Evolution of the Dad
knowablemagazine.org
knowablemagazine.org
A strange conclusion. After spending the rest of the article describing ways in which dads matter, why would the article pivot to essentially say all methods are equal?
Different circumstances create different pressures and evolve different behaviors. Choosing and socially encouraging the best ones is important. Isn't that being judgemental?
Sure, there's room for variety. But, as a society, you should be somewhat choosey.
I certainly don't see my role with my children as just a babysitter. The partnership with my wife to raise our family is a complex and rich engagement between our strengths and weaknesses to aid in our kids development, not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally among other aspects.
Actually, different people have different strengths.
There may be other factors that we as a society consider beneficial that we wish to promote, that need present and involved fathers, and that's fine. But that doesn't mean a non-involved father is bad for the survival of the child. We currently based societal mores on more than just survival, though, and that is a sign of progress.
Edit to add: I don't know if the results were able to be replicated in non-WEIRD societies.
Even when controlling for other factors (e.g. poverty), fatherless children are more likely to have teenage pregnancies, commit crimes, and drop out of high school.
Yes, single mothers are loving and contagious.
But let's not pretend for political correctness points that everything is equal.
- Fathers (depending on species) can't be confident a given child is theirs. Mothers can be confident due to giving live birth. Fathers have a lower incentive to care for a given child, since expending effort on offspring that's not yours is evolutionary detrimental; everything has an opportunity cost.
- Mothers have a much higher investment in the child from the moment of conception: Due to the extra food they must consume to nourish the embryo, the effects of pregnancy etc. By comparison, sperm is cheap. Neither parent wants to let the child die due to lack of care, but the fathers are in a better position to call the mothers' bluff than vice versa due to the sunk cost.
In case it needs to be explicit: the men in the story are worried that their women may become with another man's child, whereas the women are worried that the man will not remain loyal and help raise their child.
When both of those are in effect, does jealousy dissipate?
> The carrying out of a paternity test outside the legal framework carries penalties ranging from one year's imprisonment to €15,000 fine.
Official source: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F14042?...
But in practice, I expect a paternity test to come in an otherwise troubled relationship, so I don't know how often it happens that both parents would seek to get one.
What’s the gene pool loss if the kid actually isn’t his? Seems to me that that his dating pool will then expand from zero to many. A rational male may think that offering more than 18 years of his life is more significant than not offending someone once.
It's like drawing conclusions about human society based on just watching prison inmates interact.
> He and his men would kill the heads of other clans then force the survivors to join their united “super-clan.”
> Each time he conquered a new clan or people, Genghis Khan would [rape] the women, either to himself or to his head chiefs. This is how he acquired enough wives to father the number of sons necessary to provide the DNA lineage which we know today.
Standard infanticide practice for many primate species. Humans just scale better.
> Yet when it comes to the DNA of Genghis Khan and his descendants, we are fascinated at the possibilities and still seek the “bragging rights” of being a part of his incredible family legacy.
Being descended from a mass rapist isn't something to brag about. And let's not gloss over what those women went through.
Unless the study is controlling for that. Most of these studies only control for sleep deprivation based on self reported questionnaires, where parents are likely to be too optimistic.
Dunno; how many of us agree what makes a good family? "Is everyone there happier and healthier than they would be elsewhere?" would be my question, but a lot of people seem to assume a good family is one that looks like those portrayed on TV.
As for animals; I can speak firsthand of dog packs where junior males have a lot to do with caring for the young, especially the "raise the teenagers" stage. The females of that age tend to stand on dignity and want nothing to do with pups, but the males are willing to be chew toys.
The perfectly describes a non-trivial amount of fatherhood for me — I’m a combination of a mobile jungle gym and a chew toy :D
I think there are things we can broadly agree on. For example, reducing the number of single-parent families or general delinquency. Once we solve those types of issues, we can get into the relative minutae of things like screen time, etc.
What about 3?
Optimising for the individual's happiness or for society "success" conceivably yields different family models.
It’s pretty obvious that an ideal has to account for externalities to be much of one.
Happiness is measured in happiness. We can also measure health.
But “success” is too subjective to matter as a useful metric.
You're staring at the finger, when I'm talking about the moon. [1] I didn't change the criteria, because I don't actually care about the original argument. The person complaining about generalizing is missing the fact that "generally" certain things apply to a general population, and certain things don't. In general, a population gets big enough by being successful. So those certain things that bring success, apply.
As someone raising kids in a city with no community network, no family around, etc - I am acutely aware that it's quite bad for my kids despite my ongoing best efforts.
A supportive community can enrich life so much in ways that an isolated nuclear family probably can't. It can offer things parents can't themselves.
So in isolation, sure, let's talk about what the best family structure can be and we will certainly discover important things. But I think it has to be one which integrates well socially, and allow community in. Without that there is a lot of lost potential.
Just my opinion of course. Perhaps this mostly reflects my own inadequacies, I'm not sure.