Re: Parents and Peds - Complementary and Conflicting

Mating can be beneficial to both mates, or beneficial to one and harmful to other. It can also be harmful to both, but this is a failure of strategies, not a strategy of either mate.

"Deliberate"/selected-for mating strategies are either predatory (the mate following the strategy gains, the other mate loses) or cooperative. Both strategies are present in everyoneÂ´s pool of potential mates (and may in fact be pursued by the same mate depending on opportunity).

It is important for every participant in mating game to avoid falling victim to a predatory mate, and find either a cooperative mate or else one who can be successfully preyed on.

Now, parents have a big stake in the success of their children in mating game - it is the children who transmit their genes. Parents therefore have the same interest in making their children avoid falling victim to predatory mates.

Although parents do have an option to practice incest, it is not a particularly attractive option. There must be disadvantages, such as inbreeding loss of genetic diversity, and also loss of social alliances via having two sides of family. Even though an incest baby is closer related to its parent/grandparent than an ordinary outbred child (sharing more of the genes), the disadvantages to its later success must have been sufficient to evolve mechanisms to avoid inbreeding.

The parents therefore NEED in-laws to mate with their children. Because it is grandchildren (and beyond) who are the goal of their existence.

But the parents need to get their children to find mates who are either cooperative or prey - not predators.

Compared to minor children, parents may have slightly divergent interests (they may have more children, and yet produce more - but mothers past menopause would NOT have that option!), but they have more accumulated knowledge and also neurological advantages. They therefore feel that they may detect predatory mates even when the said predatory mate successfully deceives the child.

But... Why should parents, generally, classify paedophiles as predatory mates?