Applying the human component model of parenting to other primates: Developmental patterns of mother-child interactions across primate species

Abstract

The component model of human parenting has been extensively used to study parents’ interactions with their offspring and to examine variation across cultural contexts. The current study applies this model to nonhuman primates to investigate which forms of parenting humans share with other primates and how these interactions change over infants’ first year of life. We repeatedly observed 52 mother-infant pairs, including humans ( N = 11), chimpanzees and bonobos ( N = 21), and several species of small apes ( N = 20), during different daily activities when infants were 1, 6, and 12 months of age. Humans differed from apes in their higher probability of face-to-face contact and the use of object stimulation. Moreover, parenting seemed to be characterized by more variability within humans than within and possibly between ape species. Overall, the component model of parenting appears to be an effective tool to study the functional systems of parenting behavior in a comparative developmental perspective, by allowing direct comparisons between human and non-human primate species across development.