Critically consider evolutionary explanations of sex differences in parental investment. (24marks)
Critically consider evolutionary explanations of sex differences in parental investment. (24marks)
Parental investment was defined by Triver (1972) as “any investment by the parent in an individual offspring that increases the offspring’s chances of survival (and hence reproductive success) at the cost of parents ability to invest in other offspring.” (alive or yet to be born).There are many ways in which parents invest in there offspring, including the supply of resources for example food, energy, and time getting food, time spent looking after the young and risks taken in protecting them.
There are different levels of parental investment seen in females and males, one being the theory of Trivers (1972) he said that in most species males and females do not share this parental investment equally. He suggested that mammal females investment is far greater than males as the females effort during pregnancy is a huge part of the investment as she carries the baby for 9 months and deals with the physical and emotional effort that goes into pregnancy. Due to this females have to be choosier concerning potential mates for there future offspring as they can produce less gametes than men and in parental investment males only to give a teaspoon of semen. This is a large difference in the reproductive success of the sexes, making random mating all the more costly for human females. Especially as the costs of childcare in human females are very high now.