Customer Reviews

More than Kin and Less than Kind: The Evolution of Family Conflict

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Sibling rivalry and conflicts between relatives aren't limited to human beings, as is common perceived: animals and all creatures often experience deadly family conflicts when offspring compete for resources. Douglas Mock is Professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma: his studies in More Than Kin And Less Than Kind: The Evolution Of Family Conflict blend natural history and theoretical biology with social insights to draw some important conclusions on the nature of family strife as it is determined by cooperative and competitive patterns. Academically impressive, More Than Kin And Less Than Kind is a recommended addition to university library Sociology and Social Psychology collections.

Most of us have at least one or the other horror story to tell about our family: like when your older brother tried to suffocate you while you peacefully and helplessly lay in your crib; or when your mother unjustly punished you for the mess your sister had made in the bedroom; or that time when you almost broke your youngest brother's arm and felt good about it. And, of course, you might remember having wished at least once or twice that you had been an only child or that you had actually been adopted and came originally from much nicer and richer parents. All these instances run counter to the idea that families should be protective, loving nests where we learn the values of cooperation and altruism. Honour your parents, be nice to your siblings, and for God's sake stop whining just because your sister got more chocolate mousse than you for dessert!

Douglas Mock proposes a different approach to the issue of family conflict. His main argument being: what might seem unfair, cruel, even dangerous in a relationship between parents and children or between siblings does not imply that a particular family is dysfunctional. Quite the opposite, this may just indicate how successful -- and therefore functional -- the family is. In order to understand this, our notions of individual and family relationships need a slight rearrangement: we should regard everything from a genetic point of view. The question then being: are certain less appealing attitudes and actions advantageous for the replication of genes in the long run?

Interestingly, what it all comes down to is economics -- and lots of luck. After all, selfish genes are annoyingly calculating instances, only concerned with getting spread as much and as cheaply as possible. All organisms, as vehicles for genes, have therefore been selected throughout the generations to be quite shrewd and self-absorbed reproducers. Even if it means sacrificing an offspring or a sibling.
Throughout the book Mock shows how far this calculating principle can actually go. It involves everything from parents producing more offspring than they can actually feed, mothers culling their young without a flicker of regret, and big bullying siblings pecking or starving their younger weaker siblings to death while the parents watch indifferent (and yawn!). All this is accompanied by photos representing such actions.
The good news being: if an organism is born in a favourable territory and resourceful year (or if its older, nasty sibling(s) happen to die early), it might just survive the hectic nesting period and go on to produce its own bunch of kids. A success story, after all -- one to which billions of individual organisms currently on the planet can attest to. We've made it! The main winners, of course, are the genes, who can go on playing their replication game.

For all its worth, Mock uses a delightfully uncompromising method: he hardly makes any mention of humans at all. The book provides lots of examples of conflict in bird, insect, fish and even fruit families. Not surprisingly, wherever he looks he finds similar behavioural traits. (And every now and then, with charming wit, the author does remind us that we shouldn't think humans are all that different -- as in the following sentence: "From lowly dung beetles to the courts of human royalty, even the simplest families are anything but simple.")

Needless to say, the book might seem a bit discouraging. However, it is in fact not only very entertaining, but also -- for those of us who, like Petrarch, believe that enlightenment is the only true consolation in this world -- an eye opener. Like every good sociobiology book, it shows that, in the words of the author, behavioural traits are above all "subject to the unsentimental shaping powers of natural selection." And for better or for worse, this implies lots of conflict and losses.
All in all, More Than Kin is a valuable contribution to a relatively innovative but already somewhat widespread approach to life on this planet, teaching us to look beyond morality (and moral panics) and concentrate on ultimate (evolutionary) reasons behind many a disturbing factor. The answers might not always be cheery but they certainly makes sense. Which is, in the end, all that any good philosophy book can provide.

In this popular work on the evolution of siblicide, Mock has posied that bird ususally hatch more than the optimal nuber of offpsrings, as insurance policy in case of an unexpected boom in resource availability that can sustain an abnormallly large brood.

However, Mock also believes that the parents deliberately handicapped the non-core, marginal offspring, which is born smaller than its core siblings, which tend to kill it irrespective of the food availablity. Now it boggles the mind as to WHY would the parents spent all the resources in an egg that it, in most case, believes will be finished off (if the offspring is destined to be executed, why invest in it?), especially in birds with long life histories, and WHY the core offsprings do not eat the marginal one if all thet care about is monopolize the food and take out the competition?

Mock has not cared to research on the fact that may be the evolutionary mechanisms do not work clock-like and that the parents may sometimes give birth to a large brood even in times of deprivation, and that the marginal offspring may be culled due to the risks pathogens/infections (that would explain why the carcass is not eaten!) posed to other offsprings.

All in all, the book is nice story telling, but unfortunately it's not science.