MattofVA

Exactly, biological parents are cruel probably almost as often. thanks for the reiteration.....soooooo......statistics, anyone? I'll do a search, in the meanime.

Doubting Didymus

I don't suppose you know indeed the answer, then?

hinduwoman

I don't think all animals are cruel to their stepchildren. I saw a film in BBC where there is a duel between two ostrich couples; the winner coolly walked away with the loser's offsprings as well; both its own and another's offspring were raised similarly. Again, elephants do take care of others' infants. a hen will raise a duckling etc.

keyser_soze

Not a clue! Still looking though.

Pain Paien

Y'all might'sa come from monkeys, but my granpappy ain' no monkey!

DMB

I haven't so far after a cursory search found statistics, but I know I have read that the incidence of physical abuse of children is significantly higher at the hands of stepfathers than of biological fathers.

I agree, of course, that whatever tendencies we may have inherited do not excuse bad behaviour. I think it merely illustrates qualities we share with other animals.

As a step-parent myself, I agree that probably most step-parents can be as loving and caring as natural parents.

Jennie

My stepfather adopted me and my brother, and was a wonderful Dad; I love him dearly. I suspect this is true of most stepparents as the instinct to love and take care of children is very strong. However, it is true that young children are in more danger from stepparents (or unrelated partners in an unmarried relationship) than they are from biological parents.

http://www.stepfamily.net/Childabuse.htm

keyser_soze

I think you're missing the point. The point is that our behavour can be directly seen in primates. Does every step parent kill their young? No, neither do primates. You're grasping on to a tiny portion of the point, excluding all else. Are step parents any more apt to physically abuse their step kids? I shouldn't think so, there's enough abuse either way.

scombrid

Where increasing broodsize increases the chance that one's one offspring will survive without the cost of actually producing more offspring, this might not be a bad strategy. The winner still gets to monopolize future mating opportunities and may also secure more food resources by excluding rival adults.


A hen raising the duckling might just be a misfiring of motherly instinct. Chickens are pretty simple animals. They might simply have a program that tells them to raise whatever hatches in their nest. Some parasitic birds exploit this instinct by placing their eggs in other birds' nests. Their young then push the host's young to their deaths and the host raises the imposter.

Some animals are very cruel to stepchildren. Lions, Tigers, and Bears Oh My!

ps418

Regarding statistics of rates of abuse and homocide between step-parents/step-children and biological parents/biological children, the data of Daly and Wilson from the US and Canada definitely support increased risk for step-children (Daly and Wilson, 1988). In their analyses, children are 50-100 times more likely to be killed by step-parents than by biological parents, with the risk being greatest for the youngest children, 0-2 years. From the same dataset, Daly and Wilson (1994) showed that murder of children by genetic fathers are much more likely to be accompanied by suicide and uxoricide (wife-killing), while homocide-by-beating was more common with step-fathers. On the other hand, data on child homocide (all child homocides, 0-15 years, over ~20 years) from Sweden do not appear to show any increased risk from step-parents, according to Temrin et al (2000). I have no idea why the exess risk would be so great in US and Canada, yet insignficant in Sweden.

Patrick

Daly, M., and Wilson, M., 1988. Evolutionary social psychology and family homicide. Science, 242: 519 - 524.

Daly M., and Wilson, M., 1994. Some differential attributes of lethal assaults on small children by stepfathers versus genetic fathers. Ethology and Sociobiology 15: 207-217.

Temrin et al, 2000. Step-parents and infanticide: new data contradict evolutionary predictions. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B, 267, 943-945.