Intergenerational Transmission Of Parent-child Life History Strategy: Evidence From Early Adult And Mid-childhood Groups

Life history strategies are a series of corresponding measures taken by human individuals to adapt to the complex external environment and to sustain life growth,development,and reproduction more effectively in the course of long-term evolution.Individuals need to allocate their limited energy,resources and time accordingly,and different allocation decisions lead them to form different life history strategies.Theoretically,life history strategies are a continuum from fast to slow,with fast and slow strategies as the poles.Individuals with fast and slow strategies differ significantly in many behavioral aspects such as physiology,courtship,parenting,and reward orientation,but whether these differences are intergenerational needs to be further explored.Based on the differences in parenting styles of different life history strategies and the life history model of attachment,this study investigated the existence and influential mechanisms of intergenerational transmission of life history strategies,and included two studies.Study 1 explored the intergenerational transmission effects between the life history strategies of individuals and their primary caregivers in early adulthood,using freshmen students from several colleges and universities in Shanxi Province as participants,after excluding random effects by means of a permutation test.The results showed that the life history strategies of primary caregivers was significantly and positively correlated with the life history strategies of their children,and the life history strategies of the primary caregivers positively predicted the life history strategies of the children,indicating that there was indeed an intergenerational transmission effect between the life history strategies of the primary caregivers and the life history strategies of the children.Study 2 explored the intergenerational transmission effect of life history strategies between primary caregivers and their children in mid-childhood(7-11 years old),as well as the mediating role of parental reflective functioning and parent-child attachment using elementary school students in mid-childhood as participants.The results showed that(1)primary caregivers’ life history strategies was significantly and positively correlated with the three dimensions of parental reflective functioning,i.e.,pre-mindfulness,certainty,interest and curiosity,and significantly and negatively related to aggression,impulsivity and attention.(2)Primary caregivers’ life history strategies significantly predicted children’s life history-related behaviors,i.e.,children of primary caregivers with fast strategies exhibited more life history-related behavioral problems than children of primary caregivers with slow strategies.(3)Parental reflective functioning played a significant mediating role in the effect of primary caregivers’ life history strategies on children’s life history-related behaviors.(4)Parent-child attachment played a significant mediating role between primary caregivers’ life history strategies and children’s life history-related behaviors.(5)There was a significant chain mediating effect of parental reflective functioning and parent-child attachment between primary caregivers’ life history strategies and children’s life history-related behaviors.