A parent is either the progenitor of a child or, in humans, it can refer to a caregiver or legal guardian. The gametes of a parent result in a child, a male through the sperm, and a female through the ovum. Parents are first-degree relatives and have 50% genetic meet. A female can also become a parent through surrogacy. Some parents may be adoptive parents, who nurture and raise an offspring, but are not biologically related to the child. Orphans without adoptive parents can be raised by their grandparents or other family members.
DNA paternity testing is the use of DNA profiles to determine whether an individual is the biological parent of another individual. Paternity testing can be especially important when the rights and duties of the father are in issue and a child's paternity is in doubt. Tests can also determine the likelihood of someone being a biological grandparent. Though genetic testing is the most reliable standard, older methods also exist, including ABO blood group typing, analysis of various other proteins and enzymes, or using human leukocyte antigen antigens. The current techniques for paternity testing are using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP). Paternity testing can now also be performed while the woman is still pregnant from a blood draw.
The fathers' rights movement is a social movement whose members are primarily interested in issues related to family law, including child custody and child support, that affect fathers and their children. Many of its members are fathers who desire to share the parenting of their children equally with their children's mothers—either after divorce or marital separation. The movement includes men as well as women, often the second wives of divorced fathers or other family members of men who have had some engagement with family law.
Polygynandry is a mating system in which both males and females have multiple mating partners during a breeding season. In sexually reproducing diploid animals, different mating strategies are employed by males and females, because the cost of gamete production is lower for males than it is for females. The different mating tactics employed by males and females are thought to be the outcome of stochastic reproductive conflicts both ecologically and socially.
A paternal bond is the human bond between a father and his child.
Parental investment, in evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, is any parental expenditure that benefits offspring. Parental investment may be performed by both males and females, females alone or males alone. Care can be provided at any stage of the offspring's life, from pre-natal to post-natal.
Alloparenting is a term used to classify any form of parental care provided by an individual towards young that are not its own direct offspring. These are often referred to as "non-descendant" young, even though grandchildren can be among them. Among humans, alloparenting is often performed by a child's grandparents and older siblings. Individuals providing this care are referred to using the neutral term of alloparent.
Partible paternity or shared paternity is a cultural conceptualization of paternity according to which a child is understood to have more than one father; for example, because of an ideology that sees pregnancy as the cumulative result of multiple acts of sexual intercourse. In societies with the concept of partible paternity this often results in the nurture of a child being shared by multiple fathers in a form of polyandric relation to the mother, although this is not always the case.
Monogamous pairing in animals refers to the natural history of mating systems in which species pair bond to raise offspring. This is associated, usually implicitly, with sexual monogamy.
Paternity fraud is one form of misattributed paternity or paternal discrepancy. Specifically, paternity fraud is the intentional misidentification of a child's biological father by its mother. Paternity fraud is distinct from other, unintentional misattribution, which may arise from simple error, an accident such as a mix-up during fertility treatment, or a sexual assault.
Sexual conflict or sexual antagonism occurs when the two sexes have conflicting optimal fitness strategies concerning reproduction, particularly over the mode and frequency of mating, potentially leading to an evolutionary arms race between males and females. In one example, males may benefit from multiple matings, while multiple matings may harm or endanger females, due to the anatomical differences of that species. Sexual conflict underlies the evolutionary distinction between male and female.
The sexy son hypothesis in evolutionary biology and sexual selection, proposed by Patrick J. Weatherhead and Raleigh J. Robertson of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario in 1979, states that a female's ideal mate choice among potential mates is one whose genes will produce males with the best chance of reproductive success. This implies that other benefits the father can offer the mother or offspring are less relevant than they may appear, including his capacity as a parental caregiver, territory and any nuptial gifts. Fisher's principle means that the sex ratio is always near 1:1 between males and females, yet what matters most are her "sexy sons'" future breeding successes, more likely if they have a promiscuous father, in creating large numbers of offspring carrying copies of her genes. This sexual selection hypothesis has been researched in species such as the European pied flycatcher.
In animals, infanticide involves the intentional killing of young offspring by a mature animal of the same species. Animal infanticide is studied in zoology, specifically in the field of ethology. Ovicide is the analogous destruction of eggs. The practice has been observed in many species throughout the animal kingdom, especially primates but including microscopic rotifers, insects, fish, amphibians, birds and mammals. Infanticide can be practiced by both males and females.
Parental care is a behavioural and evolutionary strategy adopted by some animals, involving a parental investment being made to the evolutionary fitness of offspring. Patterns of parental care are widespread and highly diverse across the animal kingdom. There is great variation in different animal groups in terms of how parents care for offspring, and the amount of resources invested by parents. For example, there may be considerable variation in the amount of care invested by each sex, where females may invest more in some species, males invest more in others, or investment may be shared equally. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed to describe this variation and patterns in parental care that exist between the sexes, as well as among species.
Sperm donation is the provision by a man of his sperm with the intention that it be used in the artificial insemination or other "fertility treatment" of one or more women who are not his sexual partners in order that they may become pregnant by him. Where pregnancies go to full term, the sperm donor will be the biological father of every baby born from his donations. The man is known as a sperm donor and the sperm he provides is known as "donor sperm" because the intention is that the man will give up all legal rights to any child produced from his sperm, and will not be the legal father. Sperm donation may also be known as "semen donation".
Due to not carrying the child, the male is suggested to experience paternal uncertainty.
Polyandry in fishes is a mating system where females mate with multiple males within one mating season. This type of mating exists in a variety of animal species. Polyandry has been found in both oviparous and viviparous bony fishes and sharks. General examples of polyandry occur in fish species, such as green swordtails and Trinidadian guppies. Specific types of polyandry have also been classified, such as classical polyandry in pipefish cooperative polyandry in cichlids and convenience polyandry in sharks.
In biology, paternal care is parental investment provided by a male to his own offspring. It is a complex social behaviour in vertebrates associated with animal mating systems, life history traits, and ecology. Paternal care may be provided in concert with the mother or, more rarely, by the male alone.
In behavioral ecology, polyandry is a class of mating system where one female mates with several males in a breeding season. Polyandry is often compared to the polygyny system based on the cost and benefits incurred by members of each sex. Polygyny is where one male mates with several females in a breeding season . A common example of polyandrous mating can be found in the field cricket of the invertebrate order Orthoptera. Polyandrous behavior is also prominent in many other insect species, including the red flour beetle and the species of spider Stegodyphus lineatus. Polyandry also occurs in some primates such as marmosets, mammal groups, the marsupial genus' Antechinus and bandicoots, around 1% of all bird species, such as jacanas and dunnocks, insects such as honeybees, and fish such as pipefish.
Paper abortion, also known as a financial abortion, male abortion or a statutory abortion, is the proposed ability of the biological father, before the birth of the child, to opt out of any rights, privileges, and responsibilities toward the child, including financial support. By this means, before a child is born, a man would be able to absolve himself of both the privileges and demands of fatherhood.
