach suggests that variation in parental investment patterns and internalization results from " alternate strategies " in which different levels of parental investment are evolved responses to variation in resource availability. The other approach suggests that variation in life history strategies is influenced primarily by genetic variation in viable reproductive strategies. I argue on theoretical and empirical grounds that the latter interpretation provides the most parsimonious fit with the available evidence. Finally, the fourth section discusses some specific mechanisms related to internalization. Internalization is here conceptualized as resulting from a generalized motivational system that makes children receptive to parental influence independent of specific content. Following a brief discussion of temperament influences, attention is focused on warmth as a central motivational component of the internalization of parental values. Warmth is viewed here as an evolved reward system that motivates family members to bond together by making close relationships pleasurable to their participants. Parent-child warmth therefore channels children's social learning because children are motivated to attend to adult values and seek parental approval. …