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Some evolutionary models of human behavior posit that father-absence during early childhood influences subsequent adult reproductive strategies. We compare evidence for intergenerational transmission of conjugal stability in Western industrial populations with multigeneration patterns of conjugal stability in a rural Caribbean community. Genealogies (N=8O3) and behavioral data for a Caribbean community suggest that father-absence during early childhood has weak influence on later conjugal stability. Father- absent females were slightly more likely to have father-absent children than were father-present females (p=.08). Women whose mother had multiple mates were more likely to have multiple mates themselves (p=.03). Father-absent males were not more likely to become absent fathers than were father-present males. Men whose mother had multiple mates were not more likely to have multiple mates. Evidence from industrial populations and behavioral observations in a Caribbean community suggest that parental supervision during adolescence influences children's subsequent conjugal stability.

Postmarital residence patterns in traditional human societies figure prominently in models of hominid social evolution with arguments for patrilocal human bands similar in structure to female-dispersal systems in other African apes. However, considerable flexibility in hunter-gatherer cultures has led to their characterization as primarily multilocal. Horticulturalists are associated with larger, more sedentary social groups with more political inequality and intergroup conflict and may therefore provide additional insights into evolved human social structures. We analyze coresidence patterns of primary kin for 34 New World horticultural societies (6,833 adults living in 243 residential groupings) to show more uxorilocality (women live with more kin) than found for hunter-gatherers. Our findings further point to the uniqueness of human social structures and to considerable variation that is not fully described by traditional postmarital residence typologies. Sex biases in coresident kin can vary according to the scale of analysis (household vs. house cluster vs. village) and change across the life span, with women often living with more kin later in life. Headmen in large villages live with more close kin, primarily siblings, than do nonheadmen. Importantly, human marriage exchange and residence patterns create meta-group social structures, with alliances extending across multiple villages often united in competition against other large alliances at scales unparalleled by other species.

From a comparative perspective, human life histories are unique and raising offspring is unusually costly: humans have relatively short birth intervals compared to other apes, childhood is long, mothers care simultaneously for many dependent children (other apes raise one offspring at a time), infant mortality is high in natural fertility/mortality populations, and human females have a long post-reproductive lifespan. These features conspire to make child raising very burdensome. Mothers frequently defray these costs with paternal help (not usual in other ape species), although this contribution is not always enough. Grandmothers, elder siblings, paid allocarers, or society as a whole, help to defray the costs of childcare, both in our evolutionary past and now. Studying offspring care in a various human societies, and other mammalian species, a wide range of specialists such as anthropologists, psychologists, animal behaviorists, evolutionary ecologists, economists and sociologists, have contributed to this volume, offering new insights into and a better understanding of one of the key areas of human society