Foster care is a great altruistic act that does not only occur in humans but also in a variety of other species and even across species. From a biological point of view, it is not entirely clear if such a behaviour is adaptive. One hypothesis is that females who haven’t had offspring yet may certainly get good practice for their future offspring. It’s therefore little surprising that women who adopt babies are women who haven’t had children yet or can’t have children at all. It’s the same evolutionary adaptation that makes older girls want to hold babies and take care of infants.
However, apart from childlessness, are some people programmed to more likely adopt children than others? This question may seem strange as there is no logical reason why some people should be more likely than others to adopt children. From an evolutionary point of view, people with an evolutionary caregiving (mostly females) profile should be more likely than people with an evolutionary provisioning (mostly males) profile. This distinction corresponds roughly to Jung’s distinction between “feelers” (F) and “thinkers” (T).
If evolution programmed the caregiving profile to give love and be happy when receiving love then this effect must also be seen in men, who are generally not too happy about the idea of raising foster children. This is because the majority of men have the provisioning profile for whom an additional mouth to feed would rather be a burden than bliss.
In order to test this idea I checked out famous foster daddies and their Jungean (MBTI) types:
- Ewan McGregor (ENFP)
- George Lucas (INFP)
- Hugh Jackman (ESFJ or ENFJ)
- Walt Disney (ENFP)
- Brad Pitt (ISFP)
- Ty Burrell (ENFP)
- Ronald Reagan (ESFP)
- Michael Jackson (ISFP or INFP)
As I had expected, all of these famous foster daddies are F types. What’s more, N types (intuitives) seem to be a bit more likely to adopt children. Of course, this would take a huge sample to verify and be statistically significant. However, I have arrived at this conclusion deductively rather than via statistics. The idea is the following that our personality types and temperaments are derived from our ancestral modes of subsistence:
Hunter-gatherers (N) practise alloparenting. That means the whole band, not merely siblings and closely related relatives, take care of a child for about 40% of the time. This is in stark contrast to most other primate species where the mother takes care of the baby every minute. Primate mothers often punish their offspring for straying too far away from her due to the high rate of infanticide by murderous males.
If N types have more hunter-gatherer genes than farmer-herder types, they would therefore also be more likely to welcome non-kin children to their families.
Foster care therefore can bring a lot of bliss to families without children or fewer children they would have wished for. However, foster parents may be burdened by the fact that foster children may be extremely difficult to handle due to a whole range of reasons ranging from drug addicted babies to avoidant attachment. About half of children in foster homes have a chronic disability that can make caring for them difficult. In fact, many of these children enter foster care because they have complex medical needs that their families cannot manage, often because of limited resources.
It is obvious that children with a history of abuse are more difficult and have a higher incidence of health problems, including mental health problems such as BPD or PTSD. However, this isn’t the whole story. Some of the conditions that are extremely common among foster children are ASD and ADHD as well as ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) that cannot be simply explained by neglect or abuse as they have a high genetic component. There are a variety of reasons why such neurodiverse children end up more frequently in foster care:
- Parents with ASD or ADHD struggle to get along themselves and find themselves unable to take care of a child
- Parents of children with ASD or ADHD tend to be older (especially fathers) and may have died before the child reached adulthood
- Parents of children with ASD or ADHD tend to be low income and my find themselves unable to support the child financially
- Parents of children with ASD or ADHD tend to be unable to cope with their difficult children
This brings me to another question: are people with a certain temperament more likely to end up in foster care? This is a question that has followed me ever since reading: From Foster Care to Millionaire: A Young Entrepreneur's Story of Tragedy and Triumph (2018) by Cody McLain. It’s the moving story of a teenager (INTJ) who ends up in foster care after losing both his parents and who finally makes it big in the digital economy. There are a variety of reasons why hunter-gatherer type children should end up in foster care more frequently:
We live in a farmer world, hunter-gatherer types often struggle, from school to finding a fulfilling job. Hunter-gatherer type people often take longer to find a partner and have a family so, parents are often older and may be dead before their children reach adulthood. Hunter-gatherer type people tend to have fewer children and kinship ties, which may leave children of hunter-gatherer types without any kin who could take care of them in case their parents die. Here is a list from an online site:
- Marilyn Monroe (ENFP)
- Seal (ENFP)
- John Lennon (ENFP or INFP)
- Neil Morrisey (INTJ)
- Coco Chanel (ENTJ)
- Oprah Winfrey (ENFJ)
- Bill Clinton (ENFP)
- Nelson Mandela (INFJ)
- Maya Angelou (ENFJ)
- Eleanor Roosevelt (INFJ)
- Truman Capote (ENTP)
- Edward Albee (INTP)
- Leonardo DiCaprio (ENFP)
- James Hetfield (INTJ)
- J.R.R Tolkien (INFP)
- Edgar Allan Poe (INFP)
- François Truffaut (INFP)
- Bertrand Russell (ENTP)
I am quite certain that the incidence of having been a foster child is higher in famous people than the general population. I have argued that hunter-gatherer type children are the typical orchid children that are known from the psychological literature. To me it wasn’t that surprising that Cody McLain made it from foster care to millionaire or that Marlyn Monroe’s mother suffered from mental health problems (depression and schizophrenia). Or that one of the few reliable findings about geniuses is that they had older fathers or that their fathers died while still quite young. From foster care to millionaire is not only Cody’s story, it’s not such a rare story among famous people: Marilyn, Ophrah, Seal, and many more.
If an innate tendency towards alloparenting is an important cause for assuming foster children, it is sadly, likewise an important cause for giving children away to foster care. Modern hunter-gatherer type women may be overwhelmed by having to bear the brunt of childrearing, which often amounts to 100% of her time, whereas in hunter-gatherer societies mothers would not take care of their children more than 60% of their time.
Of course, you will find many other types among foster children. Steve Jobs (ISTP), is a famous case of foster care. Herder types are likely to be second after hunter-gatherer types who may give their children to adoption as they tend to have too many children and not enough income.
One of the most common problems with children in foster care is ODD, which manifests itself as
- Having frequent temper tantrums.
- Arguing a lot with adults, including the foster parents
- Refusing to do what a foster parent asks
- Always questioning rules and refusing to follow rules.
- Doing things to annoy or upset others, including the foster parents
- Anti-social behaviour
- Pathological demand avoidance
- Running away from foster care
If my hypothesis is correct and we are dealing with hunter-gatherer type children a lot of these problems are due to hunter-gatherer egalitarianism. Hunter-gathers treat everyone as equal, including children. This may be a bit hard to fathom for us, but hunter-gatherer children always get their way, even when they want to play with fire (in fact, they often do have burns). If that seems like bad parenting to us, for hunter-gatherers it simply means there is no coercion for anyone, including children. I am aware that in our modern world this kind of laissez-faire parenting is impossible. However, if foster parents understand that coercion with hunter-gatherer children does not make them compliant in the least like they would farmer type children, but that opposition is all they can achieve and this problem may easily spiral out of control a lot of harm can be avoided. Hunter-gatherer type parents often instinctively do the right thing, but farmer type people may be programmed by evolution to do the worst thing, i.e. coercion.
Hunter-gatherer type children may seem defiant, spiteful or even anti-social. However, if they receive the right treatment they are highly social as they have a highly developed innate sense for sharing and justice. If foster parents understand their hunter-gatherer foster children, not only will they experience fewer troubles, but they would finally be able to enjoy
the love they deserve from their foster children and raise happier foster children.
My hypothesis may sound outlandish, however, I am quite confident that it will withstand empirical verification.
Dedicated to Cody
Comments
Post a Comment