Kay got it right — we all pick for a variety of things, and a guy that can beat up other men to “protect” us will all too often turn his beat-em-up instinct inward when no men are around to knock about, putting the entire family at risk. Speaking personally, having that unpredictable and dangerous instinct wandering around off-leash in my personal space is not what I’d look for in a mate.

Women. All. Choose. Differently. Say it again and it will sink in eventually.

see my article on parental investment theory:
http://www.city-journal.org/2009/19_4_femina-sapiens.html

Choice is a female thing. Female selection only is what drives the species. Men do indeed show off for women; in all species, males are highly decorative and compete for females. The thing is … they don’t pick the winner. Women pick the winner, and not only is it not necessarily the same guy the males think won, but different women will pick different men. It’s obvious — if we’re all driven to maximize our own DNA, and we all have different DNA, we all need to pick a different guy to have the healthiest offspring. So one woman will say, “Sure, Mr. Medal Winner, I like you fine!” and another will say, “Where’s that cute one who got eliminated int he first round, I want him,” and yet another one will say, “I like the runner-up best.” Who I think is wonderful may be the worst possible choice for a woman with vastly different DNA issues than me.

That’s a huge part of why it’s absolutely preposterous that men all prefer exactly the same kind of woman (the typical stereotype of the Barbie doll). They also all have different DNA, so if they were really exercising Darwinian choice for the healthiest offspring, they would also all pick … different women whose DNA looked to be the kind that would balance out theirs.

But again … they don’t. Exercise choice, that is. Any willing partner will do for them. Darwinian choice is the bailiwick of women. And the whole thing makes sense, enabling women to choose to maximize their individual DNA from a pool of potential mates, all of whom are willing.

Again, I’m sorry guys, but men just do not exercise choice. Females exercise choice, and they all exercise it differently. It’s even more ridiculous that men would “choose” women too young and stupid to be effective mothers. Are these ev psych idiots actually saying that men deliberately choose to minimize the robustness and intelligence of the species?

Then, there’s the basics of what our species looks like even after a zillion years of natural selection already in progress. To put it bluntly, there’s an awful lot of short-legged, hairy-lipped, plain women running around, guys. Someone’s spreading those genes …

I believe that many same sex couples feel pressured to mirror the patterns of heterosexual society. Instead of redefining relationship, I have found in gay culture that people are still more comfortable with assigning gender based roles. It would be interesting to see if this trend ever changes.

I would quibble a bit, though, with your assessment of parental investment. I don’t think it is as intrinsically bankrupt a concept as you are arguing. Where it goes wrong, I feel, is by considering only biological factors when calculating parental investment. Clearly, cultures impose different costs (and rewards) based on the ways in which they configure gender roles and parenting responsibilities and in the ways in which resources are allocated. If these social costs were figured into evolutionary psychology’s equations, I think a much more nuanced—and useful—picture would emerge.

“Questioning” assumptions with only anecdotal evidence does not disprove them. Whether those stereotypes are true across any defined demographic remains to be seen. In poor families struggling for survival, men and women both might well sacrifice their young to maintain a household, whereas wealthier families might not behave that way. For all we know, abundance of resources is the most significant factor in paternal outcomes, whatever roles the mothers and fathers play as “providers” or “care-takers.”

Also, the distinction between “provider” and “care-taker” seems arbitrarily late-capitalist, not evolutionary-biological, and it obscures the reality of working mothers. Women who seek out means to provide for their young, through co-opting more financially-successful male “bread-winners” as mates or through (oftentimes male) employers (for whom the women may perform sex acts to secure a position), are “providers” in and through their role of “care-taker” just as much as they might conversely care-take through providing. The question seems to be about whether a person, male or female, provides monetary support to a household via sex acts or not. Those who use sex to secure a job or money are “care-takers.” Those who use support to obtain sex are “providers.” The world of work seems to devolve into a kind of whore-john binary, not a “care-taker-provider” connection, since both parties “care-take” and “provide.” Is there any certified profession on earth so sanitized with degrees that applicants have not offered sex to secure a position within its econ-system? Sex-specifics tends to mean that some parties are prone to offer sex as barter in economic/professional interactions and others are prone to trade sustenance for sex. If you obtain a job with the added-value incentive of sex, does that mean you’re NOT a provider? The distinction is misleading. Whores provide through care-taking Johns’ sexual needs. That sexual or sexualized relationship can be very subtle.

U.S. statistics show that single mothers are the fastest growing demographic sector under the poverty line. Whether it is biologically or psychologically evolutionary, poor women with dependent children might very logically set out on the hunt for stepfathers with dough, who are very likely older than the hotties without. Do these prospective providers act like lions once they mate, instinctively prone to offing the offspring of other males to clear the den for their own? Or do they express a “higher level” (reasonable, not instinctive or irrational) resentment when they grow to feel their love-nests are really invasions by women who, wittingly or not, are working to co-opt them into raising children they didn’t father?

Women will provide for their children and themselves, however they may have to “market” themselves. For many women, single mothers, the economics of that marketing are failing and more and more families sliding into poverty. If what makes people “providers” is that they pay for sex (become the John), and what defines them as “care-takers” is that they trade sex for sustenance in some form (obviously or subtly), that dichotomy seems to spring from a very old-fashioned male-identified set of stereotypes that, I had hoped, first-wave feminism had dismantled. Are we still stuck in that bracket of ideas? Dr. Heywood’s theoretical questions seem specious inasmuch as they arise out of a set of assumptions inadequate to describe or explain the real lives and choices of men and women who struggle for economic and psychological survival.