Everything about Parents totally explained
A
parent is a
father or
mother; one who
sires or gives
birth to and/or nurtures and raises an
offspring. The different role of parents varies throughout the tree of life, and is especially complex in
human culture.
Mother
A mother is the biological or social
female parent of a
child or
offspring. The
maternal bond describes the feelings the mother has for her (or another's) child. In the case of a
mammal such as a
human, the mother
gestates her child (called first an
embryo, then a
fetus) in the
uterus from
conception or
implantation until the fetus is sufficiently well-developed to be born. The mother then goes into labour and gives
birth. Once the child is born, the mother
produces milk to feed the child.
Father
A
father is traditionally the
male parent. Like mothers, fathers may be categorised according to their biological,
social or legal
relationship with the child. Historically, the biological relationship
paternity has been determinative of fatherhood. However,
proof of paternity has been intrinsically problematic and so social rules often determined who would be regarded as a father for example the husband of the mother.
Biological parents and parental testing
The term
biological parent refers to a parent who is the
biological mother or father of an individual. While an individual's parents are often also their biological parents, it's seldom used unless there's an explicit difference between who acted as a parent for that individual and the person from whom they inherit half of their
genes. For example, a person whose father has remarried may call his new wife their
stepmother and continue to refer to their mother normally, though someone who has had little or no contact with their biological mother may address their
foster parent as their mother, and their biological mother as such, or perhaps by her first name.
Parental testing
A paternity test is conducted to prove
paternity, that is, whether a man is the biological father of another individual. This may be relevant in view of
rights and duties of the father. Similarly, a maternity test can be carried out. This is less common, because at least during
childbirth and
pregnancy, except in the case of a pregnancy involving
embryo transfer or
egg donation, it's obvious who the
mother is. However, it's used in a number of events such as legal battles where a person's maternity is challenged, where the mother is uncertain because she hasn't seen her child for an extended period of time, or where deceased persons need to be identified.
Although not constituting completely reliable evidence, several
congenital traits such as attached
earlobes, the
widow's peak, or the
cleft chin, may serve as tentative indicators of (non-)parenthood as they're readily observable and inherited via
autosomal-dominant genes.
A more reliable way to ascertain parenthood is via DNA analysis (known as
genetic fingerprinting of individuals, although older methods have included
ABO blood group typing, analysis of various other
proteins and
enzymes, or using
HLA antigens. The current techniques for paternity testing are using
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and
restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). For the most part however, DNA has all but taken over all the other forms of testing.
Parent-offspring conflict
Parent-offspring conflict describes the
evolutionary conflict arising from differences in optimal
fitness of parents and their
offspring. While parents tend to maximize the number of offspring, the offspring can increase their fitness by getting a greater share of
parental investment often by competing with their
siblings. The theory was proposed by
Robert Trivers in 1974 and extends the more general
selfish gene theory and has been used to explain many observed biological phenomena. For example, in some
bird species, although parents often lay two eggs and attempt to raise two or more young, the strongest fledgling takes a greater share of the food brought by parents and will often kill the weaker sibling, an act known as
siblicide.
David Haig has argued that human
fetal genes would be selected to draw more resources from the mother than it would be optimal for the mother to give, an hypothesis that has received empirical support. The
placenta, for example, secretes allocrine
hormones that decrease the sensitivity of the mother to
insulin and thus make a larger supply of blood sugar available to the fetus. The mother responds by increasing the level of insulin in her bloodstream, the placenta has insulin receptors that stimulate the production of insulin-degrading
enzymes which counteract this effect.
Bibliography
Further Information
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