Comment Re:Teenage behaviour is evolution's reaction (Score 1) 397
A) Teen-aged rebellion may keep children and parents at a distance, but it will do the same for children raised by foster-parents.
But evolution didn't have time to adapt to foster-parenting yet
It also does little to keep similarly-aged children of opposite sex apart, so it has no relation to "gene carriers" except in an incidental sense.
Then for this there's AnyoneEB's interesting reference below.
B) It's pretty well established that rebellious behavior is simply developing children wanting and needing to begin to set out on their own, and distance themselves from their dependence on their parents.
Indeed, but can't one of the reasons for this need to set out on their own be our instincts' way of avoiding inbreeding (instincts inherited from the times when they could set out on their own)? What is the reason we (and some mammals) have the urge to set out on our own, whereas other mammals (like meerkats, which then live in clans where only the alpha pair breeds) haven't?
No flame disclaimer: I'm not trying to present a "scientific explanation" here, just brainstorming and trying get free knowledge from you. My field observations are from Animal Planet, and I'm a semi-autistic engineer, so what do I know about human and animal social behavior? My first post was an attempt to do a funny musing I had about the subject.