Do Characteristics of Parental Child Homicide in Sweden Fit Evolutionary Predictions?

Evolutionary models have been used to explain parental child homicide. One idea is that children with low fitness value to their parents will be less loved and cared for and therefore more at risk in conflict situations. It is then important to investigate if conflicts with the children are the major pattern in cases of parental child homicide. The aim of this study is to survey the background circumstances of parental child homicide in Sweden and relate them to the evolutionary model suggested. We more specifically investigate if the homicides occur in conflict situations with the child, the frequency of several victims (including the partner or former partner) and if there are differences in characteristics of homicides between stepparents and genetic parents. Our results show that parental child homicide is a heterogeneous phenomenon, where relatively few cases were the result of a conflict with the child‐victims. Instead severe conflicts between parents were the most common circumstance in which children were killed. Many children were victims of an extended suicide, which often included several members of the family. Step‐parents were more likely to kill children aggressively in conflicts with them than genetic parents. The complexity of the phenomenon suggests that an evolutionary model based upon a mechanism related to conflicts with the child‐victim has limited explanatory value on parental child homicide in general.     

Are stepchildren over-represented as victims of lethal parental violence in Sweden?

Evolutionary psychologists have suggested that stepchildren should be over-represented as victims of lethal parental violence compared with children living with their two genetic parents, because of relatively more lapses in parental solicitude among stepparents. In our study, using data over a period of 35 years in Sweden (1965-1999), there was no overall over-representation of stepchildren as victims. For very young stepchildren there was a tendency for over-representation. In families with both stepchildren and children genetically related to the offender, genetic children tended to be more likely to be victims.     

Differential parental investment in families with both adopted and genetic children

Stepchildren are abused, neglected and murdered at higher rates than those who live with two genetically related parents. Daly and Wilson used kin selection theory to explain this finding and labeled the phenomenon “discriminative parental solicitude.” I examined discriminative parental solicitude in American households composed of both genetic and unrelated adopted children. In these families, kin selection predicts parents should favor their genetic children over adoptees. Rather than looking at cases of abuse, neglect, homicide and other antisocial behavior, I focused on the positive investments parents made in their children as well as the outcomes of each child. The results show that parents invested more in adopted children than in genetically related ones, especially in educational and personal areas. At the same time, adoptees experienced more negative outcomes. They were more likely to have been arrested, to have been on public assistance and to require treatment for drug, alcohol or mental health issues. They also completed fewer years of schooling and were more likely to divorce. In adoptive families, it appears that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Parents invest more in adoptees not because they favor them, but because they are more likely than genetic children to need the help. I conclude that discriminative parental solicitude differs in adoptive and step households because adoptive families generally result from prolonged parenting effort, not mating effort like stepfamilies.     

Forensic aspects in domestic homicide

The aim of the study was investigation of specific forensic aspects in offenders involved in domestic homicide cases in regard to sociodemographic and psychosocial variables and modalities of the offense. The research was conducted at the Department of Forensic Psychiatry in Neuropsychiatric Hospital "Dr. Ivan Barbot" in Popovaca, Croatia. The sample in this study consisted of domestic homicide group (N = 162). The results showed certain characteristics within the group of domestic homicide offenders. Generally speaking the offenders in domestic homicide cases were often married and were living in their families. Moreover, they were brought up in families with both parents and they had history of regular military service. Furthermore, offenders in domestic homicide cases were less involved in intervention from social services with rare history of home runaway and substance abuse during adolescence. Finally, the same group of offenders was less often had mothers or close friends with antisocial personality disorder but had frequent language and speech problems during adolescent period. In regard to the victims of domestic homicide they were often aged females. The offenders usually commit crime in their living space, either in the house or in the apartment. Based on these findings we conclude there are certain specific characteristics in the domestic homicide cases compared to homicide in general.     

Fostering relations: first sex and marital timings for children raised by kin and non-kin carers

Kinship fostering is generally preferred to non-kin fostering by policy makers in the U.S. and elsewhere. Researchers and policy makers alike tend to provide several proximate reasons for why this may be, generally neglecting an ultimate evolutionary framework. However, kin selection theory predicts that in the absence of genetically related parents, care from kin will result in the most similar life history outcomes. In low-fertility settings, parents typically favour increased investment in embodied capital and thus delayed reproductive life history strategy. Using archival data from the original Kinsey survey, collected in the U.S. from 1938 to 1963, we used survival analyses to compare the effects of living with kin and non-kin fosterers in childhood on timings of first sex and marriage. Our results support a kin selection hypothesis showing that while fostered children have accelerated life histories compared to children from “intact families”, kin fosterers buffer children from early sexual and reproductive behaviors, compared to children cared for by non-kin.     

Transnational families and the subjective well-being of migrant parents: Angolan and Nigerian parents in the Netherlands

Studies on transnational families argue that the subjective well-being of migrant parents is negatively affected by living separated from their children. Most studies employ qualitative methods without a control group and hence are not able to distinguish whether the effects found are associated with separation only or with other factors. This paper investigates the association between parental subjective well-being and parent–child separation by comparing migrant parents who have at least one child in their country of origin with those who live with all their children in the Netherlands. The paper further investigates whether the same associations are found between migrant groups from Angola and Nigeria. Results indicate that transnational parents indeed report lower subjective well-being, as measured by happiness, life satisfaction and mental health for both groups and additionally, self-assessed health for Angolans. However, legal status, socio-economic status and the quality of the parent–child relationship are found to be important mediators.     

Child sexual abuse--children and families referred to a treatment project and the effects of intervention.

The characteristics of a series of 274 families who were referred to a sexual abuse treatment programme were analysed. Information was obtained on 411 abused children and 362 non-abused children. Different forms of sexual abuse were noted, with 77% of girls and 23% of boys affected. Boys tended to be abused at a younger age, more severely, and for longer periods than girls. There was a predominance of lower social class groups among the parents, and a wide variety of family structures, with reasonable stability over time. Ninety six per cent of perpetrators were men, and biological and step-parents predominated. Contributing factors in both the family history and the current perpetrators and their wives included sexual abuse, violence, chaotic families, marital problems, sexual difficulties, alcoholism, and subnormality. Follow up of 120 families, 180 victims, and 226 siblings showed that prosecution occurred in 60% of cases, with a high percentage of perpetrators being imprisoned. Treatment was offered to 87% of families, but because the treatment programme was in the early stages of development a variable number of children and parents were offered family treatment or treatment in groups for parents and children separately. There was an improvement in the victim''s circumstances in 61% of cases, and a noticeable reduction in "sexualised" and general emotional difficulties among victims, but there was reabuse rate of 16%. Protection of children was achieved through changes of family attitude and changes in family structure including divorce and separation: 14% of victims were rehabilitated to both parents, 33% to mothers only, and 26% to new families or other residences. Consensus in the family that abuse had occurred was seen as an important factor in determining which children could be rehabilitated with both their parents, with their mothers only, or with new families; which families could be offered or accepted treatment; and whether positive changes in the family occurred.     

CLONING, PARENTHOOD, AND GENETIC RELATEDNESS

In this paper I examine what I take to be the best case for reproductive human cloning, as a medical procedure designed to overcome infertility, and argue that it founders on an irresolvable tension in the attitude towards the importance of being ‘genetically related’ to our children implied in the desire to clone. Except in the case where couples are cloning a child they have previously conceived naturally, cloning is unable to establish the right sort of genetic relation to make couples the parents of their cloned child. If anybody is the genetic parent of a cloned child it is the natural parent(s) of the DNA donor. Paradoxically, in order to resist the claims of the parents of the donor to the cloned child, the argument for human reproductive cloning must place more weight on the intention to parent a child, than we do in cases of ordinary reproduction. It must insist that the parental relation is established by the intentions of the couple who bring a clone into the world and not by their genetic relation to the child. The emphasis placed on intention as establishing the parental relationship works to undermine the justification for cloning in the first place. For cloning to play a useful role as a reproductive technology, it must allow couples to become parents who could do so no other way. However, to the extent that intention is sufficient to establish parenthood, adoption or surrogacy, which are existing alternatives to cloning, will serve equally well to allow couples to become parents.     

Homicidal fantasies

Actual homicides may be considered the tip of an iceberg, reflecting evolved coercive impulses and motivations found in normal individuals as well as the criminally violent. Two studies examined reports of homicidal fantasies in normal subjects. In the first study, subjects were asked whether they had ever had a homicidal fantasy, and if so, they were asked several questions about their most recent fantasy. In the second study, subjects were asked about the frequency of homicidal fantasies in several categories. The majority of subjects in both studies reported at least one fantasy. Males tended to recall more homicidal fantasies than did females (in Study 1, 73% vs 66%; in Study 2, 79% vs 58% of males and females, respectively). Males also reported longer and more detailed fantasies, and were more likely to imagine strangers and coworkers as victims. Females' recent fantasies were more likely to involve family members than were males, but that appears to be due to the fact that males had more fantasies about members of other categories, and not due to a tendency for males to have fewer homicidal fantasies about family members than do females. There was some evidence of greater fantasies involving step-parents, especially when one considered the amount of time subjects had spent living with step-, as opposed to genetic, parents. Results are discussed in terms of Daly and Wilson's evolutionary model of actual homicides.     

Away-from-home food intake and risk for obesity: examining the influence of context

Objective: This study examined sociodemographic and cultural determinants of away‐from‐home food consumption in two contexts and the influence of frequency of away‐from‐home food consumption on children's dietary intake and parent and child weight status. Methods and Procedures: Parents of children (N = 708) in grades K‐2 were recruited from 13 elementary schools in Southern California. Parents were asked through a questionnaire the frequency with which they eat meals away from home and the restaurant they frequented most often. The height and weight of the parents and their children were measured to calculate BMI. Results: Consuming foods at least once a week from relatives/neighbors/friends (RNF) homes was associated with children's dietary intake and children's risk for obesity. For example, children of parents with weekly or greater RNF food consumption drank more sugar‐sweetened beverages. Parents of families who ate at restaurants at least weekly reported that their children consumed more sugar‐sweetened beverages, more sweet/savory snacks, and less water compared with families who did not frequent restaurants this often. The type of restaurant visited did not affect diet intake or obesity. More acculturated families exhibited less healthy dietary behaviors than less acculturated families. Discussion: Restaurants remain an important setting for preventing child and adult obesity, but other settings outside the home need to be considered in future intervention research. This may especially involve eating in the homes of RNF.     

When to have another baby: A dynamic model of reproductive decision-making and evidence from Gabbra pastoralists

Maximizing reproductive success involves having as many children as possible that can themselves reproduce successfully. Thus, when Gabbra parents decide to have another baby, they must trade off the probability that they will be able to afford to raise the child and marry it off successfully when it reaches maturity against the risk that feeding and raising that child would diminish the family herd, harming the marriage prospects of other children and possibly even leading to household destitution. Here I use a dynamic, state-dependent optimality model to analyze this trade-off. The decision to have another baby depends on household wealth and the number of children they already have. Parents should not necessarily reproduce at the maximum rate to maximize reproductive success, and the costs of marrying off a child have a large impact on the optimal family size. In the Gabbra, the cost of marrying off boys greatly exceeds the cost of marrying off girls. An analysis of demographic data from Gabbra households with a living husband and a first wife that had reached menopause show that probability of remarriage is strongly dependent on the number of children the first wife had. Number of sons has a much greater influence than number of daughters on the probability of a second marriage, as predicted by the model. Men are attempting to create the optimal family.     

Children Undergoing Radiotherapy: Swedish Parents’ Experiences and Suggestions for Improvement

Approximately 300 children, from 0 to 18 years old, are diagnosed with cancer in Sweden every year. Of these children, 80–90 of them undergo radiotherapy treatment for their cancer. Although radiotherapy is an encounter with advanced technology, few studies have investigated the child’s and the parent’s view of the procedure. As part of an ongoing multicenter study aimed to improve patient preparation and the care environment in pediatric radiotherapy, this article reports the findings from interviews with parents at baseline. The aim of the present study was twofold: to describe parents’ experience when their child undergoes radiotherapy treatment, and to report parents’ suggestions for improvements during radiotherapy for their children. Sixteen mothers and sixteen fathers of children between 2–16 years old with various cancer diagnoses were interviewed. Data were analyzed using content analysis. The findings showed that cancer and treatment turns people’s lives upside down, affecting the entire family. Further, the parents experience the child’s suffering and must cope with intense feelings. Radiotherapy treatment includes preparation by skilled and empathetic staff. The parents gradually find that they can deal with the process; and lastly, parents have suggestions for improvements during the radiotherapy treatment. An overarching theme emerged: that despair gradually turns to a sense of security, with a sustained focus on and close interaction with the child. In conclusion, an extreme burden was experienced around the start of radiotherapy, though parents gradually coped with the process.     

Grandpaternal care and child survival in a pastoralist society in western China

Human parents require significant support to raise multiple, highly dependent offspring. Grandmothers are often highlighted as key allomothers (non-maternal caregivers) and their presence is frequently associated with increased child survivorship, leading some to describe humans as cooperative breeders. Equally well documented is the diversity of human childcare systems, where a wide range of individuals support parents including male kin. However, the role of grandfathers has been less well documented, and they seem to have an inconsistent relationship with child survivorship, dependent on socio-ecological factors. Here, we explore the relationship between grandparental allomothering and child survivorship using demographic and time budget data from a pastoralists community in western China. We find that under-five mortality is negatively associated with grandpaternal, but not grandmaternal, living status. Pastoralists in Maqu have recently transitioned from mobile to half-settled livelihoods in which women are more economically active than males. As a result, women's childcare workloads have decreased, while older men (who are excluded from the household economy) supervise children. Our results suggest that patterns of childcare are flexible and highlight the need to consider social and ecological factors to understand allomothering and child survival.     

Family Type and Investment in Education: A Comparison of Genetic and Stepparent Families

Data from the U.S. National Education Longitudinal Survey were examined to investigate postsecondary educational investment in two-parent families. Consistent with hypotheses derived from the logic of inclusive fitness theory, contrasting children with two genetic parents with children from stepparent households on a multivariate composite of investment indicators revealed that stepchildren receive significantly less parental support for pursuit of higher education. Univariate tests on the three measures comprising the multivariate composite indicated that relative to children with two genetic parents, stepchildren have parents who (1) delay the start of savings accounts for postsecondary education, (2) put aside less money for subsidizing the costs of higher education, and (3) expect to allocate fewer economic resources to support the first year of postsecondary schooling. Statistical control of child ability, resource availability, and number of family members sharing in parental resources was accomplished in a second multivariate analysis by using child achievement, familial socioeconomic status, and number of financial dependents in each family as covariates. Statistically equating genetic and stepparent families on these measures reduced, but did not eliminate, the investment differences.     

Waiting for Trivers and Willard: Do the rich really favor sons?

Parental investment theory has been put forward as a major evolutionary argument explaining male or female biased birth sex ratio, the Trivers-Willard (T-W) hypothesis, predicting that parents living in good circumstances will bias their investment to sons, whereas parents in poor circumstances will bias their investment toward daughters. Tests of the T-W hypothesis on human beings have shown limited evidence for parents appearing to differentiate their investment to sons or daughters according to the reproductive potential of each sex. The present study tests the T-W hypothesis among a large contemporary Polish sample using first birth interval and extent of breastfeeding as measures of parental investment, and economic status and level of parental education as measures of parental condition. The extents to which parental investment and markers of parental condition vary by sex of the child were examined using log-linear analysis. Weak support for the T-W effect is found among families where fathers were best educated, where a greater proportion of first-born boys are breastfed longer than girls, while the opposite trend is observed among families with fathers with lowest levels of education. Although the present study does not fully support the T-W hypothesis, it gives evidence of greater investment in female offspring at the lower extremes of income, and greater investment in males at higher levels of income.     

Denying biological parenthood: fosterage in Northern Benin

Among the Baatombu in Northern Benin, child fosterage is not an exception in crisis situations, but the common upbringing pattern: until some years ago, most of the Baatombu children did not grow up with their biological parents, but were fostered by social parents. There is a strong attitude of shame related to biological parenthood and an attempt to deny it. Young children are given to paternal or maternal relatives in order to stay with them until their marriage. This involves the transfer of all parental duties and rights to the social parents. Every gesture and practice of demonstrating property rights over one's biological child is therefore a definite breach of norms. Schooling, urbanization, and modernization also trigger off a transformation process. Particularly in the urban context, new forms of social parenthood, such as tutorship and temporary arrangements, have been developed. However, they have clear links to the old frame of ideas and norms.     

Familial aggregation of blood pressure in 558 adopted children.

Blood pressure was measured in each member of 398 French-Canadian families with at least one adopted child of the same ethnic origin. Measurements were made at home by a nurse, usually with the subject seated. One comparison per family between parents and randomly chosen index children was made, using age- and sex-adjusted scores. The correlation in blood pressure scores between parents and natural children was highly significant (P less than 0.001), at 10.2% for systolic and 13.7% for diastolic in 140 homes with at least one natural child, but the correlation between parents and adopted children was nonsignificant, at 0.81% and 1.0%, in 398 homes with at least one adopted child. The correlation between pairs of natural children was significant (P less than 0.05), at 7.84% for systolic and 8.41% for diastolic, in 80 homes with more than one natural child but nonsignificant, at 0.49% and 1.69%, respectively, for pairs of adopted children in 138 families with more than one adopted child. It is concluded that heredity explains most of the familial resemblance of blood pressure in children.     

Early detection of visual defects in infancy

To determine the part played by screening in detecting visual defects questionnaires were sent to 240 families with blind or partially sighted children identified from the Family Fund''s database. Questions were asked on social and family background, the visual disorder and its severity, any other disability, and how and when the disabilities were discovered and subsequently managed. Data from 189 families were analysed, constituting all those with children with major visual defects from the 219 families who replied. The visual defect was first discovered in 111 children by parents, friends, and neighbours, and in 36 by a doctor at the neonatal examination. In only three children who did not have a family history of visual impairment was the defect discovered during a formal screening examination at a child health clinic. Dissatisfaction about medical services was expressed by about a third of the parents, particularly a lack of provision of information and consideration of their worries and a failure to refer the child promptly to educational and treatment services.Visual defects in children under 5 are generally detected by family and friends, not by screening, but detection by the medical profession could be improved by increased awareness and observation and quick referral.     

Parental quality of life in the framework of paediatric chronic gastrointestinal disease

Chronic gastrointestinal diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and celiac disease (CD), might have impact not only on the affected child but also on their parents since inside the family framework, a change in each member may have influence on the whole system. The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that parents whose children have IBD or CD will have a lower quality of life (QoL) compared to parents of healthy children, as well as that lower QoL will be found among parents who perceive lower health related quality of life (HRQOL) of their child. 55 parents of children with IBD, 49 of CD and 53 parents of healthy children were included in the study. Children were aged 7-18 years. In order to measure parental QoL, a Croatian version of the WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire was administered, with four domains: physical health, psychological health, social relationship and environment. The Total QoL was calculated as a sum of all domain items. The parent-proxy report of children's HRQOL, PedsQL 4.0 Generic Core Scales was used. Main result shows that parents of children with IBD report a significantly lower psychological health, compared to parents of other children, and significantly lower physical health compared to parents of healthy children. Among parents of children with CD and parents of healthy children, better parental Total QoL was significantly correlated with better parental report of children's HRQOL, while for parents of children with IBD those associations were not found. Results of study show association between presence of the disease in offspring with poorer parental QoL, thus highlight the importance of supporting not only children with chronic disease but also involving their parents in psychosocial interventions, as well as supporting the patient's association groups which gather both children with chronic disease and their parents.