J.
JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
>Doug wrote:
>
>
>>I think SB is mostly post hoc stories invented to shore up the status
>>quo in the guise of science, but isn't the standard line that men
>>want to be sure any kids are theirs and not some other guy's, or they
>>won't stick around to support them?
>>
>>
>
>Oh, I just can't resist:
>
>McDonald, Kim A. "Shared Paternity in South American Tribes Confounds
>Biologists and Anthropologists," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 9, 1999, pp.
>A19-20:
> "Recent studies of multiple fatherhood in indigenous societies in South
>America are forcing scientists to rethink their notions about the evolutionary
>roles of female fidelity and male provisioning...."
> "'Throughout lowland South America, there is a belief in the partability
>of paternity... The belief, in essence, is that all of the men who have sex
>with a woman around the beginning of her pregnancy and all through her pregnancy
>share the biological paternity of her child. In this view, the fetus is
>considered to grow by repeated contributions of semen.'
> "The pervasiveness of those beliefs among at least 18 widely separated
>and distinct cultures in South America, said Mr. Beckerman, suggests that social
>views about fatherhood are not universal and do not follow the standard
>picture of the evolution of human sexuality. In fact, he noted, examples of a
>belief in partible paternity are being discovered outside South America, in
>indigenous societies in New Guinea, Polynesia, and India.
> ... "What's more, the concept of multiple fatherhood may minimize sexual
>jealousy, a source of potentially lethal conflict between men. Mr. Beckerman
>said that one of the more fascinating findings in his work with the Bari, a
>lowland horticultural society, was that "we never got a man expressing jealousy
>over his wife taking a lover.
> "[Beckerman says:] 'Presumably, it's because, when that happens, the
>husband, in effect, has purchased a life-insurance policy. If he dies, then there
>is some other male who has at least a residual obligation to those children,
>most of whom probably belong to the husband. So, it's to his benefit to have
>his wife take a lover or two.'"
>"'All of this calls into question this presumed evolutionary bargain between
>men and women in which, in effect, female fidelity and guaranteed paternity
>are the coin with which women pay for resources provided by their mates,' he
>said. (He is Stephen J. Beckerman, professor of Anthropology at Pennsylvania
>State University.)
> ..." Ms. Hawkes of Utah said that what was clear about all of those
>societies was that they do not fit the evolutionary paradigm—that, as humans
>evolved, males shifted their efforts away from competition with one another for
>mates to parental nurturing.
> "Her own studies of the Aché of eastern Paraguay and the Hadza of
>northern Tanzania, she said, "don’t support the notion that men's work is about
>providing for their kids." Goes on to say hunting (and collecting honey) "do not
>provide more for a man’s own wife and children than they do for anybody else."
>
>***
>Jenny Brown
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
>
-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20060605/59d55d31/attachment.htm>