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This chapter begins with a brief review of the theory of parent-offspring conflict and considers the role of this conflict in the cognitive development of human infants. It then discusses the evolution of theory of mind — which is taken to have its origins in human evolution — and considers how this human cognitive specialization might have interacted with existing parent-offspring dynamics. How the epigenetic systems of infants might have responded is shown by elaborating upon existing cognitive and behavioural systems, or by canalizing later developing ones earlier into development, in order to recruit higher degrees of parental investment. The merits of this framework is assessed in the context of the development of behaviours considered by some researchers to be indicative of a certain degree of social understanding, namely, gaze-following, pointing, social smiling, and neonatal imitation. The chapter concludes by showing how this proposal makes several longstanding theoretical and methodological difficulties for the field of cognitive development even more vexing.

Disputes between parents and their young might seem easy enough to spot in everyday human life, but the notion of a general, evolutionary conflict between offspring and their parents has proved surprisingly slippery. This chapter shows how the concept of parent-offspring conflict has robust theoretical support and discusses the diverse evidence that it is a significant selective force in nature. It reconstructs the evolutionary consequences of this conflict for traits in offspring and their parents. It considers how conflict links pairs of traits in parents and their offspring, and shows how co-evolution between the two parties becomes focused on these particular characters. Finally, it discusses whether parent-offspring conflict will always end in a stable equilibrium or whether unstable outcomes are more widespread than is currently appreciated.

Sibling relationships are unique. They are the longest lasting human social relationship exceeding, on average, the length of relationships with parents, mates, and children. The powerful underlying evolved psychological mechanisms activated in the contexts of sibling relationships are revealed in the attempts often made by parents to foster closeness between their children. Parents often attempt to groom young children for the arrival of a younger sibling. Put simply, there would be no need for such attempts if it were not for the evolved psychological mechanisms triggered in the minds of children that attempt to counteract the diversion of parental resources to siblings. This chapter shows that the most powerful guidance available to unmask this psychology is offered by evolutionary theories including inclusive fitness theory, parental investment theory, and parent-offspring conflict theory.

This chapter argues that corporal punishment is the result of an essential conflict between parent and offspring, as parents try to balance the competing demands of their lives. It begins with a brief overview of parental-investment theory, which predicts that parent-offspring conflict will occur as a consequence of the parents' attempts to maximize their reproductive success by distributing parental care across all of the offspring they can produce in their lifetime. Conflict of interest between parents and offspring produces attempts by the parents to limit offspring behavior, resistance by the offspring, and escalation to corporal punishment. Parent-offspring conflict theory is then used to explain variation in the form and frequency of punishment by primate mothers according to the age and sex of the offspring, the presence of siblings, and the mother's reproductive opportunities and socioeconomic circumstances.

This chapter reviews advances in evolutionary theory since Bowlby and proposes that our capacity for culture emerged with the evolution of human attachment by means of selection for increased mother-infant cooperation in the resolution of parent-offspring conflict. It outlines the evolutionary-developmental logic of attachment, parent-offspring conflict, and the view of culture as “extended embodied minds.” It describes how the embodied mind and its attachments might have been extended beyond the mammalian mother-infant dyad to include expanding circles of cooperative individuals and groups. It argues that because attachment came before and gave rise to culture, no culture could long exist that did not accommodate the attachment needs of its infants. On this view, all the myriad cultural contexts of attachment foster secure-enough attachment—except when they cannot. Theory and evidence show that when mothers and others are unable to buffer their children against environmental risk and uncertainty, insecure attachment can be (or once was) evolutionarily rational. It concludes that an attachment theory fully informed by twenty-first century evolutionary theory is fully consilient with normative emic perspectives on the nature of the child and appropriate child care, in both favorable and unfavorable environments.

This chapter surveys the impact of evolutionary conflicts on maternal and fetal health in pregnancy and childhood. Some adaptations that have evolved to benefit mothers may be costly to offspring and vice versa, for natural selection can act at cross-purposes on maternal and fetal genes. For example, the typical duration of lactation in our evolutionary past was suboptimal for offspring fitness. Communication between mothers and fetuses is compromised by evolutionary incentives to send misleading signals. Mothers have evolved mechanisms for testing offspring and terminating investment in offspring of low perceived quality. Offspring have evolved features that reduce their chances of failing these tests. When fetal genes manipulate maternal physiology to increase the flow of maternal blood through the placenta, pre-eclampsia may result. The unusually large fat deposits of human babies may have provided a store of structural lipids and energy, for growth and maintenance of the infant brain.

Conflict and teamwork are not mutually exclusive, they are alternative strategies for different adaptive circumstances. Children may have become pioneers of a sort in human evolution. Under certain circumstances, humans kill their own kind.

Kings of England with strong mothers—queens who were heiresses in their own right, or the daughters of other kings—came to the throne as younger men, and had longer reigns. That is in part because their mothers waged war against their husbands on their sons’ behalf, or had their husbands blown up. Against Freud, there is no evidence that those queens had sex with their sons. But in Trivers’ favor, there is plenty of evidence that those sons, after they became kings, had sexual access to hundreds of servants, and got bastards on their subjects’ wives.