scholarly journals Parental antagonism and parent–offspring co-adaptation interact to shape family life

2012 ◽  
Vol 279 (1744) ◽  
pp. 3981-3988 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joël Meunier ◽  
Mathias Kölliker
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Multiple Paternity ◽  
Maternal Investment ◽  
Family Interactions ◽  
Forficula Auricularia ◽  
Mothers And Fathers ◽  
The Family ◽  
Future Reproduction ◽  
Evolutionary Consequences

The family is an arena for conflicts between offspring, mothers and fathers that need resolving to promote the evolution of parental care and the maintenance of family life. Co-adaptation is known to contribute to the resolution of parent–offspring conflict over parental care by selecting for combinations of offspring demand and parental supply that match to maximize the fitness of family members. However, multiple paternity and differences in the level of care provided by mothers and fathers can generate antagonistic selection on offspring demand (mediated, for example, by genomic imprinting) and possibly hamper co-adaptation. While parent–offspring co-adaptation and parental antagonism are commonly considered two major processes in the evolution of family life, their co-occurrence and the evolutionary consequences of their joint action are poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate the simultaneous and entangled effects of these two processes on outcomes of family interactions, using a series of breeding experiments in the European earwig, Forficula auricularia , an insect species with uniparental female care. As predicted from parental antagonism, we show that paternally inherited effects expressed in offspring influence both maternal care and maternal investment in future reproduction. However, and as expected from the entangled effects of parental antagonism and co-adaptation, these effects critically depended on postnatal interactions with caring females and maternally inherited effects expressed in offspring. Our results demonstrate that parent–offspring co-adaptation and parental antagonism are entangled key drivers in the evolution of family life that cannot be fully understood in isolation.

scholarly journals Specificul colaborării familiale eficiente în relația soț-soție

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-61
Author(s):  
Uliana Culea
Keyword(s):  
Life Events ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Social System ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Family Life Cycle ◽  
Family Interactions ◽  
Life Cycle Stages ◽  
Family Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family

The family is a social system which functions according to one’s own inner laws and for the benefits of the society, being an indispensable part of it, focusing on the social role in perceiving family life. Therefore, the family behavior can be analyzed depending on the family life cycle stages and society evolution. The changes within inner family framework focus on family interactions and on its members’ reactions to specific life events and situations.

scholarly journals Short-term benefits, but transgenerational costs of maternal loss in an insect with facultative maternal care

2015 ◽  
Vol 282 (1817) ◽  
pp. 20151617 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Thesing ◽  
Jos Kramer ◽  
Lisa K. Koch ◽  
Joël Meunier
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Maternal Care ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Developmental Time ◽  
Early Evolution ◽  
Transgenerational Effects ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Maternal Loss ◽  
Forficula Auricularia

A lack of parental care is generally assumed to entail substantial fitness costs for offspring that ultimately select for the maintenance of family life across generations. However, it is unknown whether these costs arise when parental care is facultative, thus questioning their fundamental importance in the early evolution of family life. Here, we investigated the short-term, long-term and transgenerational effects of maternal loss in the European earwig Forficula auricularia , an insect with facultative post-hatching maternal care. We showed that maternal loss did not influence the developmental time and survival rate of juveniles, but surprisingly yielded adults of larger body and forceps size, two traits associated with fitness benefits. In a cross-breeding/cross-fostering experiment, we then demonstrated that maternal loss impaired the expression of maternal care in adult offspring. Interestingly, the resulting transgenerational costs were not only mediated by the early-life experience of tending mothers, but also by inherited, parent-of-origin-specific effects expressed in juveniles. Orphaned females abandoned their juveniles for longer and fed them less than maternally-tended females, while foster mothers defended juveniles of orphaned females less well than juveniles of maternally-tended females. Overall, these findings reveal the key importance of transgenerational effects in the early evolution of family life.

scholarly journals Family Health Climate: A Qualitative Exploration of Everyday Family Life and Health

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hagen Wäsche ◽  
Christina Niermann ◽  
Jelena Bezold ◽  
Alexander Woll
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Health Behavior ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Family Health ◽  
Family Interactions ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Family ◽  
Health Related

Abstract Background The family is an important social environment for children’s, adolescents’ and adults’ health. However, studies mostly focused on dyadic and unidirectional influences of parents on their children. Studies addressing influences arising from daily family life and including family level influences are rare and the existing studies solely focus on the relevance for children’s health or health-related behaviors. We use a qualitative approach to explore how daily family life and its inherent health-related cues affect family members’ physical activity and eating behavior. Methods Semi-structured interviews utilizing an interview guide were conducted. Since we aimed to examine family life, we analyzed both parents’ and their children’s views on health-related interaction patterns and family environmental influences on individuals’ health-related behavior. Twenty-two members of seven families were interviewed. Transcripts of the interviews were systematically analyzed following Grounded Theory principles.Results The interviews revealed that various individual as well as environmental factors shape health-related aspects of daily family life. A model was developed that organizes these influencing factors on family life with regard to health-related interactions and the emergence of the Family Health Climate (FHC) – reflecting shared perceptions and cognitions regarding a healthy lifestyle within families – and its consequences. Family interactions and family time, often realized through shared family meals, are key factors for families’ health with regard to nutrition and physical activity. The FHC showed to affect various aspects related to health behavior of individual family members.Conclusions The model allows to gain knowledge on underlying processes and mechanisms of family life that influences individuals’ health-related behavior. Based on a better understanding of the association between family life and individual health behavior the development of family-based interventions can be informed. Furthermore, the insights can help to guide further research focusing on families as a system.

scholarly journals The evolution of social life in family groups

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jos Kramer ◽  
Joël Meunier
Keyword(s):  
Parental Care ◽  
Family Systems ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Evolution ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Family Interactions ◽  
Eusocial Insects ◽  
Associated Family

ABSTRACTFamily life forms an integral part of the life-history of species across the animal kingdom, and plays a crucial role in the evolution of animal sociality. Our current understanding of family life, however, is almost exclusively based on studies that (i) focus on parental care and associated family interactions (such as those arising from sibling rivalry and parent-offspring conflict), and (ii) investigate these phenomena in the advanced family systems of mammals, birds, and eusocial insects. Here, we argue that these historical biases have fostered the neglect of key processes shaping social life in ancestral family systems, and thus profoundly hamper our understanding of the (early) evolution of family life. Based on a comprehensive survey of the literature, we first illustrate that the strong focus on parental care in advanced social systems has deflected scrutiny of other important social processes such as sibling cooperation, parent-offspring competition and offspring assistance. We then show that accounting for these neglected processes – and their changing role in the course of evolution – could profoundly change our understanding of the evolutionary origin and subsequent consolidation of family life. Finally, we outline how this diachronic perspective on the evolution of family living could provide novel insights into general processes driving social evolution. Overall, we infer that the explicit consideration of thus far neglected facets of family life, together with their study across the whole diversity of family systems, are crucial to advance our understanding of the processes that shape the evolution of social life.

scholarly journals Family health climate: a qualitative exploration of everyday family life and health

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hagen Wäsche ◽  
Christina Niermann ◽  
Jelena Bezold ◽  
Alexander Woll
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Health Behavior ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Family Health ◽  
Family Interactions ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Family ◽  
Health Related

Abstract Background The family is an important social environment for children’s, adolescents’ and adults’ health. However, studies mostly focused on dyadic and unidirectional influences of parents on their children. Studies addressing influences arising from daily family life and including family-level influences are rare and the existing studies solely focus on the relevance for children’s health or health-related behaviors. We use a qualitative approach to explore how daily family life and its inherent health-related cues affect family members’ physical activity and eating behavior. Methods Semi-structured interviews utilizing an interview guide were conducted. Since we aimed to examine family life, we analyzed both parents’ and their children’s views on health-related interaction patterns and family environmental influences on individuals’ health-related behavior. Twenty-two members of seven families were interviewed. Transcripts of the interviews were systematically analyzed following Grounded Theory principles. Results The interviews revealed that various individual as well as environmental factors shape health-related aspects of daily family life. A model was developed that organizes these influencing factors on family life with regard to health-related interactions and the emergence of the Family Health Climate (FHC) – reflecting shared perceptions and cognitions regarding a healthy lifestyle within families – and its consequences. Family interactions and family time, often realized through shared family meals, are key factors for families’ health with regard to nutrition and physical activity. The FHC showed to affect various aspects related to health behavior of individual family members. Conclusions The model sheds light on underlying processes and mechanisms of family life that influences individuals’ health-related behavior. Based on a better understanding of the association between family life and individual health behavior the development of family-based interventions can be informed. Furthermore, the insights can help to guide further research focusing on families as a system.

The Family Book of Child Care

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1958 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 518-518
Author(s):  
EDWIN A. HARPER
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Mothers And Fathers ◽  
The Family ◽  
Care Family ◽  
Comprehensive Treatise ◽  
Family Living

This book is much more than a manual covering the routines of child care from conception to puberty. It is a comprehensive treatise upon family living with emphasis upon the child. In addition to advice about feeding, bathing, training, etc., there are practical chapters on "How to Have a Comfortable Home," "Money is a Part of Child Care," "Family Life and Moral Values," "Emotions are Fundamental," and "Work and Play: A Foundation for Happiness." As the preface states: "This book is written for mothers and fathers who expect to enjoy raising a family; it is written for the couples who are making bigger families popular again."

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