Exclusive paternal care is the rarest form of parental investment in nature and theory predicts that the maintenance of this behavior depends on the balance between costs and benefits to males. Our goal was to assess costs of paternal care in the harvestman Iporangaia pustulosa, for which the benefits of this behavior in terms of egg survival have already been demonstrated. We evaluated energet...

We explore paternal social anxiety as a specific risk factor for childhood social anxiety in a rational optimization model. In the course of human evolution, fathers specialized in external protection (e.g., confronting the external world) while mothers specialized in internal protection (e.g., providing comfort and food). Thus, children may instinctively be more influenced by the information s...

OBJECTIVE To explore potential mediating and moderating factors that influence the association between paternal depression in the postnatal period and subsequent child behavioral and emotional problems. METHODS A population-based cohort (N = 13,822) from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) was recruited during pregnancy. Paternal and maternal depressive symptoms were ...

Given the primacy of reproduction, same-sex sexual behavior poses an evolutionary puzzle. Why would selection fashion motivational mechanisms to engage in sexual behaviors with members of the same sex? We propose the alloparenting hypothesis, which posits that sexual fluidity in women is a contingent adaptation that increased ancestral women's ability to form pair bonds with female alloparents ...

OBJECTIVE To discuss the recent literature on paternal obesity, focusing on the possible mechanisms of transmission of the phenotypes from the father to the children. SOURCES A non-systematic review in the PubMed database found few publications in which paternal obesity was implicated in the adverse transmission of characteristics to offspring. Specific articles on epigenetics were also evalu...

This review explores research surrounding the concept of father involvement and its effects on child development. Research to-date has primarily focused on the maternal role in child development and has often discounted or failed to report on the positive effects of fathers’ presence on their children. Scholars are primarily in agreement that there are several systemic aspects that influence th...

After being paired with females, male prairie voles show major changes in their social behaviors among which is an increase in paternal responsiveness. These changes are accompanied by fluctuations in the density of the [Argelvasopressin-immunoreactive (AVP-ir) fibers in the lateral septum, suggesting that septal AVP might be involved in these changes. To explore a possible involvement of septa...