Chapter 8 Battle of the Generations

There is an inherent conflict between the generations of parent and child. The mother is interested in having the optimum number of off spring and the children are interested in receiving a majority of the resources so long as its not at to much of a detriment to their siblings. While a cuckoo will throw all other eggs out of the nest upon hatching the swallow will only throw off a couple. The swallow is related to eggs discarded so it would be damaging to its genes to throw them all out. Instead it only tosses a couple. This will help keep resources concentrated on itself and still have siblings to carry on genetic material.
Because of this conflict children will evolve to better at exploiting their parents. We definitely see this in human society. Many children are experts at manipulating their parents. Older siblings often try and divert resources from siblings to themselves.