Parenting can be bad for the kids

Parents often fret about whether they are doing their jobs properly. Take too hands-off an approach and the kids will grow up feral. Smother them with attention, though, and the risk is of raising offspring unable to function on their own.Evolution, it seems, faces similar trade-offs. In a paper published in on May 24th, Rahia Mashoodh and Rebecca Kilner, a pair of biologists at the University of Cambridge, offer an explanation for a curious fact: once a species has evolved to care for its young, the trait is almost never lost again. They argue that parental pampering comes with a genetic price that makes returning to the difficult.