RE: Is long term monogamy unnatural for human beings?
April 4, 2018 at 1:32 pm
(This post was last modified: April 4, 2018 at 1:42 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Evolutionary pressures produced monogamy and promiscuity. The relative advantage to either strategy isn't something that can be determined in advance, and an environment can favor monogamy over promiscuity just as easily as it can favor promiscuity over monogamy, shift back and forth between the two, or allow a niche for both.
That some part of a population engages in a different set of behaviors doesn;t make those behaviors or individuals "unnatural" in any evolutionary sense. It makes them a divergent strategy that may (or may not) become dominant in the next iteration of that pop..depending on how well represented they become.
The first amphibian wasn;t "unnatural". The first bird wasn;t "unnatural". They were different than most of their peers....but, terrestrial and avian life seems to have been a good bet among many bets, in retrospect. Monogamy, similarly, confers advantages in environments where promiscuity does not, and even in environments where promiscuity is an equally viable strategy (vv also the case).
We produce relatively helpless offspring with a long wait to adulthood. This alone is enough of a reason for some of us to be monogamous. We could throw hundreds of children into the meatgrinder..and we do..but we could also invest heavily in those offspring we have..and that..in human beings, is an enterprise that can exceed our own reproductive viability. Some of us just don't have any kids left in us when we're done with the first batch.
That some part of a population engages in a different set of behaviors doesn;t make those behaviors or individuals "unnatural" in any evolutionary sense. It makes them a divergent strategy that may (or may not) become dominant in the next iteration of that pop..depending on how well represented they become.
The first amphibian wasn;t "unnatural". The first bird wasn;t "unnatural". They were different than most of their peers....but, terrestrial and avian life seems to have been a good bet among many bets, in retrospect. Monogamy, similarly, confers advantages in environments where promiscuity does not, and even in environments where promiscuity is an equally viable strategy (vv also the case).
We produce relatively helpless offspring with a long wait to adulthood. This alone is enough of a reason for some of us to be monogamous. We could throw hundreds of children into the meatgrinder..and we do..but we could also invest heavily in those offspring we have..and that..in human beings, is an enterprise that can exceed our own reproductive viability. Some of us just don't have any kids left in us when we're done with the first batch.
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