Fatherhood: Evolution and Human Paternal Behavior

by Peter B. Gray, Kermyt G. Anderson

We've all heard that a father's involvement enriches the lives of children. But how much have we heard about how having a child affects a father's life? As Peter Gray and Kermyt Anderson reveal, fatherhood actually alters a man's sexuality, rewires his brain, and changes his hormonal profile. His very health may suffer—in the short run—and improve in the long. These are just a few aspects of the scientific side of fatherhood explored in this book, which deciphers the findings of myriad studies and makes them accessible to the interested general reader. Since the mid-1990s Anderson and Gray, themselves fathers of young children, have been studying paternal behavior in places as diverse as Boston, Albuquerque, Cape Town, Kenya, and Jamaica. Their work combines the insights of evolutionary and comparative biology, cross-cultural analysis, and neural physiology to deepen and expand our understanding of fatherhood—from the intense involvement in childcare seen in male hunter-gatherers, to the prodigality of a Genghis Khan leaving millions of descendants, to the anonymous sperm donor in a fertility clinic. Looking at every kind of fatherhood—being a father in and out of marriage, fathering from a distance, stepfathering, and parenting by gay males—this book presents a uniquely detailed picture of how being a parent fits with men's broader social and work lives, how fatherhood evolved, and how it differs across cultures and through time.

Genres: Anthropology, Biology

320 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2010

About the author

I have a passion for understanding various aspects of human reproduction from an integrative, evolutionary perspective. That's a sensible scholarly passion too: in a Darwinian world, the ultimate currency is reproductive success.

My academic training as an undergraduate was at UCLA, where I majored in Anthropology and Geography/Environmental Studies. While I began as a Civil Engineering student, one Anthropology class threw me off those tracks and on to this other. The faculty were inspiring, and so were study abroad experiences in Kenya and Costa Rica, which prompted my non-stop mental application of the same evolutionary principles applied to other creatures to us as well.

I earned a PhD in 2003 in Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. Faculty mentors reinforced the importance of viewing human behavior, physiology, and health within an overarching evolutionary framework. Comparison with other primates is illuminating, an international scope is important, and so is appreciation of the complementary ways that ultimate and proximate processes play.

I subsequently bulked up my clinical research and androgen side through a postdoc in Los Angeles, at a time when my wife and I also welcomed our first daughter amidst kin support. Reproductive ideas and realities have been enmeshed ever since. And since 2005 I have been an anthropology professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), allowing space for research, thinking, and teaching on these same passions.

Reviews

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

So glad that I paid to overnight this when I ordered it a year ago (...and am just now reading it). Turns out it didn't have the missing info that I was looking for at the time. It's a descriptive survey of fatherhood, meant to be for popular reading. Less useful for researchers in the field, but I did walk away with several useful bits.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A useful review of research on fatherhood from an evolutionary perspective. The book's chapter breakdown provides various related themes with helpful overviews of the literature on the different subjects, from marriage to kinship, stepfatherhood and more.