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Comment by quantumBerry | Hacker News Reader

A woman takes 9 months to birth a child, and up until very recently had some serious risk during childbirth. The dude just has to shoot his load. This imbalance in reproductive investment predates modern human concept of monogamy.

> if a woman knows she is only ever allowed to have one partner

If each woman and each man can only choose one partner, i would expect the choosiness of men and women to become much more equal, because the reproductive investment of the man and the woman start to look a lot more equal (a lifetime investment for each). In reality we know that humans historically have not really been monogamous creatures, even in societies that are nominally so.

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I was about to quibble with

> Females have a biological incentive to be more choosy than men as their reproductive investment is much higher

until I saw you had also written

> If each woman and each man can only choose one partner, i would expect the choosiness of men and women to become much more equal

which is the missing piece I was going to add.

> In reality we know that humans historically have not really been monogamous creatures, even in societies that are nominally so.

But, to shift emphasis a little, in those societies, many many people really were monogamous, there absolutely were, and are, functioning lifelong pair-bonds, there were men who devoted a lot of themselves to being good husbands and fathers, and, I'd like to think, there still can be. But yes, such men will need to be choosy, because they're making the biggest investment of their lives.

It seems that your definition of "good husbands and fathers" implicitly disallows non-monogamous interactions.

I would bet that men (from couples) who have clear and open communication can be otherwise very loving partners and devoted parents without also having to be monogamous. If you zoom out just a bit and look at what is physically occurring, why should it be that physically touching someone else would prevent you from continuing to be a good parent and partner?

At an individual level, one could be a good husband and father and be non-monogamous. At an individual level, one could also be a good monogamous husband and father. I agree with you there, although I think the expectations for most (but not all) people in western nations is that their wife/husband will be "faithful" in the traditional sense. If most wives expect most husbands to be monogomous, it starts to look like the _average_ person who is "unfaithful" is a "bad" husband by definition of the wife (even if they care deeply for their wife and any children). This also suffers from the network effect that even if the wife is ok with non-monogamy, family and friends could still shame her into being negatively effected by any non-monogamous actions in the marriage.

At a population level, it's hardly even up for debate that humans are not monogamous. This has been researched ad nauseum, although I am too lazy at the moment to dig up the research at the moment.

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