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Rating: 
Summary: Concise summary
Review: A short, interesting booklet on the sociobiology of step-parents. Darwinism predicts step-parents will be less caring than biological ones, and this seems to be the case. The authors carefully distinguish research on other animals and humans. Certain to enrage a number of "social science" types.
Rating:
Summary: Thought-provoking
Review: Before reading this book, I was already familiar with Daly and Wilson's work from Wright's Moral Animal, Pinker's How the Mind Works, and others, so frankly, this book did not contain a lot of new ideas for me. By no means do I intimate that The Truth About Cinderella is not worth reading. Definitely, definitely, read this carefully, especially if you harbor any doubts about the validity of their findings, as they very neatly refute critics. The authors provide an ingenious explanation for the prevalence of evil step-mothers in fairy tales: Mama's telling the bedtime stories. Much as I admire this explanation, I wonder if there isn't more to it than that. Let us leave fairy tales aside, and look at history, which abounds with stories such as that of Duke Wen of Chin/Jin (7th c. BC). As a prince, he was forced to flee for his life after his brother, the crown prince, had been coerced into suicide by his father, at his step-mother's connivance. You can probably provide similar stories. Now, please tell me a story about the mother who puts her own child to death at the step-father's insistence.... Does this reflect a sexist bias in historical records? Perhaps Daly and Wilson have tacity answered this question in another context: "the payoff coming in the form of an increased chance to sire the mother's next baby." Kids are easy (and fun) to come by once you've got a woman, so maybe earlier kids can be sacrificed to keep the woman (who may have cost a pretty penny) compliant. To their discussion of why step-families do generally work out after all (I call attention to the ubiquity of infanticide, as shown by Marvin Harris in Cannibals and Kings), I wish to add my speculation. Due to our big brain, human birth has always been a dangerous event for women. I suspect step-families were far more common in the paleolithic than now. Men outlived women ¡Xprobably outlived several wives. We know from the archaeological record that old people, unable to fend for themselves, were taken care of ¡Xobviously, by the young and healthy. What I suggest, without a shred of hard evidence, is that young men who looked after old men were aware that one day they might find themselves dependent on the younger generation. It made sense for them to tolerate step-children as well as their own gene-bearing children, because some old-age insurance is better than none at all. Finally, I would like to add that Weidenfeld & Nicolson's Darwinism Today series is thought-provoking, pleasingly designed, and well-printed, just the thing to stuff into your pocket to take somewhere to read and ponder. Have fun!
Rating: 
Summary: Provoking and Informative, but hardly Darwinian
Review: First, the book is very informative on the subject of step-parenthood as a risk factor for child abuse and neglect, and should be read by anyone interested in the subject. The authors do a respectable, if sometimes overly defensive, job of answering critics of their data. It is clear that anyone disputing this correlation is not only ignorant of the data, but blind to obvious trends in the society around them. It is an excellent introduction to the literature on the subject. However, most of the conclusions the authors draw from these data and the obvious correlation between reconstituted families and abuse are not supported in any way. The book suffers from the same problem as most (though not all) of the books in this series; namely that the authors are not evolutionary biologists, and do not have a thorough understanding of evolutionary theory. While they make a very convincing case for using step-parenthood as one of the most important risk factors for abuse, their attempt to explain it is hardly convincing. Despite the citing of numerous animal examples, they show no reason why this behavior would be positively selected in humans. To be biologically selected for in a Darwinian sense, this behavior would have to impart a reproductive advantage to the abuser, or a survival or reproductive advantage to the genetic offspring of abusers, over the population at large. There is no evidence of this being the case. On the contrary, given the social stigma against abusers, any biological selection acting on this trait would seem to favor non-abusive step-parents. It surprises me that, as psychologists, the authors ignored much more likely explanations, such as the fact that step-parents are entering a family that has suffered extreme emotional upset (divorce or death, etc.), which will put significant strain on what is already an artificial relationship, or that the genetic parent in this case is often likely to choose a new mate based on their own emotional or financial needs rather than on the needs of their children. The lower level of parental care is not necessarily a selective trait, it is simply the lack of activation of the positively selected trait of the parental bond. Since many reconstituted families never produce genetic children of the step-parent, there is always a reduced selection for any trait they possess. While I believe that, as products of evolution, we can and must understand ourselves and our societies in the context of Darwinian theory, I strongly feel that anyone seeking to do so must not ignore the fact that evolutionary theory is not simply "survival of the fittest", and is in fact at least as complex as their own chosen field of expertise, often not even understood by biologists outside the sub-field of evolutionary biology. While I believe evolutionary theory will ultimately revolutionize the social sciences, those wishing to apply it should either make themselves expert in it first, or seek the collaboration of those who already are, rather than depend on their own incomplete understanding of it.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: I just read this book again after five years. It is an engrossing read and can be done in one sitting in about an hour. I kept reading passages loudly to my family as I was reading it. I have two teenagers and I will make sure they read it as a basis of a well-read and thougthful consideration of their world. All of it should be intuitive to intelligent people but how often we fall pray to wishful thinking.
Rating:
Summary: Very good on evolution
Review: I'm not sure why a previous reviewer, apparently considering his "Ph.D. in molecular evolution" (whatever that is, since organisms, not molecules, evolve--does he mean he got a Ph.D. in molecular biology?) to give him privileged status, besmirched the authors of this book as not knowing much about evolution. A fundamental finding of evolutionary biology is that nature preserves adaptations--what worked earlier in an ancestral line generally tends to be continued. Parsimony, not incompetence, dictates that we assume this applies to humans. In fact, killing "step-children" is not rare among primates; among gorillas, it is pretty much de rigeur. Gorillas are our nearest survivng *predecessors* in the great ape lines. What advantage would lack of attachment, even hostility, to step-children confer? Among gorillas, it probably has at least two functions: It is sexually selected, though not necessarily naturally selected: females tend to follow alpha males who can protect them, and killing another's offspring is a pretty good indicator of dominance; and the females become fertile again more quickly because they stop lactating. What about for humans? Why would this adaptation be preserved? First, two elementary facts about evolution: what matters is what reproductive advantage the trait conferred in our environment of evolutionary adaptedness, which occurred at least 10,000 (and more likely 30,000-100,000) years ago; and natural selection only occurs under conditions of scarcity. So what advantage would have been conferred, under conditions of scarcity at least 10,000 years ago, by indifference or hostility to step-children? If you put your care into your own children and slight your step-children, you don't waste your investment on someone else's genes. Since child mortality rates under hunter-gatherer conditions are something like 30-40 percent, this increases substantially the likelihood that your own genes, not your spouse's ex's, will be carried forward. Classic natural selection. When we look at humans we see a genome that developed in times quite different than our own. No competent evolutionist would infer either that an earlier adaptation would necessarily be adaptive now or that gene expression would not be modified by current circumstances. Nor do many folk who study at the human level deny that culture has it own powers, and many of those powers work to curtail expression of previously adaptive traits. Finally, the notion of "inclusive fitness" is a well-established principle of evolution: from bees to humans, we show greater care for those related to us genetically, pretty well in proportion to the degree of relatedness, than to those who are not. We certainly have other calculi for mutual care, and maybe even an evolved "cheater detector" to make sure that people who take help give help. But none of these other pro-social mechanisms deny the fundamental power of inclusive fitness, even where they work to qualify it.
Rating:
Summary: Nice and short
Review: In this nicely concise book (which can easily be read in one or two nights), the authors discuss the issue of step-parenting. Although we all have an intuitive sense that step parents are not the same as genetic parents, Daly and Wilson present more precise statistics, and provide an evolutionary explanation for why this might be the case. This book will go well with all the other evolutionary psychology books in your collection.
Rating:
Summary: solid evidence for an intuitive theory
Review: This study is a thorough inquiry into the natural biases a step-parent may have towards step-children, as illustrated in the tale of Cinderella (and countless other stories). The authors offer an evolutionary explanation for this (why would we want to invest our parental effort into someone else's progeny) as well as extensive empirical evidence (statistics on child abuse from several agencies around the globe). I'm surprised that I haven't seen this information pitched about by the media (it would make a compelling local news piece, along the same lines as "heat wave 2000", "is your terrier a terror in waiting?" or "How deadly are the bacteria under your fingernails?".) Except that this material is a bit more serious and scholarly. Its a quick read and well worth the effort, especially if you are a step-parent (or have one, or married to one).
Rating:
Summary: solid evidence for an intuitive theory
Review: This study is a thorough inquiry into the natural biases a step-parent may have towards step-children, as illustrated in the tale of Cinderella (and countless other stories). The authors offer an evolutionary explanation for this (why would we want to invest our parental effort into someone else's progeny) as well as extensive empirical evidence (statistics on child abuse from several agencies around the globe). I'm surprised that I haven't seen this information pitched about by the media (it would make a compelling local news piece, along the same lines as "heat wave 2000", "is your terrier a terror in waiting?" or "How deadly are the bacteria under your fingernails?".) Except that this material is a bit more serious and scholarly. Its a quick read and well worth the effort, especially if you are a step-parent (or have one, or married to one).
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