Judith Rich Harris

Jonah's interview of Judith Rich Harris is much recommended. Clearly related to my post on adoptive parents.

Via Dienekes, Differential parental investment in families with both adopted and genetic children: Stepchildren are abused, neglected and murdered at higher rates than those who live with two genetically related parents. Daly and Wilson used kin selection theory to explain this finding and labeled the phenomenon "discriminative parental solicitude." I examined discriminative parental solicitude in American households composed of both genetic and unrelated adopted children. In these families, kin selection predicts parents should favor their genetic children over adoptees. Rather than looking…