Re: Do men really not like to have children?
- From: "John Edser" <edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2007 14:09:22 -0500 (EST)
"Alan Meyer" <ameyer2@xxxxxxxxx>
Paul's argument seems pretty decisive to me. It is absolutely
clear that paternal care for the young is not solely found in
species that have a conceptual understanding of sex and
fatherhood.
JE:-
Hi Alan,
It all depends on reproductive strategies. The number of available
permutations of males-do-this if females-do-that is almost endless.
Mostly, the sexes have evolved _opposing_ reproductive strategies for a good
reason: what the males mostly do the females do not and vice versa because
they both benefit by doing this but not necessarily equally. Only if both
sexes get it right can either sex actually gain, i.e. IOW this is not a Van
Valen war, only competition stimulating cooperation between more specialized
forms. It is rather pointless paying the enormous cost of evolving more
specialized (non hermaphrodite) male and female bodies which demand a 50%
reduction in fecundity because males can't have babes anymore and then go on
to allow males and females to do everything in exactly the same way. Nature
is not so stupid. In humans the males mostly specialize in tribal matters
and the females in family matters. The emotions for sex have evolved
differently for each sex to make this level of specialization to work. The
male _emotional_ experience of sex is predicted to have evolved quite
differently to the female emotional experience because of this type of
intense specialization.
Note also that the ancient polygamy Vs monogamy thing is still operating in
our species because polygamy always favors males over females as far as
increasing fecundity (the reproduction of just immatures) is concerned. If a
male has sex with a 100 females and female has sex with a 100 males, guess
who stands to reproduce the largest number of babies? Of course they have to
be raised to fertile adulthood within one population before they count but
polygamy provides males with a head start over females. Quite obviously sex
is less personal within a polygamous system. The more partners the male has
the less emotional space he can allocate to each so the more he becomes
focused on sexual stimuli. OTOH monogamy favors females over males because
one female gets to use all the resources of a particular male for rearing
her own children to fertile adulthood. Monogamy maximizes personal sex but
forces males to act more like females _reducing_ the gains of gender
specialization.
The male is selected to seek and defend as many females as he can as long as
the mean number of fertile forms raised per female on his patch INCREASES.
If it decreases this does not benefit him because he only ends up working
harder and harder for less and less. OTOH the females are selected to force
other females out of his territory whenever her TOTAL reproductive effort
benefits by it. She is not at all concerned with the reproductive total of
ALL the females under that male, JUST HER OWN reproductive total of fertile
forms per population. This provides a lot of the push and shove anybody can
observe in "Bold And The Beautiful" type of goings on within our own
species. Most of the entertainment industry is devoted to it because this
occupies so much of our emotional space. Nature evolves games like these to
seek out mutualised optimal solutions via competition in the same way that
businesses and consumers in free markets optimize profits to availability.
Please note that even today, making such a comparison remains politically
incorrect because the key function of trade (cognitive mutualised exchange
which remains unique to our species) has been lost in the bitter tribal
politics of Left Vs Right. Competition is required to find the best, i.e.
_optimally opposing_ reproductive strategy. This is one which can
_maximally_ benefit BOTH sexes. The best way to find just about any mutual
optimal solution (interdependent solution) is via a competition of some
kind. Sport is all about understanding this as a play. Don' tell the Looney
Left or the Fascist right such basics because they do not wish to know.
Their preferred solutions is always more top down tribal dictates.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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