Jeff Winking: Texas A&M

Fathering traditionally played a central role in the evolutionary stories of human marriage. Paternal investment proved a convincing lynchpin linking together numerous hallmark aspects of the human adaptive strategy: the capacity for long-term romantic bonds, altricial infancy, extended juvenile dependence, etc. However, recent theoretical work suggests that the importance of paternal investment is an unlikely candidate for the primary selective force behind the evolution of long-term pairing in humans; indeed, paternal care likely evolved within the context of pre-existing pair-bonds. Here I explore the numerous scenarios that have been put forth to explain the “marriage-first” phylogenetic order and the role that paternal investment still plays in reconstructing the evolution of human pair-bonding.