Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T21:26:13.905Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Grandmaternal investment and early childhood injury: the role of X-chromosomal relatedness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2020

Antti O. Tanskanen Open the ORCID record for Antti O. Tanskanen [Opens in a new window]  and
Mirkka Danielsbacka
Antti O. Tanskanen*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Finland
Mirkka Danielsbacka
Affiliation:
Department of Social Research, University of Turku, Finland
*
*Corresponding author. Email: antti.tanskanen@utu.fi
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Evolutionary theory posits that grandmothers can increase their inclusive fitness by investing time and resources in their grandchildren. According on the X-linked grandmother hypothesis, the asymmetric inheritance of X-chromosomes should be responsible for the biased effect of the investment by maternal and paternal grandmothers towards granddaughters and grandsons. The British Millennium Cohort Study (n=4445 children) was used to investigate the association between grandmaternal childcare and children’s injuries between the ages of 9 months and 3 years. Support was found for the X-linked grandmother hypothesis predicting that the investment of paternal grandmothers benefits more granddaughters than grandsons, the investment of paternal grandmothers benefits granddaughters more than the investment of maternal grandmothers, and the investment of maternal grandmothers is similarly associated with the injuries of granddaughters and grandsons. However, no support was found for the prediction that maternal grandmothers benefit more grandsons than paternal grandmothers. Thus, some, although not univocal, evidence for the prediction that X-chromosomal relatedness shapes the grandmaternal effect on child outcomes was found.

Keywords

Childhood injuryGrandmothersSex differences
Type
Short Report
Information
Journal of Biosocial Science , Volume 53 , Issue 6 , November 2021 , pp. 968 - 971
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Chapman, SN, Pettay, JE, Lummaa, V and Lahdenperä, M (2018) Limited support for the X-linked grandmother hypothesis in pre-industrial Finland. Biology Letters 14(1), 20170651.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chrastil, ER, Getz, WM, Euler, HA and Starks, PT (2006) Paternity uncertainty overrides sex chromosome selection for preferential grandparenting. Evolution and Human Behavior 27(3), 206–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coall, DA and Hertwig, R (2010) Grandparental investment: past, present, and future. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 33(1), 1–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Daly, M and Perry, G (2017) Matrilateral bias in human grandmothering. Frontiers in Sociology 2(11), 1–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Euler, HA (2011) Grandparents and extended kin. In Salmon, CA and Shackelford, TK (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Family Psychology. Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Fox, M, Sear, R, Beise, J, Ragsdale, G, Voland, E and Knapp, LA (2009) Grandma plays favourites: X-chromosome relatedness and sex-specific childhood mortality . Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 277(1681), 567–573.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hamilton, WD (1964) The genetical evolution of social behaviour I and II. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7, 1–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, K (2014) Millennium Cohort Study: First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Surveys. Centre for Longitudinal Studies, London.Google Scholar
Rice, WR, Gavrilets, S and Friberg, U (2010) The evolution of sex-specific grandparental harm. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 277(1694), 2727–2735.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sear, R and Coall, D (2011) How much does family matter? Cooperative breeding and the demographic transition. Population and Development Review 37, 81–112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sear, R and Mace, R (2008) Who keeps children alive? A review of the effects of kin on child survival. Evolution and Human Behavior 29(1), 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tanskanen, AO (2013) The association between grandmaternal investment and early years overweight in the UK. Evolutionary Psychology 11(2), 417–425.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tanskanen, AO and Danielsbacka, M (2016) Association between grandparental co-residence and early childhood injury in the UK. Child Indicators Research 10(3), 825–837.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tanskanen, AO and Danielsbacka, M (2018) Multigenerational effects on children’s cognitive and socioemotional outcomes: a within-child investigation. Child Development 89(5), 1856–1870.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tanskanen, AO, Rotkirch, A and Danielsbacka, M (2011) Do grandparents favor granddaughters? Biased grandparental investment in UK. Evolution and Human Behavior 32(6), 407–415.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waynforth, D (2020) Kin-based alloparenting and infant hospital admissions in the UK Millennium cohort. Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health 2020(1), 72–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WHO (2008) World Report on Child Injury Prevention. World Health Organization, Geneva.Google Scholar