Is Monogamy Natural? (AlterNet)

[marmar]

Is Monogamy Natural?

By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet. Posted July 25, 2007.



A lifetime of love versus a quick roll with a stranger. It's funny how we can have two seemingly opposite urges at the same time.

A hot naked chick hit on Joe Quirk at Burning Man. That's what he calls her: a hot naked chick. He's married. But his wife wasn't there.

"I was in the middle of a desert," he remembers. "Nobody would ever know."

It's funny how we can have two seemingly opposite urges at the same time. A lifetime of love. A quick roll with a total stranger.

He said no.

Because he loves his wife. Because he wouldn't want to ruin his life by losing her. But choices such as the one he made that day on the sand aren't totally matters of morality. They're not about cartoon angels and devils sparring on our shoulders.

They're science talking.

Vaunted in the mainstream media, two new reports from the Pew Research Center report and the National Survey of Families and Households indicate that couples become bored and unhappy sooner than was previously thought: more like three years into their togetherness than seven.

Well, sure, says Quirk, whose book Sperm Are from Men, Eggs Are from Women (Running Press, 2006) details what he calls "the science of relationships." A three-year itch makes plain biological sense, he says.

"This is when your genes are saying, in effect, 'No child has been produced. Move on.'" In relationship matters, Quirk says,"we tend to consult our feelings. Well, where do our feelings come from? Emotions are instincts. Lust is an instinct. Marriage is an instinct."

Sometimes those two collude. Sometimes they collide. But among heterosexuals at least, both indiscriminate lust and what biologists call the pair-bond are hyperpowered programs streamlined through millions of years of evolution to produce one paramount result: offspring, preferably those who will live long enough to reproduce. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/sex/57724/

[Tom Joad]

1. it seems so, because so many are in one monogamous relationship after another.

sometimes people are involved in two monogamous relationships at the same time!

[USA_1]

2. Monogamy? Not According to the Bible ...

In Isaiah 4:1 we see seven women approaching a man for marriage and each comes with her own dowry. Nothing in the Bible overrules this.

Thus, the Mormons got it right the first time!

[MADem]

3. What's "natural" really? iPods aren't "natural" -- neither are Twinkies.

But humans are attracted to them.

This bit was interesting:

Everywhere we look (even on the Hallmark Channel), we are reminded again and again that the U.S. divorce rate is a staggering 50 percent. So, see? Why bother? Kipnis seizes on that statistic too. Actually, it's closer to .38 percent per capita per year, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau and National Center for Health Statistics figures. This means about four out of every 1,000 Americans -- or 1 in 250 -- will get divorced every year. And that's the lowest it's been since 1970, marking a steady decline -- down from .48 percent in 1992. While .38 percent might seem minuscule, year by year, a married person's odds of getting divorced will add up, so that eventually half of all American marriages fail. But divorce statistics are notoriously open to interpretation, and competing ideological camps post varying claims about what the raw numbers mean. According to a report released by Rutgers University's National Marriage Project, 43 percent of first marriages end in divorce, not 50 percent -- an improvement over percentages in past decades.

One reason that fewer marriages fail these days is that fewer of us rush into them. Or even tie the knot at all. Since 1970, the U.S. marriage rate has plummeted by around thirty percent, according to the Rutgers report. Changing social mores have removed the stigma from what used to be called "living in sin." The number of unmarried cohabitating American couples has mushroomed since 1970 by over 1,000 percent, according to the Rutgers report. But statisticians don't keep track of failed cohabitations and boyfriend-girlfriend breakups.

Which in turn doesn't mean that we aren't mostly monogamous.

"I'm reluctant to say that something like monogamy could be genetically determined," says Gordy Slack, author of The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA (Jossey-Bass, 2007). "But humans are incredibly adaptable; our adaptability is one of the reasons for our success as a species. We evolve cultures that are specific to different times and places, different environments. In some of these situations, monogamy is appropriate and has great adaptive value. In others, it would be cultural suicide." Spinning a scenario that evokes the 1970s sex-fantasy sci-fi flicks Zardoz and A Boy and His Dog, he describes a theoretical population that has for one reason or another been reduced to several women and just one man. Monogamy, Slack points out, "would be the end of that little society."

[Sherman A1]

4. Agreed and Well Said.

However, I do take great exception to the thought that Twinkies are not Natural. Next someone will tell me that Santa isn't real and I just won't accept that at all.


.:toast:

[xchrom]

5. personally -- i don't do monogamy.

and this was an interesting read.

i think what has affected marriage and the divorce rate is is choice -- specifically romantic choice.

the sixties removed the last vestiges of parental, village grannies and gramps, match makers, aunts and uncles having any say so regarding who we picked as our partner.

and so we picked solely based on love.

and well -- that's probably going to be a 50-50 success rate no matter what.

people make mistakes, things change, etc.

the biggest problem we have now -- is other people manipulating all of us over how terrible the divorce rate is.

[Behind the Aegis]

6. Is it natural?

Well, given that it does occur in nature, I will say it is natural. The real question should be: Is monogamy the norm? Again, turning to nature, monogamy is far from the norm, even in the human animal. Monogamy has its benefits, but so do other forms of partnering.