Human societies display considerable differences in reproductive and parenting behavior, both between and within cultures, resulting in a variety of family settings in which children are raised. Parents invest and care for their children in numerous ways, but some children may be more invested in than others, and evolutionary models may help explain biases in investment. Among the reasons why one child might receive more parental investment than another may be a difference in child wantedness. Child wantedness is a term used to describe unwanted, live births resulting from unintended pregnancy. Worldwide, unintended pregnancy remains a major public health concern, as it may inflict threats on the health and wellbeing of both the mother and child. However, in both developing and developed countries, whether having a child without wanting to influences parental behavior in ways that result in reduced investments in child nutrition and wellbeing remains an open question. In high fertility populations going through the early stages of fertility decline, stated preference in child wantedness might be recurrently updated to include subsequent births and, thus, exceeding a prior desired number of children may have little effect on child health. The Roma/Gypsies, a historically shunned, largest, poorest and fast-growing minority in many European countries, are well-suited for addressing questions relating to parental care and unwanted childbearing. Today, childbirth and childrearing remain central to the lives of many Roma women to an unprecedented degree in the countries where they reside, but little is known regarding how Roma parents allocate parental investment.