Care and provisioning from alloparents as well as parents was critical for offspring survival in the line of apes leading to the genus Homo.

Human parenting differs from their phylogenetically closest primate relations and more nearly resembles care among physiologically and cognitively very different New World monkeys.

As among other cooperatively breeding primates, human postpartum maternal responsiveness is unusually sensitive to cues of social support.

Postpartum delays in responsiveness may have facilitated the emergence of peculiarly discriminative maternal solicitude in Homo sapiens.