Beware of altruism. It is based on self-deception, the root of all evil.

—Lazarus Long


A Unified Theory of Male Slobbishness and Female Preening

It’s all about asymmetrical investment, boys and girls….

One of the hot topics in the blogosphere recently has been the
difference between male and female standards of attractiveness, and
what this has to do with feminism and “the beauty myth”. Ann Althouse
has been having
fun
at the expense of Laura Kipnis’s column bemoaning the grip that beauty has on
women
. Sissy
Willis
and has connected this issue to a gripe by Andrew Sullivan
that women ought to demand that men turn themselves out better.

The bloggers rightly see the differing incentives attached to
sexual selection as the key to understanding these differences. Those
differences are the reason that the many forms of un-PC behaviors that
Ms. Kipnis decries aren’t going to go away short of a genetic
reengineering of human beings.

What’s missing, so far, is a unified explanation of why
those incentives are different. This turns out not to be complicated,
and understanding it helps us grasp some interesting and entertaining
subtleties in the situation.

The central fact that controls the the preferences of both sexes is
that bearing children is difficult and dangerous for women, but
fertilizing a woman is almost trivially easy for a man. Furthermore,
the female investment in childbearing is front-loaded (proportionally
more of the risk is before and at birth) while the male investment is
back-loaded (proprtionately more of the risks and costs are incurred
after birth).

Moderns living in a largely disease-free environment seldom realize
how cruel and pressing these differences were over most of our species
history. But before modern sanitation, death in childbirth was so common
that men wealthy enough to afford it expected to have several wives
during their lifetimes, losing many of them to childbed fever and
other complications.

Also relevant is the extremely high rate of childhood death from
infectious diseases and parasites that was characteristic of premodern
societies. Disease resistance in humans is highly variable and
generally increases with genetic mixing (the same reason a mongrel
puppy or kitten is less likely to catch a disease than a purebreed).
Thus, both men and women have instincts intended to maximize genetic
variety in their offspring in order to maximize the chances that some
will survive to reproductive age.

Our instincts evolved to cope with these patterns of life and
death. The next piece we need to understand those instincts is what
physical beauty means. Recent anthropology revealing strong
cross-cultural patterns in the perception of pulchritude is helpful
here.

In both sexes, the most important beauty indicators include symmetrical
features and a good complexion (clear skin without blemishes, warts, etc.).
It turns out these are indicators of resistance to infection and parasites,
especially resistance in childhood and during adolescent growth. Good hair
is also a health indicator.

In men, physical signs of strength, dexterity, and agility are also
favored; this reflects the value female instinctive wiring puts on
male specializations in burst exertion, hunting, and warfare. In
women, signs of fertility and fitness to bear are favored (healthy and
generous breasts, a certain range of hip-to-waist ratios).

Men fixate on physical beauty and youth because under primitive
conditions it is a leading indicator of the ability to bear and suckle
children. Through most of history, plain or ugly women were bad risks
for the next round of infectious diseases — and their children,
carrying their genes, were too.

The last piece of the puzzle is that men and women have asymmetrical
information about the parentage of their children. A woman is seldom
in doubt about which children are the issue of her womb; a man, by
contrast, can never be as sure which are the fruit of his seed. Thus,
genetic selfishness motivates the woman in a mated pair to sacrifice more
for her children than it does the man. This is why women abandon
their children far less often than men do.

While women do respond to male good looks, it’s not the
agenda-topper for them that it is for men. To understand why this is,
it helps to know that the optimal mating strategy for a woman begins
with hooking a good provider, a man who will stick around to support
the kids in spite of not being as sure that he’s their father as the
woman is of being their mother. Where men look for fitness to bear
children, women seek the capability and willingness to raise them.

Thus, robust health and infection resistance, while desirable in a
potential husband, are not the be-all and end-all. Behavior traits
indicating attachment, loyalty, nurturance, and kindness are more
important than a tight six-pack. Men instinctively worry about these
things less because they know women are more certain of parentage and
thus more tightly bonded to their children. Fitness-to-raise also means
that indicators of success and social status count for more in men.
Men marry health and beauty, women marry security and good prospects.

There is, however, one important exception — one circumstance
under which women are just as physical, beauty-oriented, and “shallow”
in their mating preferences as men. That’s when they’re cheating.

Both sexes have a genetic-diversity incentive to screw around, but
it manifests in different ways. Again, the reason is parentage
uncertainty. For a man, diversity tactics are simple — boff as
many hot babes as possible, accepting that you don’t know which of
their kids are yours and counting on stronger maternal bonding to
ensure they will have at least one devoted parent around. Because a
woman can be more sure of who her offspring are, her most effective
diversity tactic is different — get married to a good provider
and then cheat on him.

Under those circumstances, she doesn’t have to value good character
in a mating partner as much; hubby, who can’t tell the kids aren’t
his, will supply that. Thus the relative value of handsomeness goes
up when a woman is taking a lover on the sly. Marrying the lord and
screwing the gardener is an old game, and from a genetic-selfishness
point of view a very effective one.

All this should explain why men can often get away with being slobs
while women primp and preen. But it is wise to distrust evolutionary
accounts that are simply just-so stories without making testable
predictions. This one makes a few.

Most notably, it predicts that women who are less concerned about
security and the the status of their offspring (e.g. wealthier, older,
or for other reasons less dependent on a male provider) are more
likely to be interested in bagging studmuffins. It also predicts that
by contrast, men’s tendency to value physical beauty over most other
qualities in a mate will change little, if at all, with their wealth
level — because their instincts tell them health, not wealth, is
the woman’s most important input.

It also explains why gays and lesbians have such opposed attitudes
about beauty. In (male) gay mating both parties are instinctive
beauty-seekers, while in lesbian matings both parties are instinctive
security-seekers. Thus, gay culture is full of posturing pretty-boys
and lesbian culture full of sincere plane janes.

As others have noted, women who habitually demand peacock males are
making themselves less effective at competing for the good-husband
traits that instinct tells them are more valuable; they will lose out
in the reproductive race to women who can tolerate a faithful slob.
On the flip side, the instinctive male fixation on fitness-to-bear
means that all attempts to devalue female beauty in the mating market
are doomed. Hetero- and bisexual women know this in their bones; it
takes a lesbian to believe this is even a reasonable project —
which is why agitation against “lookism” has been the least successful
facet of feminist ideology.

25 Responses to “A Unified Theory of Male Slobbishness and Female Preening”

  1. seanc Says:

    This evolutionary psychology crap really ticks me off. It’s fun at parties and all, but the idea that people’s behavior can be modelled and predicted based on loosey goosey post hoc prestidigitation is specious.

    If all this preening and primping people engage in is going on, why is it that women are most often concerned with thier apperance in front of other women? For example, in rich Muslim countries, such as Saudi Arabia, women primp and preen just as much as they do in the West, all for the exclusive benefit of their female peers.

    This asymmetry in child rearing is present in all mammals, and many other species. Even within human societies one sees many, many solutions to these problems, sometimes within the same culture. Extending to primates, one sees standardized species behaviors of all different flavours, monogomy, open polygamy, secret polygamy, etc. etc.

    So given this diversity, what is the argument then? That people have these latent seething genetic desires which some of us overcome through our superior intellect? I don’t buy it. There is so much genetic diversity among humans in so many other traits, I would say a system with as many genetic and enviornmental inputs as our emotional behavior could be expected to display enough variation so as to defy pat categorization.

    And if you think about the real relationships in your life, I’m sure you’ll agree.

  2. Erich Schwarz Says:

    “… what is the argument then? That people have these latent seething genetic desires which some of us overcome through our superior intellect? I don’t buy it.”

    Seanc,

    If you think that seething desires can’t overcome the intellect — and don’t do so, quite often — then you’re either a saint or an idiot. Or both.

  3. Josh Narins Says:

    I say “Bah” for other reasons. The bread-winner demands to be pleased. If the bread-winner is female, she is not going to stand a slob around. The other situation is far more common.

    It’s hilarious, by the way, that someone would seriously quote a gay guy saying that women should expect guys to be hotter. That Andrew wants guys to be hotter is so obvious, that for him to demand women demand men to be that way is jsut too predictably self-serving for comment.

  4. John Says:

    “Let us take woman, said Stephen… The Greek, the Turk, the Chinese, the Copt, the Hottentot, said Stephen, all admire a different type of female beauty. That seems to be a maze out of which we cannot escape. I see, however, two ways out. One is this hypothesis: that every physical quality admired by men in women is in direct connexion with the manifold functions of women for the propagation of the species. It may be so. The world, it seems, is drearier than even you, Lynch, imagined. For my part I dislike that way out. It leads to eugenics rather than to esthetic. It leads you out of the maze into a new gaudy lecture-room where MacCann, with one hand on The Origin of Species and the other hand on the new testament, tells you that you admired the great flanks of Venus because you felt that she would bear you burly offspring and admired her great breasts because you felt that she would give good milk to her children and yours.” Dedalus goes on like this for a while (OK, fine, it’s actually Joyce but you get my meaning) but that’s already a long quote.

    I would take issue with the idea that this theory makes “testable predictions;” if they’re that self-evident then they’re not predictions.

    There’s certainly something to this sort of idea but it’s often overblown; applied too liberally.

    Also, did everyone else get the Dr. Phil “Overweight?” ad in the article at Slate? Now that’s comedy.

  5. Eric Raymond Says:

    The trouble with the Joyce quote is that his premise is objectively false. Standards of beauty turn out not to vary a great deal across cultures; there are, for example. no cultures in which warty and blemished skin is preferred to clear skin.

    The trouble with the “breadwinner” objection is that it applies a modern frame to two million years of species history. In premodern societies (indeed, until the early nineteenth century almost everywhere) the margin of survival was so thin that both man and wife in most mated pairs were necessarily breadwinners. Moderns often miss this because most of our accounts of daily life were written by the people wealthy enough to avoid the necessity. Even today, on small family farms the farm wife works as many hours as the farmer.

  6. Omar K. Ravenhurst Says:

    A-hem-hem. Give me enough money or time, and I’ll create an American subculture that prizes wart or “blemish”-like modifications. (If it doesn’t exist already.) But this discussion really misses the point. The feminists I know mainly object to drastic measures that women take to look “better”. Like plastic surgery or piercings for the purpose of fitting social norms. Like anorexia. The norms that encourage such behavior do not follow logically from the human genome.

    About your theory: would it also predict that more women than men find happiness in marriage?

  7. Josh Narins Says:

    Your anti-breadwinner articles begs that we have any idea what standards of beauty were before realistic art, more distinctly, photography. Do you find Cleveland’s wife Francis to be beautiful? The country did.

    I worked on a dig at the center of the Yarmukian culture, and the only found sculpture, several hundred of them, were near-identical depictions of a woman so fat you could clearly see the folds of skin on the arms and legs. And that was just in the last 8,000 years. Was she depicted because she was famous, but not beautiful? Perhaps.

    Clear skin, an untangled mane, and lacking any odors of rotting, are all pretty obvious.

    On further review, I find your “pretty boy/plain jane” comment to reflect a dearth of first hand experience. There are butch types in both regimes. Your confusion, I believe, might stem from the conflation of the concommitant rise of anti-big-dumb-joke and mainstream homosexuality. In Athenian gay culture, the biggest and strongest chose men for lovers, and preferred the brave and strong. The most “gorgeous” man in Athenian history being the General Alkibiades, who was sought as a lover by Socrates, and could have had any lover he chose, because of his beauty. Beauty at that time included his “sexy” lisp.

  8. Josh Narins Says:

    If you want me to chill, just say so. I think your first statement “assymetrical investment” is the same as the breadwinner argument. The breadwinner invests time in fiscal activities, which take away from the time possible to invest in looking beautiful. The non-breadwinner will have the time to look more beautiful than the breadwinner can (assuming identical base positions (which is silly)).

    A person with money can, and usually wants to, take care of other people. Their tastes are what matter, whether it be for men, women, strong, weak, smart, simple, wild or serene.

  9. Nancy Lebovitz Says:

    As far as I can tell, it’s usual in most human cultures for both men and women to dress up, though the only one I can think of where men dressed up more than women was the colonial US. We’re anomalous in considering it to be unacceptably unmasculine for men to be vain.

    Also, I think female beauty is more complicated than you’re saying–there are pulls in two directions. One is the smooth skin/symmetry thing (low-maintenance), but the other is rarity/costly ornamemnt/doesn’t work (high-maintenance). The most extreme case I can think of for the the latter proving that it’s not a simple hunter-gatherer situation is foot-binding. The sexiest thing in that culture–one that lasted for a millenium–was a woman who’d been crippled to the point of being unable to walk more than a step or two.

    It wasn’t clear whether you’d heard of the “sexy son” theory–the idea is that men who are good at attracting women are likely to have sons who are good at attracting women. I’ve never seen any discussion of whether such men might also be likier than most to have pretty daughters.

  10. Josh Narins Says:

    By the way, I believe that it is your own, um, non, um, well, exactly, practiced, um, habits in this regard that cause you to adopt this theory.

    It happens that computers don’t care what you are looking like today, nor mind foul breath, nor body odor.

  11. John Cowan Says:

    BTW, I saw Fat Pig last Thursday. It’s not particularly about fat at all; it’s a straight morality play — the 1950s or early 60s version would have had a black rather than a fat woman. The male lead doesn’t lack desire for the fat woman; what he lacks is the guts to make a commitment that is so much against the social pressures that say “Fat people shouldn’t have partners, and if they must have them, let them be other fat people.”

    In addition, I suspect that anti-fat prejudice is if anything strengthening nowadays simply because other kinds of appearance-based prejudices are less acceptable.

  12. neal Says:

    This post makes a serious mistake, and misses a minor point.

    The last piece of the puzzle is that men and women have asymmetrical information about the parentage of their children.

    The bit of missing information is that women sacrifice a huge amount by having a child. It’s nine months of being knocked up, followed by a (pre modern medicine) huge chance of death. Physically, men donate much less than women do. I believe this point alone explains many of the male female relationships. I’m reminded of the old saying “What has more at stake in a ham and egg breakfast, the pig or the chicken.”

    Most notably, it predicts that women who are less concerned about security and the the status of their offspring (e.g. wealthier, older, or for other reasons less dependent on a male provider)

    This is what I view as the major mistake of this post. The post is confusing the deep genetic reasons for behavior with superficial cultural and environmental ones. While the misguided liberal policies of the United States have made women less dependent on men, with devastating consequences, the fact is that women still tend to be the limiting factor in sexual relationships. This is easy to see when you look at the statistics of sexual encounters of people with different sexual orientations, with heterosexuals having roughly seven different mates per lifetime, lesbians, seven per lifetime, while homosexual men have been measured to have up to hundreds in a single night.

    So, in my view, policy should be written with these human (or animal, if you prefer), forces at work. Until we rewrite genetic sequences, these forces will continue to dominate sexual interplay (including the enormous jealousy a man exhibits towards his mate), and in my unprovable guess, no amount of intellectualizing will remove these ingrained habits.

  13. arbitraryaardvark Says:

    If the daddy isn’t sure the kid is his, a distinctive, but ugly, feature or set of features (not a bug but a feature)might be an advantage, where generic pretty-boy looks would allow more cheating.
    Clicking on nancy’s name at her comment leads to her button catalog, which is worth checking out.

  14. John Cowan Says:

    the enormous jealousy a man feels for his mate

    Which man? You? Definitely not me. In 25 years, I’ve never been jealous of (not “for”) my wife.

  15. allen Says:

    Brilliant!! I couldn’t have said it better myself. You have stuck a pin in the notion that human behavior is somehow elevated above biological concerns. One problem though: I am a married (9-yrs) hetero male of 40 yrs who does not want children, and thus far has never even fantasized about having them. My wife was 37 when we married and I don’t care one bit about that. I may be statistically abnormal that way. I dated a hot chick who wanted to marry me but I felt we were too young and later I settled down with a reliable Jane. Looks never got the best of me. Hummm…. a hetero male with no desire to procreate? That kinda throws a kink in the theory that the drive to reproduce is the single biggest factor in mate-choosing. The biggest factors for me were someone roughly my own age to be emotionally and physically intamate with, and to be with someone who could help provide financial stability (Dink’s are generally secure ie dual income no kids=dink). I suppose the hatred of lonlieness and the fear of financial ruin are much stronger in me than any genetic drive to make babies.
    I know a guy who makes 8 bucks an hour and has 6 kids with 5 women. Now, when you remove the moral imperative of looking after your brood, the risk is zero. So, while i am apparently stymied by fears of poverty and parental responsibility, this guy just dosen’t give a damn. Balance is key…less fear for me and more concern for him. It’s a complex emotional balance that makes a good parent. I think waaaaayy too many mis-fits are having kids. My childhood was less than good, but a lot of people with crappy childhoods and no clue as to how to love a kid go out and make babies. Bad idea if you ask me, but where else are you going to get the Jerry Springer Nation from? Making kids may be a genetic drive, but the will to raise them is probably a learned behavior that is hard to teach. So, if you are controlled more by prudence, you will choose a mate for non-procreative reasons. If you are controlled by fearlessness and a love of being totally irresponsible, you will be like the other guy. If you have a nice balance between responsibility and fearlessness…then you are going to be thinking positively about having and careing for kids and then long-tern traits such as motherhood skills will factor in. Still, everyone likes a hot body. One thing all men can relate to is that a nice ass and a pleasant demeanor go a long way, parenthood desires are very much more of an individual matter. Later.

  16. Allen Says:

    This is basically a Nature/Nuture debate: “Are we human beings meerly “meat machines” as Tesla reffered to himself; or are we higher, “spiritual” beings….or both. Men choose women and vice-verse for a combination of inherent biological drives and socialized ideals. The ideals may not have any survival purpose…for example: we like someone who has the same religion as we do…but does that help or hinder our lineage? Aslo,a woman having a gimpy, pigeon-toed gait is considered sexy in Japan. Isn’t that an indication of poor bio-mechanics. The list of attractive, yet unhealthy features is long and stands to contractict the general tone of your essay.
    Basically, I have no problem admitting that inherited, unconcious drives made me seek out certain traits in women. Why else does a man instictively prefer certain proportions? However, the older I get the more Nurture takes over and subjugates Nature. Remember, Nurture grows in porportion the longer you live. In other words, when you are born you are 100% Nature, all instict and no socialization. By the time you are middle aged you are 50% of each influence…DNA (hardware and animal instinct) + socialization (ideas and ideals). People used to marry young, around 15 yrs old…and they died early, aroung 50 yrs. Today poeple marry later, around 30; and die around 80. SO, if we consider that the sex drive and mind of a 30 yr old is more Nurture than that of a horny, animalistic 15 yr old, then we see that the tide of mate choosing is becomeing more Nurture than before. That is the only thing you faild to do in your essay; you failed to give adiquate weight to Nurture. We might start out as “meat machines” but we dont stay that way for our whole lives. Nature influences our decisions, but does not always deturmine them. I am a bio-machine, but I am also a bio-machine that picks up a litany of sociological, mental software along the way. It’s this software…these ideas and ideals that people talk about as being elevated above the mere mechanisms of animalistic instinct. I got married at 31. By that time i had been dis-illusioned about love, dissillusioned about the importance of physical looks also. So, much of what was survival instinct and evolution was by that time subverted by experience and ideas/ideals. I had to have sexual chemistry in order to fall for my wife…but she also had to embody ideals such as a lack of greed, which actually work against the survival mechanisms of Nature. Greedy,pushy, violent animals provide more for thier offspring, and greedy,coniving, seduceing and/or bullying poeple end up with more power and resources. They become the leaders, alpha group, and their kids go on to get into Yale wether they deserve it or not. The more Nurture you absorb, depending on how pure you ideals are, the less chance you have of becomeing an alpha group memeber. Only the snakes become political power houses…idealistic 3rd parties need not apply. And so on…and so on…
    Well, keep trying. I like the essay, but it needs some more balance to pull it back from the edge of materialistic deturminism. We don’t do everything in life just to get laid by a woman with strong thighs and a forceful persoanlity. Hell, I’m 40 and I have never fantasized about how I would like to have kids. Never wanted one. What does that say about Nature vs Nurture? We are machines…but we are THINKING machines. The more i think about it the less attractive those people who are mostly Nautre become, despite the fact that they embody the perfect survival vessal to protect and give the best advantages to my potential brood.

  17. S Prabhakar. Says:

    Read it recently. A good effort.
    Regarding the ‘jealousy’ part, it is common to both the sexes. It explains why women tend to boast about their make-up, dressing among other women. It might also be the reason for tendancy of men narrating their affairs/loves/sexual experiences(adventures) to their buddies in detail;(to induce the other person’s jealousy).

    Among gays even strength might be viewed as a ‘beauty’ while the same could be viewed as a ’symbol of security’ among lesbians. The same thing viewed in different perspectives. The blogger talks about this perspective.

    What if the woman is the bread winner and in no need of a ‘man’ to protect her in terms of wealth/security. How this would affect the woman’s inclination towards her partner?

  18. sheehan Says:

    Well, don’t call it a unified theory. I have came across many theories regarding same topic.

  19. Chris Says:

    >In both sexes, the most important beauty indicators include symmetrical
    >features and a good complexion (clear skin without blemishes, warts,
    >etc.). It turns out these are indicators of resistance to infection and parasites,
    >especially resistance in childhood and during adolescent growth. Good hair
    >is also a health indicator.

    Anyone can have a good complexion. It’s all about diet. Food does NOT directly cause blemishes but is an indirect cause as a pollutant of the detoxifying organs which are overworked in a body that has not been fully detoxified. The first (and most dramatic) step in detoxification is very simple and is the cleaning up of the intestinal tract. But it depends on which product is used. I’ve tried many products and can only recommend one, it is called Oxypowder, it works overnight by DISSOLVING the contents of your intestinal tract, unlike other products which can cause scouring. Oxypowder release oxygen which reacts with intestine and colon contents and turns everything to water. Dramatic colon cleansing can be done overnight. My skin cleared up fast. Of course there are much more serious reasons to detox your body.

  20. Sissy Willis Says:

    While your thesis makes perfect theoretical sense, I’m stymied regarding the following — debatable — assertion vs. reality on the ground:

    “Through most of history, plain or ugly women were bad risks for the next round of infectious diseases — and their children, carrying their genes, were too.”

    How do we explain the preponderance of plain and ugly women “out there”?

  21. esr Says:

    >How do we explain the preponderance of plain and ugly women “out there”?

    Why does it need explaining? Suppose it were true that most women are plain or ugly: that would simply mean our perception of ‘beauty’ starts relatively high on the bell curve.

  22. chris Says:

    a hetero male with no desire to procreate? That kinda throws a kink in the theory that the drive to reproduce is the single biggest factor in mate-choosing.

    i think you might be confusing the drive to mate with the drive to reproduce. i think this is the classic ID/EGO conflict that makes male/female interaction so confusing in modern times. i can very easily rationalize not wanting kids (especially since i have two kids already) but cannot so easily rationalize celibacy (at least not the voluntary variety).

    if you buy into the whole psychology of evolution, then the male instinct to mate is deeply rooted in the subconsious. while the desire to conform to western/judeo-christian society by remaining monogamous is a newer (in terms of human evolution) and more conscious (possibly even intellectual) desire. this would explain why men try to be good but can’t help sneaking a peek.

    in other words, our desire to have sex is a vestage of the primordial drive to continue the species. males want sex, though they may not want children as a result. that might expalin why we invented birth control instead of “libido control”.

    in keeping with this line of thought, modern society has created much conflict with our primordial instincts. one is example is the effect that birth control has had on western society. since women have access to birth control now, they do not have to be so selective about their mates, yet female promiscuity is not viewed the same as it’s male counterpart, by both men and women. also, women can choose to have sex for reasons other than reproduction, or satisfying a perceived obligation to a male provider. therefore we are seeing a sort of “male crisis” in terms of sexual prowess and capability. modern women can now have sex for pleasure and can choose to be satisfied by capable and competant lovers, rather than settling for what they married. this means a change in the rules for men, leading them to seek education and/or medical help for impotence or even incompetence.

    there are many more examples of this. women have infinitely more choice now than in the past, and can make more demands now than ever before. i think that this “evolution” of choice will continue to create conflict with both our “traditional” society and our more basic instincts.

  23. Amy Stephen Says:

    Interesting read.

    One question on the whole “reduce it to genetics reasoning” for cheating. What is a woman’s motivation after her ability to bear children is gone? Could there be social reasons for screwing the gardener? Perhaps he was there and he listened and he cared? Maybe her husband was cheating with his cubicle mate — for years — and she just wanted to connect in a personal way with someone — for even just the briefest of moments — just to know she was alive and desirable and appreciated.

    Or, maybe he was hot and they were drunk.

    All of this is, of course, intellectual gymnastics. We may be on the cusp of teleporting , but, we will never master the decision-making process of the human species. There are times, Eric, we do things for illogical reasons! ;-)

    Now, start blogging. This is old stuff and you have more to share, I am quite certain.

  24. Pat R. Says:

    Demographics may yet have to discover whether indeed men want children at all, or how many of them actually do want children.

    The simplest of questions, in theory, to ask, yet, the reticence of men to marry suggest that men are far more into sex than marriage, and far more into marriage than children, based upon the number of men willing to abandon women and children through divorce, etc.

    If reality is that men don’t really want children, and biology doesn’t extend to natural desire to have children, society needs to reckon with whether it is ethical to deprive women of children because of the expense and hardship of single parents.

    With organizations like the man – boy love association, it also seems reasonable to conclude that gender balance needs to consider whether there are enough men to produce children for society. Conceivably, society may have to encourage test tube fertility to meet the demands of women born who do want to have children.

    Since it is mother-child (or parental) love that may well be the strongest procreative instinct in human interpersonal relations, society may need to rethink public policy on the possibility that it isn’t organized to provide for all circumstances, and instead, suffers dysfunction because of basic fundamentals that have never been answered – like – do men really want children?

    That society is managed haphazardly, and with preconceived notions of morality, it’s possible society has yet to reach the degree of human knowledge to be able to plan itself correctly, and is always chasing an illusionary dream of the perfect balance.

    Since resources allocated to the functions of society and how they are distributed is of crucial importance to any society and its success, these fundamentals should not be ignored, but given the greatest credence and possibility. The alternative of deadbeat dad collections is representative of not studying the full range of human potential as well as human practice in anticipating how society can organize itself effectively and efficiently.

    It may also be the result of allowing males only to define gender, biology, morality, and public policy that is biased and fails to consider the alternate gender desires of females or homosexuals.

  25. George Says:

    I have been looking at a lot of articles talking about sexual selection. Perhaps too many for a 21 year-old.
    I often wonder where I stand on the genetic totem pole. Neither side of my face or body is better looking than the other when looked at separately, is this a good thing? It all is giving me quite a scare to be totally honest. Now I don’t know what to think whenever I go and try to talk to women. I know this probably ISN’T the place to discuss such things but this study is broad and doesn’t really talk about individual experiences. It’s all very “zoomed out” (so to speak.) So I just wonder, what if a male is asymmetrical? What then? Is he simply doomed to be removed from the gene pool? Will there come a time where an average or not-so-good-looking man will never be able to have sex simply because he just isn’t symmetrical? The whole thing sorta does have me a bit frightened about what relationships I may develop, assuming I actually have sex ever again in my life.

    But I also wonder, is all of this somehow related to how we are conditioned to look at the world? By this I mean do we see these as reasons for infidelity and justifications because of the culture we live in? I’m talking about the U.S. After reading it all it just makes the world look so brutal and callous. Can human nature be so unforgiving? I mean, for anyone that reads these articles, do any of even think what all this may mean for YOU?

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