When it comes to genetics anything the mother/father does to ensure the survival of their offspring is a direct benefit to themselves. Its their genes they're investing in to continue their own lineage.
On first reading (badly, I admit), I was assuming that you meant that this was investing in producing offspring that can end up supporting the parents (the continuing existence of the parents being the benefit), which didn't sound right to me.
First, I re-read it and think I now understood it for what you mean (basically "selfish gene", give or take, yes?), but then I also had a think about the whole "grandparents are beneficial to the grandchildren" aspect to (at least our) biology and inheritance.
It's considered a beneficial thing that those beyond reproductive age[1] are around to assist those that are in their prime to raise the next generation on to be raised. Right now, I can't
recall any animal-kingdom equivalents (closest I can think of is uncle/aunt assistance in meerkats and other social/pack creatures with alpha couples/non-universal parentage, some of whom may be senior in age), but I'm sure there's something there. It is very much an extension of the nurturing parents (mammals, essentially by definition, but various non-mammals too), although that has alternatives like sacrificing parents (spiders and some octopuses, who give their body as 'first food' for their offspring) and the "you're on your own, in fact I might even end up eating you if necessary/accidentally" 'aparental' method is also rather successful in nature in producing
numbers of offspring, albeit that needing independent offspring who are a much larger part instinct and chance and much less part learning and support in the striving for adulthood....
...anyway, back to grandparenting. We know it happens in humans, and in turn a number of cultures have an inbuilt meme of "respect your elders". Whether actually setting them in positions of power[2] or just "pre-chewing granny's steak for her". Once there
was a capability for a species' grandparentage to have a direct effect upon the survival of the grandoffspring, the genes (or memes, or whatever container term you'd like to use that may encompass the whole involved genomic, proteomic and informatic legacy mechanism) seem to have come up with a way to make use of this.
Now, of course, it's perhaps superseded by 'extelligence'[3]. Perhaps it's arguable that as long as academics produced books(/scrolls/whatever) for ease of assimilation of knowledge at any arbitrary later time, it was no longer necessary to
directly revere and support their continued existence so as to orally pass on their hard-fought conclusions about the world. Those shut within ivory towers aren't so obviously in need of support by the young, and perhaps the ones with the biggest stake in supporting (to an extent) the elders in the academic profession are the not-quite-so-elderly academics who of course may need (once Dead Man's Shoes kicks in, give or take a push and a visit by Inspector Morse) to be similarly supported in their
own dotage, by the same system. Translate this to other cultures as much as you like. Priesthoods/shamanistic subcultures of all kinds do similar things. The real exception is probably where the pinnacle is particularly
pointy (being king, for example), with not much standing room, and the guy at the top having to be wary about the lower terraces are particularly crowded and eager to ascend to push him off.
..anyway, I think I'm going off on a fantastical diversion, once more. Yeah, and what has all this to do with gender? Not much. Erm, except that insofar as
sexuality (not actually gender, though influenced by gender-
politics), uncles and aunts without offspring (and perhaps living with co-uncles and co-aunts, respectively!) are probably like a younger version of the post-reproductive grandparents in their advantage to the continuation of their line. But the evidence (and apparent refutations, and refutations of those refutations, etc) for this has been around for a couple of decades
at least, and although I
think nobody has yet questioned it in this thread (may have missed it), it could explain the evolutionary advantage of either the 'gay gene' or the 'gay meme', or whatever combination of nature/nurture produces such people, even when current and transient social norms are highly prejudiced against such products.
Sorry, hope I didn't spring something untoward upon anyone there, was just desperately trying to bring my unstructured ramblings back to somewhere
close to where the thread was supposed to be. Feel free to ignore me altogether, I suppose, if I've missed the colour of the conversation so drastically as I feel I may have.
[1] Nominally, that is. A 17-year old mother of an (eventually) 17-year old mother could still become a (re)new(ed) mother at 36 or more, at the same time(/later than) the grandchild arrives. Theoretically,
great-grandchildren could be contemperaneous with a new child from the original mother, but obviously with at least two different possibilities of invoking social repulsion along the way.
[2] Albeit that, in patriarchal terms, being elderly does
not remove you from providing to the gene-pool.
Especially if you're in a position of power. c.f. the "Genghis Kahn" gene, found prolifically in populations across Asia and Europe through either his or his kinsfolk's profligacy during his time of conquest.
[3] This term directly ripped from Stewart and Cohen, mathematician and biologist, respectively, who have collaborated or self-authered a number of interesting works (not
all to do with Discworld) in which they use this word as the "next level out" from "intelligence", to encompass the knowledge-load and mental capabilities available to source from outside the intelligent organisms' own mind and memories. i.e. Books and (these days) the Internet. So, for example, whilesoever one still has the capability of accessing an information source with the required knowledge, a novice yachtsman might yet still be able to acquire the ability to navigate by the stars, in an emergency, far beyond what he/she would be able to entirely through his own wits. (Whether that be asking the severely injured but experienced skipper resting up belowdecks what to look out for, digging out a book from the sea-chest or using the (GPS-lacking, but still connecting) smartphone to extract the information he or she needs from some website or other. (Assuming, for now, that the latter capability doesn't give any discernible usefulness in the "please come and find me" aspect to the "I don't want to be lost any more!" situation.)
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Topic: Gender and all it entails (Read 23033 times)