Who Gains More? The Relationship Between Parenthood and Well-Being

Two studies were conducted to explore the effect of parental sex on well-being due to parenthood. Study 1 analyzed the sixth wave of the World Values Survey data. The results indicated that parents were happier than their respective childless peers. However, the effect of motherhood was significantly higher than that of fatherhood. Furthermore, Study 2 analyzed the data from 354 single-child parents in China. The results showed that perceived parent–child facial resemblance moderated the sex difference in well-being. Specifically, in the high parent–child facial resemblance group, both fathers and mothers showed high levels of well-being; however, in the low parent–child facial resemblance group, the well-being level of mothers was higher than fathers. These results supported the renovated pyramid of needs and the hypothesis of paternal uncertainty.

Correction

Regarding Gorelik, G., & Shackelford, T.K. (2011). Human sexual conflict from molecules to culture. Evolutionary Psychology, 9, 564–587: The authors wish to correct an omission in citation to the existing literature. In the final paragraph on p. 570, we neglected to cite Burch and Gallup (2006) [Burch, R. L., & Gallup, G. G., Jr. (2006). The psychobiology of human semen. In S. M. Platek & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), Female infidelity and paternal uncertainty (pp. 141–172). New York: Cambridge University Press.]. Burch and Gallup (2006) reviewed the relevant literature on FSH and LH discussed in this paragraph, and should have been cited accordingly. In addition, Burch and Gallup (2006) should have been cited as the originators of the hypothesis regarding the role of FSH and LH in the semen of rapists. The authors apologize for this oversight.

Human kin recognition is self- rather than family-referential

Inclusive fitness theory predicts that organisms will tend to help close kin more than less related individuals. In a variety of birds and mammals, relatives are recognized by comparing their phenotype to an internal representation or template, which might be learned through either repeated exposure to family members or self-inspection. Mirrors are ubiquitous now, but were absent during our evolutionary history; hence it is hard to predict, and empirically unknown, whether human kin recognition is family- or self-referential. Here we put this issue to the strongest possible test by comparing nepotistic behaviour towards self- versus co-twin-resemblant individuals. Seventy monozygotic and dizygotic twins were shown same-sex faces, covertly manipulated to resemble either themselves or their co-twin, and indicated which individual they would prefer in two prosocial contexts. Self-resemblant faces were significantly preferred to twin-resemblant faces, showing that visual information about the self supersedes that about close family members in the kin-recognition template. Because, under conditions of paternal uncertainty, a reliable family-referent template could be based only on one's mother and maternal relatives, a unique advantage of self-referent phenotype matching is the possibility of (consciously or unconsciously) identifying one's father and paternal relatives as kin.