Evolutionarily conserved pathways of caregiving breakdown underlie contemporary child maltreatment
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Child maltreatment is a leading cause of preventable harm, yet how diverse risk factors accumulate to precipitate caregiving failure remains unclear. In non-human mammals, fatal abandonment or aggression toward offspring occurs under specific ecological conditions, suggesting evolutionarily conserved pathways for caregiving breakdown. To test whether similar structures apply to humans, we conducted a case–control study enrolling 39 caregivers imprisoned for (near-) lethal child maltreatment and 351 control caregivers in Japan. Across 70 examined factors spanning caregivers’ childhood, socioeconomic, neurobiological, and proximate environmental profiles, severe maltreatment was associated with 4.6- and 5.9-fold higher exposure to cross-species factors in men and women, respectively. Developmental pathway modeling identified significant standardized total effects of low educational attainment, non-kin caregiving, isolated parenting, behavioral addiction, and maternal absence before age 15. This proof-of-concept study presents an integrated framework bridging evolutionary biology with contemporary human caregiving and suggests targets for actionable intervention.
Research highlights
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Severe child maltreatment in a modern society mirrors evolutionarily conserved, “cross-species” risk structures for caregiving breakdown.
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Early-life adversities precede isolated parenting and non-kin caregiving, the most prominent proximal predictors of maltreatment.
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The absence of a same-gender genetic parent during childhood exerts a greater effect size on later maltreatment than opposite-gender parent absence.
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Suggesting targeted parenting support for multi-risk families and educational support for children in adversity.
