Word: doings
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Tragic stories like these fill the nation's newspapers. But do they have any relevance to stepfamilies as a whole? Yes, say Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, two Canadian psychology professors at McMaster University in Ontario. In their slender new book, The Truth About Cinderella: A Darwinian View of Parental...
Their reasoning, based on research in the U.S., Canada, Britain and Australia, won't sit well with many stepparents. "Because parental love carries with it an onerous commitment, it would be strange if merely pairing up with someone who already had a dependent child were sufficient to fully engage the...
Similarly, there are animals that turn on their predecessor's offspring, the authors say. "How do [male tigers] respond to the cubs sired by their predecessors? The grisly answer is that they systematically search them out and kill them." The Darwinian reason, say Daly and Wilson, is that all animals...
Daly knows that their work, first published last year in England, is hard for some people, particularly nonacademics, to handle. "One thing that has fascinated and puzzled us is the fact that people don't seem to like this finding. I'm not sure what that's about," he says...
Daly and Wilson's findings win support from many experts. "I think it's pioneering work," says Stephen Emlen, a professor of behavioral ecology at Cornell. And the picture is not bleak, he says. "The evolutionary approach is basically saying we carry with us some genetically influenced tendencies to behave...