Over the decades, though, Maslow’s triangle came to be seen as “aspirational” — a description of what fulfilled individuals “should” do — rather than as an explanation of how human motivation actually works. Viewed through an evolutionary lens, some aspects of Maslow’s hierarchy make no sense, says Douglas T. Kenrick, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University, who argues for a new pyramid. If the only purpose of art, music and literature is self-fulfillment, how does that abet the survival of the species? After all, he argues, “the time you spend playing the guitar or creating poetry or contemplating the meaning of life could be otherwise spent finding food.” Kenrick isn’t saying the pursuit of art and such has no evolutionary purpose; he just sees it as subordinate to the main act. “Look at it this way,” he says. “If you are a good poet or a good musician, there is a reproductive payoff: women are attracted to men with these abilities. What a man is saying when he is playing his guitar up there is ‘look at my good genes.’ ”

Which is why, in the paper published earlier this summer in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, Kenrick and his co-authors redefined “self-actualization” as an indirect means to attracting a mate and, ultimately, parenting children. They chose the word “parenting,” rather than “procreation,” quite deliberately, he says, because our genes do not live on unless our children reach puberty healthy enough to have children of their own. And if those children are attractive as potential mates — the result of good schools, years of tennis lessons and the ability to play the guitar or write poetry — so much the better.

Kenrick and his colleagues are careful to say that, unlike Maslow, their pyramid is not aspirational, and that by placing parenting at the top they are not promoting it as the “right” or “laudable” path. They are simply explaining, with illustrations, why we, as a species, act as we do. In fact, Kenrick — who is the father of two sons, one 6 and the other 33 — says he believes the earth would be better off if fewer of us had children.

Point taken. But I find it hard to look at the new pyramid, with parenting at its apex, and not see a value judgement. That’s because in the decades since Maslow proposed his hierarchy, in the decades, even, since Kenrick became a father, “parent” became a loaded verb. Once, “parent” was something you were, not something you did. We have elevated it into a profession, a competition, a calling. Women, freer to choose, find themselves unexpectedly torn by the choice. Men, once free not to be involved, are now expected to plunge in. (Kenrick himself says he is “a lot” more involved in raising his younger son than he was with his older one, though that’s easier now that he has tenure.) Society, with virtual, actual and imagined predators, demands more vigilance from parents.

A result of a certain kind of overparenting, we are learning, is children who are better prepared for college but less prepared for life. They are more dependent, expecting trophies just for trying and texting their parents to ask for advice about what to eat for breakfast. Childhood, some experts say, now continues well into the 20s.