Parental investment

Parental investment or 'Parental-care' basically means the time and energy parents allocate to producing and treating their offspring. In ecology and in animal behaviour a major question is why and how much should a parent invest in its offspring. Another question relating to Parental investment is which of the parents should be the one taking care of the offspring.

Robert Trivers' theory of parental investment predicts that the sex making the largest investment in lactation, nurturing and protecting offspring will be more discriminating in mating and that the sex that invests less in offspring will compete for access to the higher investing sex.