Even the happiest families endure periods of intense conflict and emotional strife. Read this eye-opening book and find out why.

What does evolution have to do with morning sickness? With the stressful sound of a baby's cry? With sibling rivalry and adolescent rage? With child abuse? Everything, says Dr. Robin Baker, whose best-selling Sperm Wars illustrated the day-to-day Darwinism of human sexual life. Now Dr. Baker teams up with journalist and children's books author Elizabeth Oram to do the same for parenthood and family life. They look at a variety of instantly recognizable family situations and offer evolutionary explanations for common, often traumatic, events--explanations that not only make clear the genetic roots of family conflicts but that reveal, in many cases, their wider reproductive purpose.

Highly provocative yet profoundly persuasive, this compelling book sheds light on the darkest secrets of family life and brings them out into the open where they can be addressed with honesty and without judgment.

Dr. Robin Baker taught zoology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Manchester for twenty-two years. He has published more than one hundred scientific papers and many books, including Sperm Wars: The Science of Sex. His work and ideas on the evolution of human behavior have been featured on television and radio programs around the world.

Elizabeth Oram is a journalist and the author of five children's books. Both authors live in Manchester, England.