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Are Humans Naturally Monogamous?
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
DallasApple
Depends Upon My Mood..
But that was not to the exclusion that the woman needs to know his energy and strenght is devoted to her children and her children only.Not diluted and divided out.
I clarified when you brought up polygny.
Both the male and the female have a benefit/instinct to monogomy is all Im saying.Not just the male.They just have different reasons.IMHO
Love
Dallas
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Elessar
Well-Known Member
I believe, biologically, we are driven to establish a family situation which will best create and provide for children who will go on to reproduce. Both monogamy and polygamy can provide this, and neither one is more biologically driven than the other. I think monogamy and polygamy are more driven by other factors, such as the disparity between genders in a community, the availability of resources. A monogamous situation develops from a society in which there is a roughly equal number of men and women, and a smaller number of resources (meaning that a family can't provide for more than so many children). Of course, existing social ideas prevail even in situations after this has changed, thus monogamy continues even in areas where a polygamous situation would possibly be more advantageous.
Ozzie
Well-Known Member
Well I am, but I'm only human.
Quite true, but irrelevant.
Dunemeister
Well-Known Member
Why so? (The irrelevant part, I mean.)
Zatarra
Dauphin
Which part is irrelevant? And if so, so what? I'm not arguing with anyone.
Smoke
Done here.
No. It's often thought that women are naturally monogamous while men are not, but that seems to be a misconception held over from Victorian ideas about women's sexuality. A substantial percentage of women prefer to have sex with men who are not at all the kind of men they prefer to marry. They prefer a nice, steady, responsible guy as a provider, but like the "bad boys" as sexual partners. (Which is actually not a bad breeding strategy for either the "bad boys" or their female partners.) It's hard to arrive at definite numbers, but some researchers estimate that between 5% and 15% of births are "non-paternity events," i.e., the putative father is not the biological father.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
So when a girl asks "So when are we going to get married?" It should be taken as an insult?
And if I were in a situation were I was betrayed, deceived and manipulated into raising some another man's little snotling, I would adopt the lion's instinct toward such a situation and make a meal of it. 
painted wolf
Grey Muzzle
I don't think we are as a default. There have been very few strictly monogamist cultures in human history. Those that are, are as monogamist as any other species that pair bonds. (Cheating is fairly common.)
wa:do
wa:do
Good point! There is also physiological evidence that we did not evolve to be monogamous. For instance, there's some chance the penis evolved its size and shape in order to counteract cheating. That is, studies have shown that because of its size and shape, it functions as an efficient pump for removing a competitor's seamen from a vagina.
Again, in apes, the size of the male testicles correlate with the likelihood of being cuckolded. Human testicles place us just beneath the promiscuous bonobo in our likelihood of being cuckolded.
Moreover, sperm production in humans increases under circumstances when there is some chance the male has been cuckolded.
All of these facts, and many others, point to a species that evolved in a less than monogamous environment. At least one biologist, Alison Jolly, who specializes in primates, has estimated that men and women each evolved to have 1 to 3 partners at a time! This is a far cry from the notion that we evolved to be serially monogamous or monogamous (period).
The 5% to 15% figure is generally accepted by biologists, so far as I know. However, it seems the actual percentage depends to a large extent on location and local custom. One village in Wales, for instance, had a cuckold rate of around 30% as established by genetic testing.
I was just remarking that the op asks whether monogamy is (biologically) natural to humans, rather than whether it should or ought to be the case with humans. It is very easy to turn a question of fact into a moral question, but I would prefer we didn't do that in this thread. So, I was trying to head off a discussion of the morality of monogamy.
When biologists talk about a reproductive strategy, they are not referring to something people sit down and think through before acting on. Pair bonding is a reproductive strategy in humans -- one of several reproductive strategies humans employ -- but pair bonding is not something people really need to think about on all levels in order to accomplish. Our brains have evolved to encourage us to pair bond. Over 96% percent of us will do so at least once by the time we are 60 years old.
Do you need to sit down and make a conscious choice to fall in love with someone? Of course not. These things are instinctual.
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Guitar's Cry
Disciple of Pan
Even if we are (which I think may not be the case), we appear to divulge in polygamous behavior now, and I see nothing wrong with it.
If we had evolved not to cheat, women (and men) might not find anyone attractive other than their spouses. Of course, you are right that a conscious choice can override an instinct to cheat.
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Smoke
Done here.
Not at all; she loves you for your mind.So when a girl asks "So when are we going to get married?" It should be taken as an insult?
Obviously, not all heterosexual women behave that way. But a lot of them do.
Part of it might be that we evolved in different circumstances than we now live in. If a woman instinctively prefers a partner who is physically fit and aggressive -- the successful hunter and warrior -- her instinct is at odds with what she knows a good provider to be in our society. Most of the time, the high school computer geek is more likely to turn out to be a good provider than the high school football player. (Unless the football player turns out to be Deion Sanders.)
We're also taught to prefer the aggressive, impulsive man to the quiet, thoughtful man. We grow up on westerns and action movies, where the hero wins by physical daring. Real men don't back down from a fight. Real men don't eat quiche. Our culture constantly sends messages that it makes sense to turn down Bill Gates for a shot at the guy who's destined for 25 to life in prison.
It all adds up to the straight man's lament: Women always say they want a sensitive guy, but they don't respect a sensitive guy.
Sure, take it out on the kid.And if I were in a situation were I was betrayed, deceived and manipulated into raising some another man's little snotling, I would adopt the lion's instinct toward such a situation and make a meal of it.
Smoke
Done here.
Roughly half of married people in the U.S. admit to having committed adultery, so there's no telling how many actually do it. I do know that since DNA testing has become more popular and more available, genealogists are no longer surprised to find "non-paternity events" in the lines they're researching. I have reason to doubt the paternity of my 2nd-great-grandmother, but I can't figure out how to test for that at this point.
I've come to suspect the straight man's lament more accurately applies to young and inexperienced women than to older and more experienced women.