Whether you’ve sought them out or not, you’ve probably encountered parenting content creators on social media at some point in the last two decades.
In the comments section, you’ve undoubtedly seen parents being celebrated for their child-rearing methods. And you’ve probably also seen a lot of disagreements, “mom-shaming” or criticism of parenting styles.
“Gentle parenting” — an empathy-based approach focused on raising confident children through understanding and respect — has experienced a rise in popularity, for example. And then, predictably, it has been followed by sharp critiques.
More often than not, parenting is framed as a choice between fixed styles, but evidence from primate research suggests effective parenting is flexible and responsive to context.
Parenting is more complex than categories
According to Diana Baumrind, an influential American clinical and developmental psychologist, there are three parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian and permissive.
The authoritative approach has high parental warmth and discipline, the authoritarian one has low parental warmth and high discipline and permissive parenting has high parental warmth and low discipline.
Humans, however, are far from the only animal to parent. Non-human primates have a variety of parenting approaches, and researchers have looked to our closest relatives to understand how caregiving adapts across environments.
Maternal primate care strategies vary from permissive to protective, much like human parenting styles.
Primate mothers invest more energy and time into feeding, being with and generally caring for their offspring, from infancy to independence, than males do. This mirrors traditional family roles under patriarchal standards in humans.
Similarities also appear in how human and non-human primate mothers sometimes adapt their parenting to best fit their offspring’s needs and environment.
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Evolution supports responsive parenting
In a recent study by psychologists and primatologists comparing humans and captive bonobos, gibbons and siamangs, researchers found that, across all study species, mothers adjusted their behaviour to the potential risks facing their offspring.
They also changed their approaches based on age, typically decreasing protective behaviours and increasing some permissive ones as infants grew older. For example, imagine this scenario: your child becomes a teenager and has a later curfew (increased permissiveness) and is allowed sleepovers (decreased protectiveness). This would fit the authoritative approach.
Interestingly, protective care was higher in both humans and bonobos. This similarity may be explained by our shared genetics (about 99 per cent). There may be more risk in permissiveness, depending on the environment.
The flexibility in maternal care across primate species suggests that parenting may not be as simple as choosing one style or approach. Adjusting across the axes of permissiveness and protection, as well as levels of warmth and involvement, seems to be key to effective parenting with the best outcomes.
What works better appears to be the ability to shift based on context. This flexibility extends across caregivers as well, including fathers, whose role has often been underestimated.
What research says about fathers
Paternal care is present in primates but rare in other mammals. This is another reason non-human primates and humans are a more comparable model for parental care than other animals.
Fathers are important to the survival of offspring in marmosets, tamarins, titis and owl monkeys, as well as some lemurs and siamangs. This is often in the form of grooming, support during confrontations and protection from infanticide.
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It is common for adults, specifically males, to be aggressive towards young members of the group. In many species, this is a form of socialization, teaching the juveniles their place within the social hierarchy. This is more common in stricter social hierarchies like chimpanzees and may shift male roles toward the authoritarian category.
It’s well documented that parenting styles and involvement have an influence on the social and health outcomes of children. While many mammal studies focus on the influence of the mother, a study on marmosets found that during the first 30 weeks of life, a present father can improve both survival and growth trajectories of offspring.
These results are also consistent for fathers with multiple offspring, and is among the first piece of evidence demonstrating this in wild marmosets. They form long-term pair bonds and are largely monogamous, making their social model additionally comparable to ours.
These results are consistent with studies in humans showing the value of fatherhood in child health outcomes. This is a parallel between primate care and human parenting styles that encourage paternal involvement, which has historically been overlooked.
Male involvement in rearing challenges assumptions about the importance of fathers in non-human animals. Fathers clearly have a role in the success of their offspring through adulthood.
So if parenting is fundamentally adaptive, then debates over what style is right may be less useful than we think. This has implications for parenting advice culture and how we design support systems.
