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Presence of Children

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science

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Synonyms

Mate choice; Mate selection; Prior relationships; Stepchildren

Definition

How and why the presence of children influences parental mate preferences.

Introduction

This section covers the questions, how the presence of children affects parental mate selection in a subsequent partner for a new relationship and how children are expected to actively manipulate their parent in their mate preferences for a subsequent potential stepparent.

How Parent’s Age Influences Their Mate Preferences in a Subsequent Partner

The presence of children from prior relationships affects the mate selection for a subsequent relationship. As studies have shown, women’s parental status is a robust predictor of lower remarriage probability. This effect is likely to be an effect of age. Individuals who remarry are about 10 years older than the mean age of people who marry for the first time. As a consequence, there are fewer eligible (i.e., unmarried) partners, resulting in declining remarriage rates. This...

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References

  • Daly, M., & Wilson, M. (1988). Homicide. Hawthorne: Aldine de Gruyter.

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  • Duntley, J. D. (2016). Adaptations to dangers from humans. In D. M. Buss (Ed.), The handbook of evolutionary psychology (Vol. 1, pp. 264–286). Hoboken: Wiley.

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  • Ganong, L. H., & Coleman, M. (2004). Stepfamily relationships. New York: Springer.

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  • Schwarz, S., & Hassebrauck, M. (2012). Sex and age differences in mate selection preferences. Human Nature, 23, 447–466.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Weekes-Shackelford, V. A., Easton, J. A., & Stone, E. A. (2008). How having children affects mating psychology. In G. Geher & G. Miller (Eds.), Mating intelligence (pp. 159–170). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany

    Sascha Schwarz

Authors
  1. Sascha Schwarz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sascha Schwarz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland Univ Dept of Psycholgy, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana Weekes-Shackelford

  2. Department of Psychology, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

  3. Rochester, Michigan, USA

    Viviana A. Weekes-Shackelford

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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Schwarz, S. (2016). Presence of Children. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_22-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_22-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6

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