Evolution and Marriage....

[Hockeycowboy]

Committed relationships between parents and marriage are not the same thing.

Ultimately, what a child needs to grow up to be stable is that there be enough responsible, caring adults so that they don't have to worry about whether they will be able to eat or whether there is someone there in case of an emergency. Having 2 parents that are never around because of jobs isn't enough. But having 2 or 3 responsible adults that are around continually is plenty.

One bad thing about a 2 parent situation is that there are frequently times when both parents need to take care of things other than the kids simultaneously. In that case, a trusted third adult is essential. And yes, it should be one the child is familiar with. So it is much better to raise a child in a *community* of many responsible adults that are all known to the children and looking out for them. That way, emergencies, which will always happen, won't be as traumatic.

Really? That’s what you believe? Just curious, are you and others right now taking some responsibility for raising children in your local community? Most people I know say, “Thatts the parent’s job.”

I don’t see that happening in communities.

Besides, children really need to experience love, not just have their physical needs alone supplied.

As a proverb says, “Better is a dish of vegetables, where there is love, than a banquet of meat in a house without it.”

 

[Shadow Wolf]

It does help having a model of a man and a model of a woman close at hand for a child in a non threatening way that ill help them navigate life and relate to the world eventually as it grows

It does them better if we don't get all instant and adamant that this is what a man is/does and this is what a woman is/does. They'll get the general cultural norms from nothing more than socialization. But saying it must be this way and that, it's why men in contemporary Western society are more likely to die of a terminal illness and for women anorexia nervosa grew out of the unrealistic beauty standards and expectations.

 

[suncowiam]

I'm married and it's been good on our taxes.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Really? That’s what you believe? Just curious, are you and others right now taking some responsibility for raising children in your local community?

I'll do you one better: It's my job to help families work things out as a family and work for what is best for their children.

 

[NewGuyOnTheBlock]

Let's back up.

Evolution and Marriage have nothing to do with each other.

Evolution is not a philosophy, a religion, or a moral construct. It gives us no guide on how one is to live our lives.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

I'll do you one better: It's my job to help families work things out as a family and work for what is best for their children.

That’s a great occupation! More people need to have an interest in social programs that help families!

Good for you!

 

[Polymath257]

Really? That’s what you believe? Just curious, are you and others right now taking some responsibility for raising children in your local community? Most people I know say, “Thatts the parent’s job.”

I don’t see that happening in communities.

Besides, children really need to experience love, not just have their physical needs alone supplied.

As a proverb says, “Better is a dish of vegetables, where there is love, than a banquet of meat in a house without it.”

When I was raising my daughter, we were part of a small community of parents that did co-parenting. The children played together and knew the adults. We would regularly eat at each other's homes, and help take care of the children.

Children do better in extended families. Sometimes the adults have to create that.

NOW, back to promiscuity and marriage. They have *nothing* to do with child raising. Whether, and to whom, the adults are married and whether, or with whom they have sex, is irrelevant to child care.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Really? That’s what you believe? Just curious, are you and others right now taking some responsibility for raising children in your local community? Most people I know say, “Thatts the parent’s job.”

I don’t see that happening in communities.

Besides, children really need to experience love, not just have their physical needs alone supplied.

As a proverb says, “Better is a dish of vegetables, where there is love, than a banquet of meat in a house without it.”

It happens in my community. I am an aunt and a "back up mom" to my sister's two children. I took care of both of them every day when they were babies, while my sister finished school. My mother plays a large role in their lives as well. When I was growing up, my grandparents (all 4 of them) had rather large roles to play in our lives as well.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

It happens in my community. I am an aunt and a "back up mom" to my sister's two children. I took care of both of them every day when they were babies, while my sister finished school. My mother plays a large role in their lives as well. When I was growing up, my grandparents (all 4 of them) had rather large roles to play in our lives as well.

That’s great! It’s wonderful to have family members who are so caring.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Since humans today seem inclined to lead promiscuous lives, is this evolution? Or is it directly linked to a growing disrespect for the Bible? And how and why did marriage ever get to be so popular worldwide to begin with? The practice of marriage is observed among many cultures, even those that never had the Bible's influence in their society.

And is marriage a bad thing? I mean, if humans are evolving without needing it; it apparently is the way modern culture is heading.

People of some cultures may be more openly promiscuous, but I doubt that people in historical communities were all that less promiscuous. Sure there are some that clearly are more rigid in their sexuality, even today, but overall, we are just more people doing what people have always done. It impacts evolution, but it isn't evolution. It is culture.

That's a good question. I don't know. Certainly, property rights, sexual dominance and security had some role in the practice as well as religious reasons. It is one way to ensure that the children are the offspring of a particular male, not 100%, but better than nothing. It is a way to distribute wealth, power and privilege.

I don't think it is a bad thing. I don't think it is for everyone. It is a learned behavior and not a trait that evolves although there may be people with traits that make marriage more desirable or less depending on the traits they have.

It sounds like you are overthinking this and attributing genetic traits to people about a cultural phenomenon that people just don't have. You might as well choose preference for a favorite color. There is as much cultural reasoning for that as there is genetic preference. Probably there is more genetic preference for color than their are genetic traits driving one to marry or not.

In general, I think the human desire for sex and procreation and human cultures have more to do with marriage than anything else.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

It's a very stable and useful mating strategy.

I think so. It has advantages for both the man and the woman. As well as disadvantages for both, but some of those are relative. If you don't want just a single partner, being married would be a disadvantage to that, but it hasn't stopped people, so it isn't a big hurdle.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Yes of course it is. Everything is evolution. We can talk about the advantages and disadvantages of promiscuity vs monogamous marriage (which has not been the norm in many religious cultures for all that long anyway) but the driver is evolutionary fitness and generally one partner (at least at a time) seems to work reasonably well for our species. Bonobos have a different approach. The long childhood of humans also makes it advantageous to share the load of bringing up baby but in most cultures that used to be a much broader spread involving extended family ties - the western notion of the 'nuclear family' is a relatively recent adaptation arising from our economic success over recent centuries. In evolutionary terms that success is just part of the evolving 'environment' in which the evolution of our species continues.

I'm not sure I would call it evolution. It could be the result of evolution of traits related to social behavior and reproduction, but I think it is more of a cultural phenomenon. Marriage certainly is.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Pair bonds are found in many species. Formalizing that is something to be expected by an organized society. Since there is no reason to think there is a genetic change going on, any changes are NOT due to evolution.

That is what I think as well. It may arise from traits that have evolved, but formalized marriage is a cultural construct. Promiscuity too, may be a behavioral trait that has evolved, but acting on it, is an individual choice that may be effected by how a culture perceives and governs the activity.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Because human children take such a long time to mature (at 72, I'm still a "work in progress"), and since they are dependent on both physical and mental care, marriage of one form or another would have been a logical trend. However, our closest relative is the chimp, and they are promiscuous, which seems to suggest that this latter basic similar drive still resides within us as Freud pointed out with his concept of "id". But since our behavior is more learned than instinctive, most have learned to restrain the promiscuous drive.

That's a great point I hadn't considered yet. Marriage certainly makes child rearing more stable. I'm not sure how much of it is learned and how much is hard wired. I suppose the debate on that is ongoing. I remember reading once that the biggest hurdle to infidelity for many people is opportunity. If you don't get the opportunity, you aren't going to cheat. That's a generalization, because some will seek out opportunity and some will decline it when offered, but overall, many of us just don't always get the opportunity or it isn't feasible when offered.

 

[Polymath257]

That's a great point I hadn't considered yet. Marriage certainly makes child rearing more stable. I'm not sure how much of it is learned and how much is hard wired. I suppose the debate on that is ongoing. I remember reading once that the biggest hurdle to infidelity for many people is opportunity. If you don't get the opportunity, you aren't going to cheat. That's a generalization, because some will seek out opportunity and some will decline it when offered, but overall, many of us just don't always get the opportunity or it isn't feasible when offered.

I'm curious how multi-generational living arrangements impacted the child rearing aspects here. In that context, marriage isn't so much about raising children as it is about forming alliances. There will always be plenty of aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc to raise the children if you have an extended family. But making good connections could easily affect overall survival.

 

[metis]

I'm curious how multi-generational living arrangements impacted the child rearing aspects here.

Back during the hippie days, there was a study done on the children that came out of these communes, many of them believe and participating in "free love". What they found was that the children by and large came out quite well, and the main reason is that the children always got plenty of attention. Another study done with the kibbutzes in Israel found much the same.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I'm curious how multi-generational living arrangements impacted the child rearing aspects here. In that context, marriage isn't so much about raising children as it is about forming alliances. There will always be plenty of aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc to raise the children if you have an extended family. But making good connections could easily affect overall survival.

I may be out of date in my reading, but in human society it is advantageous for a woman to have a committed mate to help raise children and ensure their successful rearing. It may be that alliances are a selection pressure to drive that protection of genes in the progeny. Having additional relatives to help also ensures ones own fitness as well as the relatives. They may not be preserving their genes directly but they would be protecting some of the same genes in the offspring of their relatives. I think that making connections is important to overall survival and to fitness as well. It seems to be the driving force behind a lot of our social behaviors.

 

[Polymath257]

I may be out of date in my reading, but in human society it is advantageous for a woman to have a committed mate to help raise children and ensure their successful rearing. It may be that alliances are a selection pressure to drive that protection of genes in the progeny. Having additional relatives to help also ensures ones own fitness as well as the relatives. They may not be preserving their genes directly but they would be protecting some of the same genes in the offspring of their relatives. I think that making connections is important to overall survival and to fitness as well. It seems to be the driving force behind a lot of our social behaviors.

Agreed. It just seems that many focus on the nuclear family as the norm, even though historically it is far from being so.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The title of the video says it all:

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Agreed. It just seems that many focus on the nuclear family as the norm, even though historically it is far from being so.

I agree with you too. I think family is by relationship of heritage but also by choice, action and situation. People have raised children that aren't even their own just fine. I hope we are moving past the idea that a family has to be the nuclear family as the only possibility or as the archetype.