Modeling costs and benefits of adolescent weight control as a mechanism for reproductive suppression

The "reproductive suppression hypothesis" states that the strong desire of adolescent girls in our culture to control their weight may reflect the operation of an adaptive mechanism by which ancestral women controlled the timing of their sexual maturation and hence first reproduction, in r...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) N.Y.), 1992-12, Vol.3 (4), p.299-334
Main Authors: Anderson, J L, Crawford, C B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Anorexia
Cost-benefit analysis
Fertility
Human evolution
Sexual reproduction
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The "reproductive suppression hypothesis" states that the strong desire of adolescent girls in our culture to control their weight may reflect the operation of an adaptive mechanism by which ancestral women controlled the timing of their sexual maturation and hence first reproduction, in response to cues about the probable success of reproduction in the current situation. We develop a model based on this hypothesis and explore its behavior and evolutionary and psychological implications across a range of parameter values. We use the process of model development to identify assumptions implicit in the reproductive suppression hypothesis and variables that need to be measured in order to investigate it more fully. In addition, because costs were probably associated with weight control, an important part of this analysis is the specification of situations in which the benefits of adaptive adjustment of the maturation schedule could have outweighed the costs of achieving that adjustment by slowing adolescent weight gain.
ISSN:1045-6767
1936-4776
DOI:10.1007/BF02734054