The recent talk about pairbonding at the Pacific Science Center made me reread an even better article, Is There Anything Good About Men? by Prof. Roy Baumeister of Florida State University.
Though DNA analysis (for example, comparing the genetic variability in the Y chromosome – inherited from the father, vs. mitochondrial DNA – inherited from the mother), scientists have found that we’re descended from about twice as many women as men.
In other words, historically, the reproductive situation was vastly different for women and men. While the average women will have the opportunity to have children, men had to do much more to differentiate themselves to end up in the select group of “reproducers”.
For men, the outlook was radically different. If you go along with the crowd and play it safe, the odds are you won’t have children. Most men who ever lived did not have descendants who are alive today. Their lines were dead ends. Hence it was necessary to take chances, try new things, be creative, explore other possibilities. Sailing off into the unknown may be risky, and you might drown or be killed or whatever, but then again if you stay home you won’t reproduce anyway. We’re most descended from the type of men who made the risky voyage and managed to come back rich. In that case he would finally get a good chance to pass on his genes. We’re descended from men who took chances (and were lucky).
So high variance in male traits and behaviors is much more highly rewarded than high variance in female traits and behaviors. And this is where statistics makes things interesting:
A pattern of more men at both extremes can create all sorts of misleading conclusions and other statistical mischief. To illustrate, let’s assume that men and women are on average exactly equal in every relevant respect, but more men at both extremes. If you then measure things that are bounded at one end, it screws up the data to make men and women seem significantly different.
Consider grade point average in college. Thanks to grade inflation, most students now get A’s and B’s, but a few range all the way down to F. With that kind of low ceiling, the high-achieving males cannot pull up the male average, but the loser males will pull it down. The result will be that women will get higher average grades than men – again despite no difference in average quality of work.
The opposite result comes with salaries. There is a minimum wage but no maximum. Hence the high-achieving men can pull the male average up while the low-achieving ones can’t pull it down. The result? Men will get higher average salaries than women, even if there is no average difference on any relevant input.
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Yeah, so, the current legal climate favors two types of men: 1. those willing to more or less indenture themselves to financial servitude, or 2. men who don’t care and have nothing to lose.
A vast majority of the single men I know can’t find one positive benefit for marriage under current conditions. Since they are also otherwise very responsible men, they may not reproduce.
Seems to me, these men are the men society should be encouraging to reproduce.
It’s not inability to “commit” either… just refusal to commit to lifelong financial servitude in a system constructed to plunder their wealth, something against their long term material interests.
The men who don’t care father lots of children but aren’t fathers to any of them.
In a way, you make a case for ADHD. Somewhere I read the evolutionary reason for AHDH.Somebody has to cross the Rockies in a wagon . . . in winter :)