Synonyms
Definition
Maternal-fetal conflict results when a mother and fetus are competing for limited resources or have partially conflicting resource allocation demands related to survival and reproduction.
Introduction
In diploid sexually reproducing species, the mother and offspring share on average 50% of their genes, with half of the offspring’s genes being derived from the father. In the gene-centric view of parenting (see Reproduction), this implies that the genetic interests of the mother and offspring are not identical, which predicts that parent-offspring conflict might ensue over the optimal allocation of maternal resources. This conflict starts within the intrauterine environment, where some of the behavior of the fetus appears to be antagonistic to the interests of its mother or vice versa. As the mother and fetus still share half of their genome, however, it should be borne in mind that any maternal-fetal conflict must of necessity be...
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References
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Patch, E.A., Figueredo, A.J. (2017). Maternal-Fetal Conflict. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1549-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1549-1
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