A related, evolution-influenced theory rests on the assumption that the young of all species are wired to adapt to their environment. When that environment is unpredictable, they develop strategies that may not work in a more reliable ecosystem. Children whose family attachments and household arrangements are volatile have no reason to trust routines or develop the kind of foresight that might lead to a better future. That explains the impulsive and aggressive behaviors researchers find in kids from complex families. If life throws dangerous curveballs at you no matter what you do, why not have sex without a condom with the girl you met last week, steal that bike you want, or punch out a guy who has been bothering you? “The lesson of an unpredictable environment is that if the future is more rather than less uncertain, then efforts to mitigate risk are less likely to pay off in terms of enhancing reproductive fitness,” observes psychologist Jay Belsky and coauthors in a paper on unpredictable childhoods and their relation to early pregnancy. “After all, efforts toward such ends take time, effort and, critically, energy, so if such investments are less likely to generate anticipated payoffs, as would be the case in more rather than less unpredictable environments, then parents should adjust their rearing accordingly. The same goes for children when it comes to regulating their own development.” Can the extra income promised by the CTC change the life trajectories of kids in complex families? An optimist might argue that more money will lower stress levels in the household and improve the chances that parents will stay together. This could be true in some cases. But we have little reason to believe that lifting people from poverty to near poverty—the most realistic outcome—will solidify most parents’ relationships or lessen their all-too-human longing for a new partner and another baby. In fact, multi-partner fertility is more cause than effect of money woes. “[R]elative economic well-being is not predictive of a birth to a second partner,” Lindsay Monte, a scholar at the Census Bureau, writes in a recent paper. “However, women are subject to significantly greater economic stress after the transition into multiple partner fertility.”