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I don't generally like evolutionary "just so stories", but men are the more expendable sex, when you get down to it. Historically, only half of men ever passed

I don't generally like evolutionary "just so stories", but men are the more expendable sex, when you get down to it. Historically, only half of men ever passed their genes on, whereas nearly all women did. It makes sense that men should tend to be shorter-lived, less squeamish, more violent (to men, women and themselves), and more willing to take life-threatening risks - all of which the homicide, suicide and accident rates bear out, worldwide. If you consider the difference between sexes for the homicide rate, it's surprising the female suicide rate is as much as half of men's. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/040920063537.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/040920063537.h...

vintermann 10y ago
> men are the more expendable sex, when you get down to it This is far from as clear as people think it is. Foragers - as we were for the vast majority of our evolutionary history as humans - don't have lots of kids. They usually keep on the move, and that means carrying children, until they are maybe 4 years old. Having a life-mate to help you carry a four year old probably helps a lot. It remains that humans are the most monogamous animals alive, by a mile. Other pair-bonding animals, like pigeons, cheat a ton compared to humans. When you look at pair-bonding animals, it's often those where the males are crucial to the offspring's survival, and where raising offspring demands a lot of resources from the parents. Human children are unable to survive on their own until the age of ten, at the most optimistic. So both the evolutionary story and the observed facts in forager societies (and our own too, in many ways) suggest that fathers matter a lot. > Historically, only half of men ever passed their genes on If I recall that paper correctly, of the men living at a certain point in time, only half have descendants today, whereas almost all the women have. This difference, over thousands of years, may have arisen from very small differences adding up over the generations for all we know.

vintermann 10y ago

> men are the more expendable sex, when you get down to it This is far from as clear as people think it is. Foragers - as we were for the vast majority of our evolutionary history as humans - don't have lots of kids. They usually keep on the move, and that means carrying children, until they are maybe 4 years old. Having a life-mate to help you carry a four year old probably helps a lot. It remains that humans are the most monogamous animals alive, by a mile. Other pair-bonding animals, like pigeons, cheat a ton compared to humans. When you look at pair-bonding animals, it's often those where the males are crucial to the offspring's survival, and where raising offspring demands a lot of resources from the parents. Human children are unable to survive on their own until the age of ten, at the most optimistic. So both the evolutionary story and the observed facts in forager societies (and our own too, in many ways) suggest that fathers matter a lot. > Historically, only half of men ever passed their genes on If I recall that paper correctly, of the men living at a certain point in time, only half have descendants today, whereas almost all the women have. This difference, over thousands of years, may have arisen from very small differences adding up over the generations for all we know.