Evolutionary theory suggests that parents and their daughters (and sons, for that matter) should both want a caring and supportive mate. That would work for all of them. And they do both strive for this. But parents, apparently, want it more. The study’s co-author Tim Fawcett, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bristol, this model of parental and filial behavior is predicated on the fact that parents presumably value all of their children (and therefore the survival of their genes) equally. So parents want to allocate their resources optimally and make sure that each child ends up with equal share. But if one daughter marries the hunky but unreliable handyman and the other comes home with the gawky, devoted investment banker, the former will probably require additional investment of time, money and emotional support to survive, and the others will get less from the parents.

Spending their resources that way may not seem appealing to parents, but, says Fawcett, “it is in their evolutionary interests to do so. The conflict arises because daughters will settle for a partner who provides less support than her parents would ideally like.” In other words, parents feel a need to fill in the gap for the child married to the handyman so that daughter, and her hunk, have the same chance of raising a family and having children who continue the genetic lineage as the daughter married to the wealthy banker.