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Science Forum Index » Bio Evolution Forum » Do men really not like to have children?
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| Guest |
 Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2007 8:50 am |
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I've heard people say that men dont want children. They just want to
have sex. I guess ideally they would like to impregnate a woman and
move on and not be burdened by raising the child. |
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| g |
| Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2007 10:32 am |
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<pakihaki22@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:eor3tg$9p3$1@darwin.ediacara.org...
Quote: I've heard people say that men dont want children. They just want to
have sex. I guess ideally they would like to impregnate a woman and
move on and not be burdened by raising the child.
There is a story, told as an actual case, of a group of the most learned
scholars who gathered together, centuries ago, to settle some questions.
The question came up of how many teeth a horse has.
Much debate went on as to why a horse has this many or that many or some
other many teeth.
A young man who was not a known scholar, was sitting in the back of the
auditorium squirming in his seat until finally, after the debate had dragged
on for hours, he stood up and asked to be recognized.
Reluctantly the head scholar in charge finally asked the young man what he
wanted and the young man said, "There are some horses hitched to a rail
outside. Why don't you just go out and COUNT THEIR TEETH?
As the story goes -- the young man was pounced upon and beaten severely
before being thrown bodily out of the auditorium.
Now... to the point.
If someone wants to debate about whether "men" want or don't want children,
why in the hell don't we just flipping ASK some of them.
My answer? Yes, I wanted mine. I later had some second thoughts when they
were teenagers. Now they've sort of gotten their lives in order and are
pretty enjoyable to have visit and bring the grandchildren who -- sometimes
make me wonder how their parents let them interrupt me every time I open my
mouth. But, when they are asleep, they're kind of sweet and cute.
So, if this question is not totally facetious, now you can go and ask a
representative sampling of men. I predict you will get some yays and some
nays. Then you can add them up and tell us the ratio of yays to nays.
Meantime,
why in blazes would you think it a question best asked in a bio-evo
discussion?
Am I missing something here? Or is the asker?
g |
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| John Edser |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 10:02 am |
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Quote: Now... to the point.
If someone wants to debate about whether "men" want or don't want
children,
why in the hell don't we just flipping ASK some of them.
My answer? Yes, I wanted mine. I later had some second thoughts when
they
were teenagers.
JE:-
Gil,
Your test cannot separate: Do the MAJORITY men only SAY they want to have
children just to enable themselves to have sexual contact with a women/women
of their choice.
OR
Do the MAJORITY of men want children and would have them even if it meant
not having any sexual contact with women/women of their choice?
I would argue that this could be settled by the following empirical fact:
Men do not queue up in their millions to donate sperm, pushing and shoving
to get to the head of the queue. I would say that this would change
overnight if the sperm donation process included being "stimulated" by some
nubile young thing and would halt almost entirely if it meant being
stimulated by a female deemed old and ugly. In both cases the net counter
reaction by irate females would probably burn down the sperm banks! In
short: males are emotionally programmed to care more about sexual contact
than its reproductive result but women are not. Men are predicted to become
more emotionally involved in their children after they enter puberty because
mostly, men run the tribe and women run the family (there are always
exceptions). Ask yourself: why are so few women are interested in
evolutionary theory? Females more than males remain in charge of human
reproduction but males more than females remain in charge of the tribal
pecking orders which facilitate it. The fact that we continually fail to
acknowledge these biological basics is to _everybody's_ detriment (male and
female). Things will only change overnight when we reinvent growing the
fetus outside of the body, i.e. the egg (growing babies in bottles). The
shock horror that this can provoke at dinner parties is always a welcome
relief from continues Looney Left rhetoric which has come to dominate most
discussions on female rights.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher.
edser@ozemail.com.au |
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| Stephen |
| Posted: Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:25 pm |
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pakihaki22@yahoo.ca wrote:
Quote: I've heard people say that men dont want children. They just want to
have sex. I guess ideally they would like to impregnate a woman and
move on and not be burdened by raising the child.
120.000 years ago men did not make the connection between sex and
children, so they only wanted sex. Thats why men dont antecipate
childreens needs, we were not selected for these traits.
Somewhere between 120.000 BC to 10.000 BC men made the connection, and
started a movement to become real fathers to their real children. They
started matting preferentially with one woman, and those with
"fatherly"insticts were select For. Matriaarchy slowly moved to
Patriarchy, monogamy slowly replaced plurigamy- no fixed partners.
Its the Cads versus Dads theory, and I am trying to detemine what
percentage of men fall in each category. My estimate so far is 90%
Dads, 10% Cads.
Anyone thought alonf these lines ?
Stephen Kanitz veja@kanitz.com.br |
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| Paul Crowley |
| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:33 am |
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"Stephen" <veja@kanitz.com.br> wrote in message news:ep3v6q$obo$1@darwin.ediacara.org...
Quote:
pakihaki22@yahoo.ca wrote:
I've heard people say that men dont want children. They just want to
have sex. I guess ideally they would like to impregnate a woman and
move on and not be burdened by raising the child.
120.000 years ago men did not make the connection between sex and
children,
You were there? That's how you know?
Quote: so they only wanted sex.
There are NUMEROUS species where males
take a huge part in the care of their offspring.
Take a look at, say, Emperor Penguins.
Quote: Thats why men dont antecipate
childreens needs, we were not selected for these traits.
Speak for yourself.
Quote: Somewhere between 120.000 BC to 10.000 BC men made the connection, and
started a movement to become real fathers to their real children.
Are you saying that all those males of other
species which take an active part in the rearing
of their young, or which take huge physical
risks in defending them, have also made the
connection between copulation and fatherhood?
Quote: They
started matting preferentially with one woman, and those with
"fatherly"insticts were select
Does this logic apply to all monogamous species?
If not, and there is some alternative system,
might not that apply to the hominid line?
Paul. |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2007 10:33 am |
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I would que up at sperm banks but Im too shy to masturbate in public
area. To me , life is about getting your genes into the next
generation. I want chinese people adopting and raising my white genes
not the reverse.
[moderator's note: While repugnant, this seems to me to be at least
marginally relevant, so with some trepidation, I've approved it. - JAH]
John Edser wrote:
Quote: Now... to the point.
If someone wants to debate about whether "men" want or don't want
children,
why in the hell don't we just flipping ASK some of them.
My answer? Yes, I wanted mine. I later had some second thoughts when
they
were teenagers.
JE:-
Gil,
Your test cannot separate: Do the MAJORITY men only SAY they want to have
children just to enable themselves to have sexual contact with a women/women
of their choice.
OR
Do the MAJORITY of men want children and would have them even if it meant
not having any sexual contact with women/women of their choice?
I would argue that this could be settled by the following empirical fact:
Men do not queue up in their millions to donate sperm, pushing and shoving
to get to the head of the queue. I would say that this would change
overnight if the sperm donation process included being "stimulated" by some
nubile young thing and would halt almost entirely if it meant being
stimulated by a female deemed old and ugly. In both cases the net counter
reaction by irate females would probably burn down the sperm banks! In
short: males are emotionally programmed to care more about sexual contact
than its reproductive result but women are not. Men are predicted to become
more emotionally involved in their children after they enter puberty because
mostly, men run the tribe and women run the family (there are always
exceptions). Ask yourself: why are so few women are interested in
evolutionary theory? Females more than males remain in charge of human
reproduction but males more than females remain in charge of the tribal
pecking orders which facilitate it. The fact that we continually fail to
acknowledge these biological basics is to _everybody's_ detriment (male and
female). Things will only change overnight when we reinvent growing the
fetus outside of the body, i.e. the egg (growing babies in bottles). The
shock horror that this can provoke at dinner parties is always a welcome
relief from continues Looney Left rhetoric which has come to dominate most
discussions on female rights.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher.
edser@ozemail.com.au |
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| Alan Meyer |
| Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 7:38 am |
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Paul's argument seems pretty decisive to me. It is absolutely
clear that paternal care for the young is not solely found in
species that have a conceptual understanding of sex and
fatherhood.
Also, it seems to me a fallacy to think we can answer the original
poster's question by taking a poll among contemporary
Americans or Frenchmen, or whoever.
Parenthood is more complicated in some ways among humans
than in other animal populations. There is a huge cultural
component to it. It seems likely that the obligations of
fatherhood were very different in 21st century U.S., the Mongol
Empire, the Aztec Empire, ancient Athens, feudal England, the
Iroquois nation, and so on.
Questions about fatherhood are therefore anthropological and
historical as well as biological.
Alan |
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| Alan Meyer |
| Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 7:38 am |
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On Jan 22, 3:02 pm, "John Edser" <e...@ozemail.com.au> wrote:
Quote: ... Ask yourself: why are so few women are interested in
evolutionary theory? ...
Careful John. I've met some women who were very serious
experts in evolutionary theory. Some were professors of the
subject. It's not clear at all to me that men are more interested
in it, or better at it.
Alan |
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| Tim Tyler |
| Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 7:38 am |
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| Tim Tyler |
| Posted: Wed Jan 24, 2007 7:38 am |
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Stephen wrote:
Quote: pakihaki22@yahoo.ca wrote:
I've heard people say that men dont want children. They just want to
have sex. I guess ideally they would like to impregnate a woman and
move on and not be burdened by raising the child.
120.000 years ago men did not make the connection between sex and
children, so they only wanted sex. Thats why men dont antecipate
childreens needs, we were not selected for these traits.
Somewhere between 120.000 BC to 10.000 BC men made the connection, and
started a movement to become real fathers to their real children. They
started matting preferentially with one woman, and those with
"fatherly"insticts were select For. Matriaarchy slowly moved to
Patriarchy, monogamy slowly replaced plurigamy- no fixed partners.
IMO, the basic story is that human brains got bigger - and so females:
* face a longer dependency period - and a greater parental burden;
* have increased quick-wittedness, so they were more able to:
* adopt stratagems to encourage their mates to stay around;
* became better able to identify mates who would offer
much-needed parental investment;
Of course males also got better at deceiving females about
their intentions, resulting in an arms race, leading to
even larger brain capacities.
However, simultaneously, communication skills - and the
resulting gossip - helped communities label males who
had previously acted deceptively - making it harder
for them to desert pregnant or nursing females and
then successfully mate again.
That and the fact that dependent children
in single-parent families were becoming
increasingly handicapped, has meant that
females have tended to get the upper hand
in this his battle.
Do males want sex, without the bother of babies?
If so, they had better do a good job of concealing the fact
if they want to get any - because women area constructed
inside such a way that they are good at identifying
that attitude - and avoid mating with its representatives.
Because females are such experts in the area of identifying
deceptive males, some males give up on attempting to deceive
them about their intentions, tell the females that they will
stick with them, actually mean what they say - and go on
to accept the associated child-rearing costs.
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ tim@tt1lock.org Remove lock to reply. |
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| John Edser |
| Posted: Thu Jan 25, 2007 9:09 am |
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"Alan Meyer" <ameyer2@yahoo.com>
Quote:
Paul's argument seems pretty decisive to me. It is absolutely
clear that paternal care for the young is not solely found in
species that have a conceptual understanding of sex and
fatherhood.
JE:-
Hi Alan,
It all depends on reproductive strategies. The number of available
permutations of males-do-this if females-do-that is almost endless.
Mostly, the sexes have evolved _opposing_ reproductive strategies for a good
reason: what the males mostly do the females do not and vice versa because
they both benefit by doing this but not necessarily equally. Only if both
sexes get it right can either sex actually gain, i.e. IOW this is not a Van
Valen war, only competition stimulating cooperation between more specialized
forms. It is rather pointless paying the enormous cost of evolving more
specialized (non hermaphrodite) male and female bodies which demand a 50%
reduction in fecundity because males can't have babes anymore and then go on
to allow males and females to do everything in exactly the same way. Nature
is not so stupid. In humans the males mostly specialize in tribal matters
and the females in family matters. The emotions for sex have evolved
differently for each sex to make this level of specialization to work. The
male _emotional_ experience of sex is predicted to have evolved quite
differently to the female emotional experience because of this type of
intense specialization.
Note also that the ancient polygamy Vs monogamy thing is still operating in
our species because polygamy always favors males over females as far as
increasing fecundity (the reproduction of just immatures) is concerned. If a
male has sex with a 100 females and female has sex with a 100 males, guess
who stands to reproduce the largest number of babies? Of course they have to
be raised to fertile adulthood within one population before they count but
polygamy provides males with a head start over females. Quite obviously sex
is less personal within a polygamous system. The more partners the male has
the less emotional space he can allocate to each so the more he becomes
focused on sexual stimuli. OTOH monogamy favors females over males because
one female gets to use all the resources of a particular male for rearing
her own children to fertile adulthood. Monogamy maximizes personal sex but
forces males to act more like females _reducing_ the gains of gender
specialization.
The male is selected to seek and defend as many females as he can as long as
the mean number of fertile forms raised per female on his patch INCREASES.
If it decreases this does not benefit him because he only ends up working
harder and harder for less and less. OTOH the females are selected to force
other females out of his territory whenever her TOTAL reproductive effort
benefits by it. She is not at all concerned with the reproductive total of
ALL the females under that male, JUST HER OWN reproductive total of fertile
forms per population. This provides a lot of the push and shove anybody can
observe in "Bold And The Beautiful" type of goings on within our own
species. Most of the entertainment industry is devoted to it because this
occupies so much of our emotional space. Nature evolves games like these to
seek out mutualised optimal solutions via competition in the same way that
businesses and consumers in free markets optimize profits to availability.
Please note that even today, making such a comparison remains politically
incorrect because the key function of trade (cognitive mutualised exchange
which remains unique to our species) has been lost in the bitter tribal
politics of Left Vs Right. Competition is required to find the best, i.e.
_optimally opposing_ reproductive strategy. This is one which can
_maximally_ benefit BOTH sexes. The best way to find just about any mutual
optimal solution (interdependent solution) is via a competition of some
kind. Sport is all about understanding this as a play. Don' tell the Looney
Left or the Fascist right such basics because they do not wish to know.
Their preferred solutions is always more top down tribal dictates.
Regards,
John Edser
Independent Researcher
edser@ozemail.com.au |
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| William Morse |
| Posted: Sat Jan 27, 2007 8:04 am |
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Guest
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"Paul Crowley" <slkwuoiutiuytciuyik@slkjlskjoioue.com> wrote in
news:ep5rf0$1dva$1@darwin.ediacara.org:
Quote: "Stephen" <veja@kanitz.com.br> wrote in message
news:ep3v6q$obo$1@darwin.ediacara.org...
pakihaki22@yahoo.ca wrote:
I've heard people say that men dont want children. They just want to
have sex. I guess ideally they would like to impregnate a woman and
move on and not be burdened by raising the child.
120.000 years ago men did not make the connection between sex and
children,
You were there? That's how you know?
so they only wanted sex.
There are NUMEROUS species where males
take a huge part in the care of their offspring.
Take a look at, say, Emperor Penguins.
Thats why men dont antecipate
childreens needs, we were not selected for these traits.
Speak for yourself.
Somewhere between 120.000 BC to 10.000 BC men made the connection,
and started a movement to become real fathers to their real children.
Are you saying that all those males of other
species which take an active part in the rearing
of their young, or which take huge physical
risks in defending them, have also made the
connection between copulation and fatherhood?
They
started matting preferentially with one woman, and those with
"fatherly"insticts were select
Does this logic apply to all monogamous species?
If not, and there is some alternative system,
might not that apply to the hominid line?
Just to add some to Paul's good points:
Robert Trivers explained the basics of this over thirty years ago, using
the concepts of Parental Investment (PI) and Reproductive Success (RS).
Simplistically, whether animals are monogamous, polygynous, or
polyandrous depends on the extent of PI by males and females - when PI is
equal, you find monogamy, whether the species is a primate, a bird, or a
fish.
Given a situation where equal PI is necessary to successfully raise
children, one expects the males to want children, and to want to aid in
raising the children.
But now we have to consider the second factor, which is RS. In mammals, a
female can only contribute DNA to children that she bears. Males can
contribute DNA to children that they raise and to children of others. So
males can maximize their RS by raising children with a partner and having
sex with, in addition to their partner, any other female. Females can
maximize their RS by raising children with a partner and having sex
with, in addition to their partner, a male who has good genes or whose
social standing can aid her success. For both males and females there is
a risk in having sex with a non-partner that the partner will abandon
them, making it much harder to successfully raise the children.
The above is of course an oversimplification, especially in humans where
there are a host of other emotional issues involved. But it does help in
understanding the similarities in behavior of a range of monogamous
species.
Yours,
Bill Morse |
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