The Challenge of Correctly Predicting the Future in a

Human Family Planning Politics in association with Fitness Decisions taken earlier in life, involving questions like when and where to have children, whom to live together or how many children taking care off will influence directly or indirectly the individual living conditions later in life. In a dynamic world where human beings live in different environments throughout their lifetime, individuals will require cues (information) to anticipate and predict future environments for living. How and when individuals perceive and exploit these cues is proximately determined by a dynamic physiological control mechanism influencing e.g. mental fitness shaped by genetic, environmental and/or learned (e.g., perception, life experiences) components and constraints also involving physical fitness (e.g. body condition) (Frame 1). However, individual human characteristics influencing the perception of cues predicting the future might not always be ‘adaptive’ from a Darwinian fitness point of view (e.g. as reflected in contributions to future generations), e.g. when they are suddenly confronted to novel environments.

Development GENES

Selection Next generation (s) Next child

Environment at time of parental decision -making

Predict ?!

EARLIER IN LIFE Physiological control mechanism

DARWINIAN FITNESS POPULATION VIABILITY Environment at time of children development LATER IN LIFE

Parental phenotype

Children

(e.g. mental fitness)

Physical fitness at time parental of decision-making

Physical fitness at time of children education

1