Maternal age, investment, and parent–child conflict: A mediational test of the terminal investment hypothesis.

Abstract

Drawing on the evolutionary terminal investment hypothesis and Trivers' (1974) parent-offspring conflict theory, we advance and evaluate a mediational model specifying why and how maternal age, via mating effort and parental investment, affects mother-child conflict. Data from a longitudinal study of 757 families indicate that (a) older maternal age predicts lower mating effort during the child's first 5 years of life, and (b) thereby, higher maternal investment in middle childhood when the child is around 10 years old. (c) Higher maternal investment, in turn, forecasts less child-perceived mother-child conflict in adolescence (age 15). These results proved robust against theoretically relevant covariates (family resources, parity, maternal education, and maternal personality characteristics) and in the context of an autoregressive model. Study limitations are noted and results are discussed in terms of the unique contributions of an evolutionary perspective to the determinants-of-parenting literature.