Skipping Spouse to Spouse Isn’t Just a Man’s Game

[groovedaddy]

In the United States and much of the Western world, when a couple divorces, the average income of the woman and her dependent children often plunges by 20 percent or more, while that of her now unfettered ex, who had been the family’s primary breadwinner but who rarely ends up paying in child support what he had contributed to the household till, climbs accordingly. The born-again bachelor is therefore perfectly positioned to attract a new, younger wife and begin building another family.

Small wonder that many Darwinian-minded observers of human mating customs have long contended that serial monogamy is really just a socially sanctioned version of harem-building. By this conventional evolutionary psychology script, the man who skips from one nubile spouse to another over time is, like the sultan who hoards the local maidenry in a single convenient location, simply seeking to “maximize his reproductive fitness,” to sire as many children as possible with as many wives as possible. It is the preferred male strategy, especially for powerful men, right? Sequentially or synchronously, he-men consort polygynously.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/science/01angi.html?th&emc=th

[Forkboy]

1. I predict good things for this thread.

[skygazer]

2. It has been shown that birds who were once thought to be strictly monogamous

are actually not. Testing of their eggs revealed them to be fertilized by several males of the species rather than the single mate as was formerly thought to be the case. This has been seen in other species as well, suggesting that for females "maximizing their reproductive fitness" means mating with several different males rather than restricting her sexual choice to one.

Females, however, seem to do so in a way that is not apparent to the observer and only DNA testing reveals the true paternity of her offspring. In this way, she gains the security of a mate for protection and help in raising her young but she increases the genetic diversity of her young.

In other words, just as people can find biological reasons to justify abandoning a spouse, you can find them to justify sneaking around behind their backs. :P

[PVnRT]

3. .

[sarge43]

4. Is anyone making popcorn?

:nuke::popcorn: