A parent is either the progenitor of a child or, in , it can refer to a caregiver or legal guardian, generally called an adoptive parent or step-parent. Parents who are progenitors are first-degree relatives and have 50% genetic meet. A female can also become a parent through surrogacy. Some parents may be Adoption parents, who nurture and raise an offspring, but are not related to the child. without adoptive parents can be raised by their or other .
A parent can also be elaborated as an ancestor removed one generation. With recent medical advances, it is possible to have more than two biological parents.
The most common types of parents are mothers, fathers, step-parents, and grandparents. A mother is "a woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth."
Types
Biological
A person's biological parents are the persons from whom the individual inherits their
. The term is generally only used if there is a need to distinguish an individual's foster parents from their biological parents, For example, an individual whose father has remarried may call the father's new wife their
stepmother and continue to refer to their mother normally, though someone who has had little or no contact with their biological mother may address their
foster parent as their mother, and their biological mother as such, or perhaps by her first name.
Mother
A mother is a female who has a maternal connection with another individual, whether arising from
Pregnancy, by giving
Childbirth to, or
Parenting the individual in the role of a parent.
More than one female may have such connections with an individual. Because of the complexity and differences of a mother's social, cultural, and religious definitions and roles, it is challenging to define a mother to suit a universally accepted definition. The utilization of a surrogate mother may result in explication of there being two biological mothers.
Father
A father is a male parent of any type of offspring.
It may be the person who shares in the raising of a child or who has provided the biological material, the
sperm, which results in the birth of the child.
Grandparent
Grandparents are the parents of a person's own parent, whether that be a father or a mother. Every sexually reproducing creature who is not a
genetic chimera has a maximum of four
grandparents, eight genetic great-grandparents, sixteen genetic great-great-grandparents and so on. Rarely, such as in the case of sibling or half-sibling
incest, these numbers are lower.
Paternity issues
A paternity test is conducted to prove paternity, that is, whether a male is the biological father of another individual. This may be relevant in view of rights and duties of the father. Similarly, a maternity test can be carried out. This is less common, because at least during
childbirth and
pregnancy, except in the case of a pregnancy involving
embryo transfer or
egg donation, it is obvious who the
mother is. However, it is used in a number of events such as legal battles where a person's maternity is challenged, where the mother is uncertain because she has not seen her child for an extended period of time, or where deceased persons need to be identified.
Although not constituting completely reliable evidence, several congenital traits such as attached , a widow's peak, or the cleft chin, may serve as tentative indicators of (non-) parenthood as they are readily observable and inherited via autosomal-dominant genes.
A more reliable way to ascertain parenthood is via DNA analysis (known as genetic fingerprinting of individuals), although older methods have included blood type, analysis of various other and , or using human leukocyte antigens. The current techniques for paternity testing use polymerase chain reaction and restriction fragment length polymorphism. For the most part, however, genetic fingerprinting has all but taken over all the other forms of testing.
Roles and responsibilities
Guardianship
A legal guardian is a person who has the legal authority (and the corresponding duty) to care for the personal and property interests of another person, called a ward. Guardians are typically used in three situations: guardianship for an incapacitated senior (due to old age or infirmity), guardianship for a minor, and guardianship for developmentally disabled adults.
Most countries and states have laws that provide that the parents of a minor child are the legal guardians of that child, and that the parents can designate who shall become the child's legal guardian in the event of death, subject to the approval of the court. Some jurisdictions allow a parent of a child to exercise the authority of a legal guardian without a formal court appointment. In such circumstances the parent acting in that capacity is called the natural guardian of that parent's child.
Parenting
Parenting or child rearing is the process of promoting and supporting the
physical fitness, emotional, social, financial, and intellectual development of a
child from
infant to
. Parenting refers to the aspects of raising a child aside from the biological relationship.
Gender and gender mix
A child has at least one biological
father and at least one biological
mother, but not every
family is a traditional
nuclear family. There are many variants, such as
adoption,
shared parenting,
Stepfamily, and
LGBT parenting, over which there has been controversy.
The social science literature rejects the notion that there is an optimal gender mix of parents or that children and adolescents with LGBT parenting suffer any developmental disadvantages compared with those with two opposite-sex parents.[Lamb, Michael (2009). Affidavit – United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts]
Genetics
Parent–offspring conflict
An offspring who hates their father is called a misopater, one that hates their mother is a misomater, while a parent that hates their offspring is a misopedist.
[Francis, Darryl. "Iatrologs and Iatronyms." Word Ways 4.2 (1971): 8.][Davies, Jon. "Imagining intergenerationality: Representation and rhetoric in the pedophile movie." GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 13.2 (2007): 369-385.] Parent–offspring conflict describes the evolutionary conflict arising from differences in optimal fitness of parents and their
offspring. While parents tend to maximize the number of offspring, the offspring can increase their fitness by getting a greater share of parental investment often by competing with their
. The theory was proposed by
Robert Trivers in 1974 and extends the more general selfish gene theory and has been used to explain many observed biological phenomena.
For example, in some
bird species, although parents often lay two eggs and attempt to raise two or more young, the strongest fledgling takes a greater share of the food brought by parents and will often kill the weaker sibling, an act known as
siblicide.
Empathy
David Haig has argued that human
fetus genes would be selected to draw more resources from the mother than it would be optimal for the mother to give, a hypothesis that has received empirical support. The
placenta, for example, secretes allocrine
that decrease the sensitivity of the mother to
insulin and thus make a larger supply of blood sugar available to the fetus. The mother responds by increasing the level of insulin in her bloodstream, the placenta has insulin receptors that stimulate the production of insulin-degrading
which counteract this effect.
Happiness index
In Europe, parents are generally happier than non-parents. In women, happiness increases after the first child, but having higher-order children is not associated with further increased well-being. Happiness seems to increase most in the year before and after the first childbirth.
See also
External links
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National Educational Network, Inc. (NENI) – free online resources for parent education, curriculum. They also have a parent blog with information about child care, after-school, trends in education, tutoring, college, grants, etc.
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– A Roman Catholic view of the position of parents.
