As I said last week, we need to get past our myriad customs, taboos, social mores, etc., to look at the physical human animal if we want to truly understand how men and women relate to each other and why. To do this, we need to look at how the human animal evolved and how those evolutionary pressures continue to affect our daily lives. If you think we’ve moved beyond our evolutionary history, think again: 99.99% of our 5.5 million year history took place before civilization. We may live in cosmopolitan cities and enjoy luxuries unimaginable to our ancestors but our brains remain wired for the primordial African jungle.

This is the second in a series of articles that will look at human sexuality and relationships from a purely evolutionary point of view and will compare and contrast that with the many layers of confusion that civilization has added on top of our evolved instincts.

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Man inseminates woman. From a purely biological point of view, his job is done. Should something happen to the mother and/or the unborn child, the man is free to inseminate another woman. The woman, by contrast, must devote an ever-increasing share of her own resources toward raising what is essentially a parasite in the form of a child that relies on its mother to survive. The more the mother provides, the more the child needs. Imagine loaning money to someone who needs ever-increasing infusions of cash in order to possibly repay the growing mountain of debt. Should you keep on loaning money on the possibility of recouping your investment or cut your losses? That is the question every mother asks herself whether she’s aware of it or not. The high percentage of babies that end up miscarried, aborted, adopted, abandoned, or killed bears witness to this questioning. The mere act of bringing a baby to term inside the womb carries potentially fatal consequences for the mother should complications arise.

Meanwhile, as I’ve already mentioned, the man is free to inseminate other women. There is no hard biological need for him to stick around to help the mother raise the child, especially in modern times where babysitting and groceries are more available than they’ve ever been at any time in our evolutionary history. A child can theoretically survive without any paternal involvement whatsoever and many children do just that. The father’s incentive to help comes from both his confidence that the children in question really are his and the increased childbearing potential the mother gains through his support. You may think this a flimsy foundation on which to build a two-parent life but the male instinct to stay with a single woman is strong enough to affect even those relationships where children aren’t part of the picture. My partner Jennifer and I neither have nor want children with each other. Our bond is as monogamous as they come.

If a woman’s chief investment in the child-rearing equation is physical and the man’s economic, then logic demands that men should be attracted to women with certain physical attributes while women should be more discerning about the male’s ability to provide for her and her children. This is precisely what happens, as we’ll see in a later article.

Investment vs. Power

Men and women have very uneven reproductive investments that benefit from a sexually-based division of labor as we learned last week. Women tend to be smaller, weaker and slower than men on average. This is true for humans, chimpanzees and bonobos. Still, there is nothing intrinsically stopping women from being in charge. Bonobo societies are matriarchal while chimpanzees and the vast majority of humans are patriarchal. Bonobos enjoy a very peaceful lifestyle where conflicts are usually resolved quickly with no harm done. Chimpanzees endure a violent lifestyle where conflicts can lead to serious injury and even death.

Most human societies tend to follow the chimpanzee’s lead. Even so, there is no intrinsic connection between women’s relative powerlessness and their preference for economically viable mates. On the contrary, my guess is that a woman’s power and drive to find an economically viable mate may be inversely proportional to some extent. A woman who is independently wealthy or has a solid career may be able to overlook a man’s financial shortcomings. A woman who lacks the means to raise a child on her own may be more driven to find a good provider. One interesting exception can occur among very poor women. I’ll discuss this more in a later article.

Fundamental Errors?

I believe that men have made the fundamental mistake of devaluing women, their contributions to society (and the species) and the tremendous amount of effort required to sustain any household. Only in 2001 was the United States Labor Department studying how to include housework as part of measuring the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The Genuine Progress Index for Atlantic Canada (report prepared by Ronald Colman, PhD) estimates that replacing housework with pay would add $275 billion to the Canadian economy. According to this report, non-employed single mothers work 50 hours per week while working mothers routinely work 73 hours per week. Salary.com placed a “salary equivalent” value of $134,121 on housework for stay-at-home mothers in 2006. The actual numbers are debatable. What is beyond debate is that housework, raising children and other “women’s work” has tremendous value. How men could devalue and demean this sort of contribution is both baffling and inexcusable in this man’s never-humble opinion.

Women, on the other hand, fought long and hard for the equal treatment they deserve, finally winning the right to vote and being accepted into the workforce in droves. Whole advertising campaigns launched telling women that they could have it all: A solid career, children and a rewarding home life. The actual results have been less than spectacular. Women are increasingly dying of the same diseases as men because of the added stresses of having jobs. Children are sent off to day-care centers, sometimes for eight or more hours per day. Despite this, women are still expected to perform housework on top of their other duties. Even worse, many families have reached the point where they can no longer maintain their lifestyle on a single income. Or can they?

I once added up the potential costs of full-time child care, housekeeping, second car, dining out, etc. and arrived at a figure that’s just over half my former wife’s current gross salary. 30% of that salary goes to taxes, leaving about 20% in net income gains per month. I can’t imagine anyone who would voluntarily work their current job for 20% of her or his current salary! My calculations don’t factor in other potential costs such as the potential inflation caused by massive influxes of workers to the economy and demanding goods and services. I also didn’t factor in potential savings from economizing elsewhere in the monthly budget. If you currently rely on two incomes, then you may want to perform the same calculations for your own situation. The results may startle you.

Then again, maybe they won’t. Every situation is unique. For example, my former wife and I are fortunate in that in our son currently attends school during the same hours that she is at her teaching job. There is no extra car payment and I can spend lots of time with our son thanks to my self-employed status. We therefore realize a significantly higher return from her work thanks to our situation. I am clearly not saying that two-income situations are wrong. I am saying that you need to look beyond the extra salary at the added costs in both dollars and quality time, then make an informed decision. You probably have a lot more flexibility than you think.

I am also not saying that a woman’s place is at home. A “reverse nuclear family” where the husband stays home and the wife works can be a perfectly viable solution as can a dual-income situation. Still, the sexual division of labor exists for solid evolutionary reasons. Men should not devalue or oppress women for their biologically designed roles and women should not feel that their only path to equality lies in emulating men. Sure, women may make better fighter pilots than men. What exactly does that prove? And why do women feel the need to prove that?

Next week, we’ll look at conflict in the home. Believe it or not, ‘Home Sweet Home’ is little more than wishful thinking. Stay tuned!

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About The Expert

On our About the Expert page, you can learn more about the author, including contact information and other posts they've written. About Anthony Hernandez.