Fathers' Presence Speeds the Social and Reproductive Careers of Sons

To date, the great majority of human paternal investment studies have focused on the effects that men have on their preadolescent children, mainly in terms of child care and provisioning. These qualifications limit the ways in which paternal investment is viewed, potentially obscuring a more complete understanding of the importance of paternal care. In this study, I explore how paternal investment in postadolescent sons can have measurable benefits on the social and reproductive careers of young men. Using data from a group of Martu Aborigines living in Australia’s Western Desert, I investigate the importance of fathers and other elder male relatives to the timing of young men’s initiation, as well as how that timing correlates to future reproductive success. The presence of both biological fathers and father figures promoted an earlier age at initiation, and early age at initiation was found to predict both the likelihood that a young man currently has a child and his current number of known offspring. These results demonstrate that paternal investment, when construed more broadly, can have measurable benefits on the social and reproductive careers of young men.