less parenting effort is criticized for assuming that absolute chronology would determine direction of selection. This criticism argues that the total amount of predation threat faced by the young has the same effective protection need effect no matter if it comes in the form of a long childhood and far between the natural enemies or a short childhood and closely spaced natural enemies, as different life speeds are subjectively the same thing for the animals and only outwardly looks different. One cited example is that small animals that have more natural enemies would face approximately the same number of threats and need approximately the same amount of protection (at the relative timescale of the animals) as large animals with fewer natural enemies that grow more slowly (e.g. that many small carnivores that could not eat even a very young human child could easily eat multiple very young blind meerkats). This criticism also argues that when a carnivore eats a batch stored together, there is no significant difference in the chance of one surviving depending on the number of young stored together, concluding that humans do not stand out from many small animals such as mice in selection for protecting helpless young. There is criticism of the claim that menopause and somewhat earlier age-related declines in female fertility could co-evolve with a long term dependency on monogamous male providers who preferred fertile females. This criticism argues that the longer the time the child needed parental investment relative to the lifespans of the species, the higher the percentage of children born would still need parental care when the female was no longer fertile or dramatically reduced in her fertility. These critics argue that unless male preference for fertile females and ability to switch to a new female was annulled, any need for a male provider would have selected against menopause to use her fertility to keep the provider male attracted to her, and that the theory of monogamous fathers providing for their families therefore cannot explain why menopause evolved in humans. One criticism of the notion of a trade-off between mating effort and parenting effort is that in a species in which it is common to spend much effort on something other than mating, including but not exclusive to parenting, there is less energy and time available for such for the competitors as well, meaning that species-wide reductions in the effort spent