alloparent

English

Etymology

From allo- +‎ parent.

Noun

alloparent (plural alloparents)

1. (biology, sociology) An adult animal or person involved in parent-like behaviour towards an individual that is not his or her offspring. [from 20th c.]
   • 2011, Chris Stringer, The Origin of Our Species, Penguin, published 2012, page 142:

     And Hrdy further suggests that the immersion of human babies in a pool of alloparents would have honed the mind-reading skills and empathy that are so important to our species, faster than anything else.

   • 2016, Joseph Henrich, chapter 16, in The Secret of Our Success […] , Princeton: Princeton University Press, →ISBN:

     In non-humans, alloparents include relatives who have kin-based incentives to help and nonrelatives who are under coercive threat or have no better option for survival.

   • 2023 June 9, Ezra Klein, quoting Kristen Ghodsee, “The Ezra Klein Show: What Communes and Other Radical Experiments in Living Together Reveal”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Maybe my kids should spend more time with my sister and her kids. Maybe my colleague who has kids around the same age as mine, we should do more sleepovers. So there are all sorts of ways in which could imagine just bringing other alloparents into a relationship.

Related terms

• alloparenting