Hacker News Reader

> Another such example is polygamy, which mostly results in polygyny because of biological preferences.

I have about 10yr of exposure to friend groups with nonmonogamous lifestyles, and it’s by a long shot the women who are having multiple regular partners and the men who have an occasional fling. And I find just as many women as men choose to adopt that kind of lifestyle. Obviously there are exceptions, but this has been an extremely stable general trend I’ve observed. This is of course caveated by having a small sample size.

That said I think the trope that women only want one sexual partner while men want many is—in my experience—nothing more than that: an outdated, overused trope.

I’d love to see some actual numbers. But what numbers I have seen seem to be easily skewed by the reality that it’s more socially acceptable for men to have more partners (though that stigma is quickly changing).

Polygyny is much, much more common than polyandry.

> Of the 1,231 societies listed in the 1980 Ethnographic Atlas, 186 were found to be monogamous; 453 had occasional polygyny; 588 had more frequent polygyny; and 4 had polyandry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygyny#Findings

I'm not sure historical societies has so much relevance here. I think the real difference with the past is contraceptive.

Of course it has been that way historically, because men have been disproportionately favored by the power structures in those societies. Not to mention the lack of available and effective contraceptives before recent times.

Remove that power imbalance, as we’re getting closer to today, and you see a lot more women choosing multiple partners.

If it is the same in so many cultures, it seems quite likely the difference is not cultural, but biological.

20% or so of adults never get married, so it's hard to imagine that a few age-gap marriages are having any effect on the size of the dating pool.

It's not just "a few". Small to medium sized age gaps are the norm. Most men prefer women of the same to younger age, most women prefer men or the same to older age. In societies with changing fertility, this leads to dating pools being of non-matching size.

Historically, it has never been uncommon for older men to marry (<20yr) age gap women. Browsing the marriage records (ie ancestry.com) reveals just how common.

Yeah. In a growing population this meant that many young women couldn't find partners.

> The reverse problem of fertility vs sex difference in age preference exists in some African countries, where the fertility rate is very high. Which means there are more young people, which means some fraction of young women will not find a partner.

Maybe I’m dumb. I don’t understand how young women will have trouble finding a partner.

It makes little sense. Naturally, there are about 1.07 males born for every 1 female, so there's usually an excess of young men. The OP's statement only makes sense if the young women all insist on finding older, monogamous partners.

Women prefer men of a similar to older age, men prefer women of a similar to younger age. In countries with high fertility, the latter pool is larger than the former. And even when women lower their standards in response, this doesn't solve the problem, as it doesn't cause men to lower their standards.

It's the exact reverse in low fertility countries.

I still don’t get it. The fact that women prefer men of similar age or older … there are plenty of young men of similar age for young women, in fact it’s nearly one to one, then you add in the older men. For young women their suitors outnumber them.

Seems to be young men and elder women will always have a shortage of suitors no matter the population ratio between young and older people. It’s just that the shortage worsens for young men if the ratio leans towards more older people and the shortage worsens for older women when the ratio leans towards more young people.

We are speaking of a society with more younger than older people. For example, there are fewer people aged 30 to 40 than there are people aged 20 to 30. 30 year old men have therefore more choice than 30 year old women.