Right. Think of “breeding” as the complete act of making autonomous organisms. If your children can’t survive without you, then in the evo-bio sense, you haven’t finished “breeding” yet, because the ability of your genes to be passed on still depends on facts about your genome rather than solely on facts about your child’s genome.
Humans take a pretty long time to “breed” compared to most animals, since humans are born pretty non-autonomous compared to most animals. But there still comes a point where the probability of breeding success of a child becomes entirely dominated by the factor of that child’s genes, over the factor of the parent’s.
Also note that, just because this effect exists, doesn’t mean it guarantees that it will be an effect in the direction of longer health-span in every organism. In fact, in many organisms, the organism is wired to die as part of the breeding process, since dying better guarantees success for the offspring! (Some because they no longer compete with their offspring for food; some because their body decays and fertilizes the spawning grounds, leading to a bountiful harvest for their children; etc.)
Humans take a pretty long time to “breed” compared to most animals, since humans are born pretty non-autonomous compared to most animals. But there still comes a point where the probability of breeding success of a child becomes entirely dominated by the factor of that child’s genes, over the factor of the parent’s.
Also note that, just because this effect exists, doesn’t mean it guarantees that it will be an effect in the direction of longer health-span in every organism. In fact, in many organisms, the organism is wired to die as part of the breeding process, since dying better guarantees success for the offspring! (Some because they no longer compete with their offspring for food; some because their body decays and fertilizes the spawning grounds, leading to a bountiful harvest for their children; etc.)