Word.ws English Dictionary

alloparenting

alloparenting noun: parental behaviour towards infants and young from non-parents.

Noun

alloparenting (uncountable)

  1. (ethology) Parental behaviour towards infants and young from non-parents.
    • Some alloparenting relationships among animals resemble adoption, although more resemble foster care or wet-nursing.1992, Richard A. Posner, Sex and Reason, Paperback edition, Harvard University Press, published 1994, page 407
    • The behaviors associated with alloparenting are phenotypically similar to maternal and paternal care.1997, C. Sue Carter, R. Lucille Roberts, “9: The Psychobiological Basis of Cooperative Breeding in Rodents”, in Nancy G. Solomon, Jeffrey A. French, editors, Cooperative Breeding in Mammals...

Origin of alloparenting

From allo- + parenting.

Questions about alloparenting

What does alloparenting mean?
Alloparenting means parental behaviour towards infants and young from non-parents.
What part of speech is alloparenting?
Alloparenting is a noun.

Words near alloparenting in the dictionary

  1. alloparasitism
  2. alloparasitoid
  3. alloparasitoids
  4. alloparent
  5. alloparental
  6. alloparenting
  7. alloparents
  8. allopaternal
  9. allopath
  10. allopathetic
  11. allopathic

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: alloparenting (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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