[Closed] Are humans meant to be monogamous?

For men yes - the more women they shag, the more likely their genes will survive. And only the genes [i]actually[/i] matter.

For women no - the more men they shag, the less likely their genes will survive as they need one permanent partner to look after them and their 'young genes'.

A man needs a faithful women to avoid him bringing up someone else's genes.

A woman needs an 'emotionally faithful' man who is committed to looking after her and her genes - if he goes off shagging other women it's not a big problem.

.

And there lies the problem 😕

Monogamy works for me... Just MrsJulianA for me 😀

Sorry about getting the question ar5e about face - I read the question 'are humans meant to be polygamous'

Doh ! 🙄

A man should always ensure his Goat is tethered.
and
Once a woman's head has been turned, only a spade will turn it back..

🙄

JOKE

Reading into it what you want to see eh gg? 😉

I'd agree that GG was right in general, but then I thought about the fact that family units with father figures etc tend to bring up more balanced kids (or so the research says, obviously there are exceptions) so that would suggest that a lionesque "pride" was actually the ultimate (and possibly original) solution - many women and men to provide family, protection, better chances of catching food, but the choice of women for men and one man always being about for the woman.

pass, I'm no - whateverthatsciencewouldbeologist.

1 in 5 children aren't the children of the Father they thought they were......shoots down SST's arguement. There will be a fair few STW'ers who are raising someone else's children unwittingly.

What argument was that?? I'm asking the question . . . .

any reference for that random statistic hora?

[i]any reference for that random statistic hora? [/i]

his two sisters and two brothers. They're not ginger like him.

Is Hora adopted? 😉

of course no reference to that we have not all been geneticaly tested it sounds like b0ll0cks to me and b0ll0cks is where I will stay
If we were monogamous we would have teeny tiny ones say pea size if we were womanising philanderers they would be the size of footballs....make bike riding both difficult and dangerous.
As they lie somewhere between we are probably monogamous .....unless we think we can get away with it .... both sides
Intrestingly female humans have concealed ovulation (a baboons bum changes colour for example iirc) so we do not know when she is fertile so she tries to trick us back to get us to stay etc etc

All this is just gentics which to a degree[lets have that argument another day] we can overcome (kinship, altruism etc)Personally I think we can be faithful if we wish to but probably 50/50 split on whether we do

1 in 5 children aren't the children of the Father they thought they were

I'm the eldest of five 😯

[i]If we were monogamous we would have teeny tiny ones [testicles] say pea size if we were womanising philanderers they would be the size of footballs....make bike riding both difficult and dangerous.[/i]

hahaha.

You do realise that each fully equipped chap is capable of deploying 30 millinon mini-me's per money-shot?

It's like GG said.......

For a man, he cannot be 100% sure that the child is his.
For a woman there can be no doubt.

For a man, parental investment amounts to a few minutes.
For a woman it is around 9 months.

This is why, in order to maximise his genetic potential a man is driven to be polygamous.

A woman tends to be monogamous.

One in five?? Where's that come from ? Steve"nowhere near funny" Wright in the afternoon??

You do realise that each fully equipped chap is capable of deploying 30 millinon mini-me's per money-shot?

yes of course i am aware that is the case. Are you aware that it is the number of times a day that you can do your 30 million squirt that would be affected by testicle size.

Amasingly a 3 litre Camelbak holds more than a 2 litre one and apparently can fill more cups 😉

apparently 1 in 5 random statistics quoted in internet forums are correct the other 4 out of 5 are just made up to substantiate the posters argument 😉

I fail to see how having larger trouser plums would encourage a man to be any less monogamous or indeed more polygamous than 30million little opprortunities already permit? 🙂

I fail to see how having larger trouser plums would encourage a man to be any less monogamous

LOL ! Gotta be the best excuse [b]ever[/b] ..... "Sorry luv, but it ain't my fault - you see I've got these really large bollox. I do love you [i]really[/i]"

LOL ! 😯

I had this problem when trying to match bone marrow of two siblings and Mum & Dad...

Non matching and let the Doctor ask about the milkman/postman

DNA database ethics?

Mono works if you love and respect each other.

Besides Humans are at risk of stds. HIV, herpes,

I reckon a mans DNA can circulate in woman for life as in her children-disease causing who knows?

DNA testing-diy at home? its easy to do.

Now I'd heard that research into sperm found three types, defender, attachers and fertilisers. They say the reason for this is that there's an expectation to find "foreign" sperm in there. Guess that means women are not meant to be monogamous.

why have we got 2 palms ?

Serial monogamy. Start a relationship, impregnate the woman, stay around long enough to make sure the offspring are off to a good start, then move on to another partner.

[i]stay around long enough to make sure the offspring are off to a good start[/i]

are there standardised guidelines on that?

Someone a while back did a study of ostriches. Some of them are consistantly faithful. Some of them consistanty 'cheat'. The offspring of the faithfuls tend to be faithful themselves, the offspring of the 'cheaters' shag around. It is thought the mix of types must be sucessful and possibly helpful as neither group have died out and they co-exist within the same 'herds'.

I suspect humans are similar - some are destined to be happy with one mate, some stray.

A male friend of mine says he would never cheat on his wife, as to betray her would be a huge betrayal of himself, so he would be letting both of them down. I guess he is one of the faithful ostriches. I admire his outlook.

Mammals that are faithful in pairs /monogamous tend to have both sexes the same size; those that don't tend to have males much larger than the females (think deer, gorillas, where the males weigh twice as much as the females).

In humans, males are on average about 15% larger than females, so we're basically monogamous, but meant to mess around a bit.

I think the stat for raising children that aren't yours is 1 in 10, not 1 in 5. Still...
Out of my group of friends, equal numbers men and women, all the women have been unfaithful to a partner at some time. Only about about 30 percent of the men have cheated. The women, of course, tend to keep it much quieter.
Personally, I don't believe either gender is biologically designed to be monogamous.

Well are we not very adaptable? I'd say we are "designed" to be either or to maximise or chances of survival. Whether we are monogamous or not I'd say is probably down to how we may have lived thousands of years ago as opposed to how we do now. Or maybe that's just kerazeee.

C'mon guys your making me feel bad. It's a struggle to get one woman, never mind getting some "strange"!

We clearly we've been too succesful so far. We've overpopulated our planet massively by our behaviour. We need a genetic upgrade to refine the process. We should start by identifying superior specimens, like me, and only breed them with equally superior specimens, like Angelina Jolie, quite a few times I should imagine. I'd want paying for it obviously.

It's all in the head.

😆

p/s: the one with a brain not the other one between the legs.

I fail to see how having larger trouser plums would encourage a man to be any less monogamous or indeed more polygamous than 30million little opprortunities already permit?

The size of the plums does not control the behaviour it only allows you to do it... in the same way a s legs allow you to pedal a bike ... it does not mean you have to BUT it does mean you can if you want to.

Everytime I think of the word monogamous I think of wood. Is that Freudian?

Read [url= http://www.amazon.com/Sperm-Wars-Science-Robin-Baker/dp/0788160044 ]this book[/url]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/study-kills-1-in-10-myth-of-cuckolded-fathers-1606318.html

this has the makings of a totally classic thread.

I'd agree that GG was right in general, but then I thought about the fact that family units with father figures etc tend to bring up more balanced kids

Is this relevant? I mean our view of what is balanced is totally driven by the society we have contructed, if society collapsed then we would still reproduce.

Is this relevant?

I believe it is - being socially balanced (in whatever the current view of society is) allows progression within that society. It may not be physical evolution, but it is mental evolution - adapting to survive in your environment. Without father figures to give the male side of the family it makes the woman work harder to be all possible roles (and means she is less likely to have more kids as rearing one is twice the load), and ultimately that leads to kids without the influence of the male side of the species. This may not be overly detrimental to female kids, but I think in general kids need experience of both sexes points of view and methods of interaction in order to understand how people are as a whole. Naturally some cope just fine, but there's reasonable evidence to show kids without a father figure do not progress as well in life, do not reach their potential. If any animal doesnt reach it's potential it is not adapting to its environment very well. Obviously this is secondary to physical adaptations (such as the fact that people tend to pick more symmetrical faced partners as they're genetically better and women tend to pick more masculine men during their most fertile time of the month) which provide physical improvement feedback to the species.

Maybe the muslims have it right. More shags, but all in the family.

i was wondering about this earlier today :s
odd that, perhaps im on a STW super natural wavelength.... or perhaps not.

i myself am a serial monogamyst.

I wouldnt ever cheat on someone. i like to think its not in my genes (though my old man would indicate otherwise apparently) but having been cheated on and ditched for someone else (who always ends up being a **** to the other party involved) 3 times, i find it a bit easier not to loose sleep over it, and move on to the next fully commited relationship :s
easy come easy go,nothing else to do but try ones hardest and be the best a person can be...

irritating thing is, 2 of the 3 have, having cheated and ditched me, come back and beg for forgiveness, and cant see how i can be "so heartless"

errrrrr. Spade please hora

anyhoo, humans arnt swans, but then again they arnt slutty sparrows.
ostriches, yes we are ostriches.
no design, just personal preference....

Humans are driven by instincts, those instincts are tempered by their conscience. It depends how well you can empathise with your partner as to whether you'll cheat, and whether the relationship you're in is what you actually want or if its what you feel you "should" want.

Humans are driven by instincts, those instincts are tempered by their conscience

I suspect behaviour based on instinct is minimal. Our behavior is more based IMO on our surroundings and prevalent social pressures.
I don't think their is a Darwinian explanation for modern behavior.

It's not survival of the fittest anymore, at least not for western society. There's no risk, child death rates are way down, food is cheap, we're top of the food chain, nature tries to contain us with the odd new disease but we seem to cope and deal with them pretty well (not much stops us before we can reproduce anyway).

Instead it's survival of the fattest, waist and wallet, as we attempt to out compete each other for useless shite.

Imagine how ****ed up we'd become if they did manage to extend life significantly further!

I suspect behaviour based on instinct is minimal. Our behavior is more based IMO on our surroundings and prevalent social pressures.

Disagree - I dont feel the need to do anything due to social pressures, other than refraining from committing serious crimes and not sleeping around. Under everything is your instinctual desires - your desire for rewards and thrill seeking, your lusts and sexual instincts etc. The only reason you dont always act them out generally is because its not "acceptable" by society. Doesnt mean your general life isnt guided by them. No longer do we marry a partner just because the people around us say we should, despite the fact that we no longer find them attractive etc.

I dont think we're missing natural selection, I think we are performing it on ourselves - we are only natural ourselves. People like to separate humans from animals but we are only animals - the only difference being that we are aware of the damage we do to others. Nature couldnt get us by inventing diseases, instead we're coping with all the defects and "allowing" the defective to breed (basic human rights). We're living too long and producing more faulty people due to having kids when older. We arent really reaching the point where the earth can't cope, we're just not using the resources the earth has properly, so ultimately we're going to continue on until the number of genetic cock-ups causes us severe problems and we either have to stop helping them. We wont all die out due to climate change, we'll just move and kill each other due to having to use other peoples land etc. Eventually our numbers will reduce to a much smaller level and we'll start to grow again. this happens in dozens of species (minus the carign for the ill/old), they consume their resources until there are no more, they die out and a few survive, resources come back, species continues.

The only reason you dont always act them out generally is because its not "acceptable" by society

I think that is what I said.

I think we are in agreement regarding Darwinism. We control our environment to such an extent natural selection is less relevant.