# Serial monogamy or the fourth-year itch



## Everness

I think humankind, or at least human beings in the West, is catching up with evolution. The following article written by anthropologist Helen Fisher provides a biological explanation of the phenomenon of marriage-divorce-remarriage that puts romantic love in the right perspective. 

The practice of serial monogamy isn’t a departure from biology but exactly the opposite: a reminder that all contemporary organisms (including us) are related to each other through common descent and are products of cumulative evolutionary changes over billions of years. If you have 10 minutes to spare, please read it. This is good reading for some of us who don’t believe in evolution and don’t see ourselves as part of an evolutionary process. Here’s her thesis that I fully endorse. 

_Homo sapiens shares traits with foxes and seasonally parenting birds. The modal duration of marriage that ends in divorce, four years, conforms to the traditional period between human successive births, four years. So elsewhere I have proposed that the human tendency to pair up and remain together for about four years reflects an ancestral reproductive strategy to cooperatively rear a single helpless child through infancy. And the brain physiology for attraction, attachment, and detachment evolved to fuel this primordial mating system._
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3651/is_199601/ai_n8753923/pg_7

Here’s an easier explanation by Fisher herself:

_As it turns out, the standard period of human birth spacing was originally four years. We were built to have our children four years apart and I think that this drive to pair up and stay together at least four years evolved millions of years ago so that a man and a woman would be drawn together and stay together, tolerate each other, at least long enough to rear a single child through infancy, said Fisher, author of "Why We Love." Following the urge to find a new partner after that four-year period, she says, may have been a way that humans added more variation to the gene pool. _

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=230011&page=2

Do you think that the brain physiology for attraction, attachment, and restlessness during long relationships as well as the drive to seek another partner (fourth-year itch) has been passed down to you by our hominid ancestors who practiced serial monogamy? Or is this just another phony theory to justify our desire to look for greener pastures?


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## justjukka

I think it is sad to believe that marriage and divorce are just part of human evolution.  I suppose this is why, though I'm _definitely_ not against evolutionary theories, I'm more of the religious mind.

When two people are joined in marriage, they choose to spend the rest of their lives together.  Love is more than just lust and passion.  When the flair of courting is diminished, then the couple chooses to love one another.  Each has made a promise to honor and cherish the other, a characteristic that is very human.

This "four-year-itch," in my opinion, is just an excuse, as stated before, to look for greener pastures.


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## maxiogee

This post is so riddled with questionable claims that I'm only picking them at random…



			
				Everness said:
			
		

> The practice of serial monogamy isn’t a departure from biology but exactly the opposite: a reminder that *all contemporary organisms (including us) are related to each other* through common descent and are products of cumulative evolutionary changes over billions of years. If you have 10 minutes to spare, please read it. This is good reading for some of us who don’t believe in evolution and *don’t see ourselves as part of an evolutionary process*. Here’s her thesis that I fully endorse.



The two bits in green contradict each other!



			
				Everness said:
			
		

> The modal duration of marriage that ends in divorce, four years, conforms to the traditional period between human successive births, four years.


"traditional" —> what tradition?



			
				Everness said:
			
		

> So elsewhere I have proposed that the human tendency to pair up and remain together for about four years reflects an ancestral reproductive strategy to cooperatively rear a single helpless child through infancy.


You haven't looked around much lately, have you? 
*Four* is still helpless! Four *has always been* helpless!



			
				Everness said:
			
		

> The modal duration of marriage that ends in divorce, four years, conforms to the traditional period between human successive births, four years.


Can she provide the figures that this modal exists, and exists everywhere, and not just in marriage, but in cohabiting couples?



			
				Everness said:
			
		

> Following the urge to find a new partner after that four-year period, she says, may have been a way that humans added more variation to the gene pool.


Humans don't need to vary the gene pool - we are a mobile species. By having many children with the one spouse, I have as much control over the gene pool as by having one child with many women. The important factor is in whom my children mate with, not whom I mate with. Do the maths.



			
				Everness said:
			
		

> the drive to seek another partner (fourth-year itch)


When the film "The Seven Year Itch" came out the theory was ridiculed, and I'd like to see evidence of this "drive" kicking in at four years, or seven, or any statistically remarkable point.

This woman needs to do some joined-up thinking!


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## ireney

Hmmmmm I guess I'm going to write a book stating the the following theory:

All male animals (as females too) are interested only in making sure they have progeny. A human female can always be sure that the child is hers. The male can't. The only way to be (almost) absolutely certain is to get a virgin female and keep it aways from other males untill the male is sure the female is pregnant. After that, not wanting to wait 9 months without making anything to have more descendants the male should leave and go find another virgitn.

Indeed that is the natural way for a man to behave.

Please don't tell me that by staying with the mother of his child he ensures that it will live because according to this lady after 4 years the child's survival is ensured somehow.


P.S. And what is that "right perpective"? I can't see it I'm afraid.


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## cuchuflete

> ...anthropologist Helen Fisher provides a biological explanation of the phenomenon of marriage-divorce-remarriage that puts romantic love in the right perspective.


A resounding ho-hum.  When I want to know something about biology, I might just go to the trouble of finding writings by a competent biologist.  Biology, despite the words by Everness and his anthropological 'expert', does not concern itself with legal/cultural events such as marriage-divorce-remarriage.

So I have no choice but to conclude that this is all a jumble of biology, lust, boredom, anthropology, and somebody's wry sense of humor.

As a small postscript, I wonder aloud whether, as my children are grown and I've no interest in
further procreation, I might still be able to experience romantic love within the confines of this pseudo-scientific balderdash?  That's a male question.  The cited anthro-apologist doesn't seem able to address the romantic inclinations of women beyond child-bearing age either. 

 Neither lust nor romance nor affection are limited to procreation.


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## danielfranco

I would have thought that all those feelings of romantic love were an emergent result of our recently developed consciousness (in evolutionary terms) trying to deal with the tug and overwhelming imperative of deeply buried instincts... And I would have thought that social contracts such as marriage are an even more recent invention in the human society. 
Regardless, I think that the evolutionary imperative would be to procreate as much and as widely as possible to insure the survival of the genes, and so the four- or seven- or whatever amount of years' itch anyone cared to justify by invoking deep-seated instincts would probably be more applicable or would make more sense if both female and male humans had the same view on procreation. As it stands, for the males, to blame evolution for the mind-numbing imperative to shag everything in sight at any moment of the day or night, whether one is awake or not, well, I understand how it would make a nice excuse...
But now that we're all past that and can actually use reason to deal with most of the basest impulses (like reptilian aggression), maybe it's difficult to justify broken homes and adultery in such a whimsical manner, no?

But what do I know?


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## french4beth

ireney said:
			
		

> Indeed that is the natural way for a man to behave.  *I hope that you were being sarcastic!  *


There are numerous examples in the animal kingdom of animals that mate for life.  Humans are no exception.

Any so-called _'itches'_ are an excuse to evade responsibility, avoid commitment, and think solely of short-term physical satisfaction.  They are a sign of an immature, abusive, self-centered, egocentric individual (yes, cheating _is_ abuse).


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## Everness

Rozax said:
			
		

> I think it is sad to believe that marriage and divorce are just part of human evolution.  I suppose this is why, though I'm _definitely_ not against evolutionary theories, I'm more of the religious mind.



I'm glad that you don't approach the evolution topic from an either/or perspective. Despite what hardcore creationists and supporters of the intelligent design theory say, you can believe in God and endorse evolution at the same time. 



			
				Rozax said:
			
		

> When two people are joined in marriage, they choose to spend the rest of their lives together.  Love is more than just lust and passion.  When the flair of courting is diminished, then the couple chooses to love one another.  Each has made a promise to honor and cherish the other, a characteristic that is very human.



We are human but we are also animals. Some of us are in denial or ashamed of being members of this club. 

_The closest living relatives of Homo sapiens are the Common Chimpanzee and the Bonobo. Full genome sequencing resulted in the conclusion that "After 6.5 [million] years of separate evolution, the differences between chimpanzee and human are just 10 times greater than those between two unrelated people and 10 times less than those between rats and mice." In fact, chimpanzee and human DNA is 96% identical._
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

By the way, the author of the article doesn't deny or minimize our capacity of falling in love. 

_And by the time Homo sapiens sapiens people were wearing fox-skin coats and ivory beads and drawing beasts and symbols on cave walls in southwestern France, the Pyrenees, and northern Spain some 20,000 years ago, our forebears had developed an intricate, physiologically based constellation of emotions for loving, as well as elaborate traditions to celebrate and curb what European peoples would come to call romantic love._
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3651/is_199601/ai_n8753923/pg_7


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## GenJen54

french4beth said:
			
		

> Any so-called _'itches'_ are an excuse to evade responsibility, avoid commitment, and think solely of short-term physical satisfaction. They are a sign of an immature, abusive, self-centered, egocentric individual (yes, cheating _is_ abuse).


 
Responsibility and commitment are human constructs.  No where else in the animal kingdom do they exist.  As such, they are only important to those who hold them important.


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## .   1

I am a large omnivorous mammal and I am paired logically and have been so for 20 years.

The four year itch theory seems to me to be an excuse for blokes to play around and an excuse for the single mums left behind to not take the matter personally.

Has anybody gone into the maths of this prospect?

Let's assume for a moment that this system is in operation.

So at about 16 or so I go out hunting for a mate and find a like mind and we make a baby.

I am apparently so goo goo eyed in love with my mate that I am prepared to hang around for the next four years of late night feeds and early morning feeds and the young mother's attention being constantly diverted to her helpless little piece of protoplasm.  She will be tired and snappy and constantly worried about her first baby and she will be confused and angry and her hormones will race and I will get yelled at quite often and we will not be playing the two backed beast very often at all.  My mate will require feeding and so will my baby and the young mother is much too busy to collect much food for herself so I take myself out and hunt or forage for three all the while thanking my lucky stars that I am in such a wonderful relationship.

I am apparently so love struck that I hang around until my child is three or four and put up with all this privation and then at the moment that my child is old enough to be able to not die if not nurtured every moment I decide to split.

That's it.  I've done me bit and I'm orf to find another bit o' crumpet and start the cycle all over.

I guess that it is possible but I have grave doubts.

The first three and a half years of my daughter's life were just hard work for both of us and it required both of us to do it but we have very much enjoyed each other's company for the next 16 years and will do so for as many years as we each have left to share with the other.

The first couple of years was a process of just fititng in with a totally strange person and as I have aged my ability do accomodate others has diminished.  As I have aged I suspect that I am not quite so easily blinded by lust.

The maths question is the one that displays the inherent flaw in the proposed theory.

If everyone split up after 4 years this means that blokes would be then content to move on from a stable relationship where they are relatively certain that the child they are nurturing is their own on to a new relationship with a new woman who already has one of more children from previous relationships so I will be utterly certain that I will be working my bum off to support the children of some other slacker who slid off into the sunset.

There are unfortunately a few examples in my family of mothers looking after children after their perfect man split and even in this day and age of Social Security living in a country where it is difficult to starve these women have been uniformly unable to attract a second partner and it is my opinion that this is in no small measure due to the fact that blokes as a general rule do not wish to be saddled with the extra burden of raising babies they did not make thereby prolonging the genetic seed of obviously flawed humans.

.,,


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## maxiogee

GenJen54 said:
			
		

> Responsibility and commitment are human constructs.  No where else in the animal kingdom do they exist.  As such, they are only important to those who hold them important.



I'd argue vigorously with you about commitment! Swans, for one, mate for life. And on the death of one, the partner can pine and die also. Nature is full of species which mate for life. Not for nothing are doves a symbol of love - they too mate for life.
Whales, coyotes, jackals, and many others.
I don't know what you consider evidential of commitment, but I'd be difficult to convince that faithfulness is not the prime evidence.


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## ireney

french4beth what do you think? After all I am a female   

By the way, I seem to remember I have read, though I have no facts to actually back this up, that, in the past (and I'm talking about a period of centuries if not millenia reaching up to not so many decades ago), one of the main problems was that women used to have one child after another which is rather unhealthy for a women in general.

Where did this 4 years period come from?


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## .   1

ireney said:
			
		

> french4beth what do you think? After all I am a female
> 
> By the way, I seem to remember I have read, though I have no facts to actually back this up, that, in the past (and I'm talking about a period of centuries if not millenia reaching up to not so many decades ago), one of the main problems was that women used to have one child after another which is rather unhealthy for a women in general.
> 
> Where did this 4 years period come from?


In anthropoligical terms the four year period relates to the time that a woman is unavailable for impregnation or the time that it takes a woman to incubate her egg and then raise her baby to the point that her body became available for reimpregnation.

In nomadic societies a woman was required to carry all of her burdens on her back and this burden included her children and one baby is all that it is possible for one woman to carry the infant was not weaned until it was about three and a quarter years old.

The act of suckling strongly inhibitits impregnation so the average time between impregnations came to be about four years and remained so until agriculture developed about 9,000 years ago.

.,,


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## Everness

. said:
			
		

> In anthropoligical terms the four year period relates to the time that a woman is unavailable for impregnation or the time that it takes a woman to incubate her egg and then raise her baby to the point that her body became available for reimpregnation.
> 
> In nomadic societies a woman was required to carry all of her burdens on her back and this burden included her children and one baby is all that it is possible for one woman to carry the infant was not weaned until it was about three and a quarter years old.
> 
> The act of suckling strongly inhibitits impregnation so the average time between impregnations came to be about four years and remained so until agriculture developed about 9,000 years ago.
> 
> .,,


Unlike all previous contributors, you draw upon anthropological research to establish some facts that would explain this phenomenon. Unfortunately some people just react to information that doesn't fit into their current framework of knowledge and they dismiss it. It's interesting that apparently no one took the time to read what Dr. Miller had to say in her article or did any further research. Miller expands your comments on this topic:

_Serial monogamy had genetic benefits. Hominids who conceived offspring by varied partners created genetic vitality in their lineages. Males had the opportunity to select younger partners more likely to produce healthier children. And females had the chance to choose mates who provided better protection, food, and nurturance for them and their forthcoming infants. So despite the social conflicts inherent in changing mates, those who practiced serial monogamy disproportionately survived, passing the brain physiology for attraction, attachment, and restlessness during long relationships, as well as the optimistic drive to seek another partner, across the millennia to us._

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3651/is_199601/ai_n8753923/pg_6

I'm sure that the part that we don't like is the passing the brain physiology for attraction, attachment, and restlesnes during long relationship, as well as the optimistic drive to seek another partner, across the millennia to us. It seems that we want to strike out any links to, for instance, our hominid lineage from our collective resume. I have two theories that would explain this. First, that we have several closeted creationists among us. Second, that some of us believe that sophisticated and intelligent aliens visited our planet and created men and women overnight or something like that. 

It also seems that some of us haven't received Freud's memo on the three blows to human narcissi_sm. 

These three blows, as Freud put it, were a result of the researches of science. They consist of the Copernican, Darwinian and Freudian revolutions. That is, Copernicus' cosmological blow destroyed the notion that the Earth was the centre of the universe. Darwin's biological revolution put an end to the presumption on the part of Homo sapiens that they possessed a divine soul and a divine descent which allowed humanity to transcend the bond of community between themselves and the animal kingdom. _

http://www.religiousworlds.com/fondarosa/bodpaper.html

PS: What's with the nickname? .,,?


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## maxiogee

Everness said:
			
		

> Unfortunately some people just react to information that doesn't fit into their current framework of knowledge and they dismiss it.



Is this what you consider "information which doesn't fit" with my current framework of knowledge?



			
				maxiogee said:
			
		

> Everness said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The modal duration of marriage that ends in divorce, four years, conforms to the traditional period between human successive births, four years.
> 
> 
> 
> Can she provide the figures that this modal exists, and exists everywhere, and not just in marriage, but in cohabiting couples?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Everness said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Following the urge to find a new partner after that four-year period, she says, may have been a way that humans added more variation to the gene pool.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> Humans don't need to vary the gene pool - we are a mobile species. By having many children with the one spouse, I have as much control over the gene pool as by having one child with many women. The important factor is in whom my children mate with, not whom I mate with. Do the maths.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Everness said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> the drive to seek another partner (fourth-year itch)
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> When the film "The Seven Year Itch" came out the theory was ridiculed, and I'd like to see evidence of this "drive" kicking in at four years, or seven, or any statistically remarkable point.
Click to expand...


It appears that when people ask you direct questions  or challenge your assertions (or those of people you cite) — and this is something I've noticed across several threads — you just feel it is in order to totally ignore them.
This is, to say the least, an uncommon debating style.


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## Everness

maxiogee said:
			
		

> It appears that when people ask you direct questions  or challenge your assertions (or those of people you cite) — and this is something I've noticed across several threads — you just feel it is in order to totally ignore them. This is, to say the least, an uncommon debating style.



Tony, you need to learn to be more selective in responding to posts. (I'm making an exception here because it's you.) There were two posts that I considered worth responding to and I did so. The comments you just posted again, especially the reference to a movie, might be valuable and deep to you but irrelevant and shallow to me. Out of courtesy, and to avoid hurting people's feelings, I'd rather say nothing (that's what my mom taught me.) Hopefully you agree that selective responses are appropriate and helpful in keeping things more or less civil. So now you know why I didn't respond and I might not respond in the future. Don't take it personally.


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## ireney

http://noisefilter.blogspot.com/2006_02_19_noisefilter_archive.html




> Romantic love, Fisher maintains, is a basic mating drive—more powerful than the sex drive. “If you ask someone to go to bed with you, and they reject you,” she says, “you don’t kill yourself. But if you’re rejected in love, you might kill yourself.”



http://chemistry.com/


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## .   1

ireney said:
			
		

> http://noisefilter.blogspot.com/2006_02_19_noisefilter_archive.html
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://chemistry.com/


 
A most excellent observation.

.,,


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## Everness

Thank you for the link!

I like when Dr. Fisher uses a language that anyone can understand. I hope you noticed that she doesn't take herself too seriously (unfortunately most scientists don't). Listen to what she says in reference to the temperament types she came up with.

_If this sounds a bit, well, unscientific, Fisher is the first to admit it. “I have theories about what personality type a person would be most ideally suited with,” she told me, “but I also trust people to tell me what they are looking for. All throughout the questionnaire are checks and balances to what are just Helen Fisher’s theories.” _

http://noisefilter.blogspot.com/2006_02_19_noisefilter_archive.html

When you quote her, I'm not sure if you agree or disagree with her. She says,

_Romantic love, Fisher maintains, is a basic mating drive—more powerful than the sex drive. “If you ask someone to go to bed with you, and they reject you,” she says, “you don’t kill yourself. But if you’re rejected in love, you might kill yourself.”_

Unfortunately, this is quite true when it comes to the topic of women, depression and suicide. 

_Depression is a significant risk factor for suicidal behavior in both sexes. Women, especially those younger than 30 years of age, more often attempt suicide, whereas men more often complete the act of self-destruction. In fact, the male-to-female ratio for completed suicides is greater than 4:1, possibly because women frequently choose less lethal methods. *In addition, women often attempt suicide to change the dynamics of interpersonal relationships.* _
http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/depression/women.asp


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## Chaska Ñawi

Perhaps we could now return to the topic at hand:



> Do you think that the brain physiology for attraction, attachment, and restlessness during long relationships as well as the drive to seek another partner (fourth-year itch) has been passed down to you by our hominid ancestors who practiced serial monogamy? Or is this just another phony theory to justify our desire to look for greener pastures?



Should any more examples of the late and unlamented (and now deleted) posts appear, this thread will be closed.

Thank  you for your cooperation.


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## .   1

Chaska Ñawi said:
			
		

> Perhaps we could now return to the topic at hand:
> 
> 
> 
> Should any more examples of the late and unlamented (and now deleted) posts appear, this thread will be closed.
> 
> Thank you for your cooperation.


I think that the theory is most likely an attempt to sell books to the gullible attempting to justify an uncomfortable lifestyle.

.,,
I agree to not post any comments similar to the posts that have been deleted and I do not know the contents of


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## maxiogee

Chaska Ñawi said:
			
		

> Perhaps we could now return to the topic at hand:




I'm still awaiting responses to my comments…



			
				maxiogee said:
			
		

> "traditional" —> what tradition?
> 
> *Four* is still helpless! Four *has always been* helpless!
> 
> Can she provide the figures that this modal exists, and exists everywhere, and not just in marriage, but in cohabiting couples?
> 
> Humans don't need to vary the gene pool - we are a mobile species. By having many children with the one spouse, I have as much control over the gene pool as by having one child with many women. The important factor is in whom my children mate with, not whom I mate with. Do the maths.
> 
> When the film "The Seven Year Itch" came out the theory was ridiculed, and I'd like to see evidence of this "drive" kicking in at four years, or seven, or any statistically remarkable point.



Anthropology is a cod science, and has been ever since Margaret Mead first fabricated the "results" of her study on Samoa and elsewhere.


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## .   1

maxiogee said:
			
		

> I'm still awaiting responses to my comments…
> 
> 
> 
> Anthropology is a cod science, and has been ever since Margaret Mead first fabricated the "results" of her study on Samoa and elsewhere.


This is a difficult statement for me to process.  Margaret Mead did a disservice to Margaret Mead and to no other person but herself.  I have read a good deal of anthropology in an ongoing attempt to understand who and what I am and I am as able to throw the name of Desmond Morris in as a total representation of the field of anthropology as you are to dismiss it with reference to one poor deluded person.

Four is not helpless and four has never been helpless.  Four is the beginning of the end of helplesness.  Four knows what a snake is and what to do.  Four knows what a hot stove is and what not to do.  Four can be left alone for brief periods and will not fall over and drown in a cup of water.  Four is the time that mum can lift her head up briefly and contemplate her nirvana prior to heading into the next bundle of helpless protoplasm that seems to make life worthwhile.

.,,
Mine is now 18 and she is helpless but only in very defined areas and only to a degree.


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## vince

So is raising kids to age 18 instead of age 4 unnatural, against evolution, and therefore we should return to our biology and kick kids out when they're four to fend for themselves?

I disagree with most of these "evolutionary biologists" who start with a personal situation which may or may not be the reality of the majority of the population, and with this biased presumption, try to selectively interpret science to explain their particular situation. e.g. they see a bunch of men who happen to be cheaters and perverts, then try to interpret science to say that it's natural for men to go around screwing as many women as they can find, that they're hard-wired (ugh, I HATE that word!) to not care about their children's emotional development.

Humans are different. They have some things called culture and personality.  Many people cannot be described by evolutionary biology, and in fact many of us (including me myself in some cases) completely defy it. Evolutionary biology is just another form of group-think since it can almost never describe all members of a group and is therefore a vehicle to form new stereotypes and prejudices against people outside one's own group.


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## Everness

. said:
			
		

> Four is not helpless and four has never been helpless.  Four is the beginning of the end of helplesness.  Four knows what a snake is and what to do.  Four knows what a hot stove is and what not to do.  Four can be left alone for brief periods and will not fall over and drown in a cup of water.  Four is the time that mum can lift her head up briefly and contemplate her nirvana prior to heading into the next bundle of helpless protoplasm that seems to make life worthwhile.



Brilliant!


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## pickypuck

vince said:
			
		

> [...] it can almost never describe all members of a group and is therefore a vehicle to form new stereotypes and prejudices against people outside one's own group.


 
I agree with this  

¡Olé!


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## .   1

vince said:
			
		

> So is raising kids to age 18 instead of age 4 unnatural, against evolution, and therefore we should return to our biology and kick kids out when they're four to fend for themselves?


I am gobsmacked.  I do not know how to respond to this.  It is my position that the most viable situation is for children to be raised from birth to maturity by mum and dad with it being teh same mum and the same dad at all times.
I am saying that we are hardwired for mono monogamy not this serial dating concept.
I am very sorry to have given you the utterly incorrect impression.

.,,


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## maxiogee

. said:
			
		

> Four is not helpless and four has never been helpless.
> 
> Mine is now 18 and she is helpless but only in very defined areas and only to a degree.



Mine is twenty, he is not helpless and hasn't been for many a year - that doesn't make either of us experts. 

Four is also the age at which the degree of independence needed to really hurt yourself sets in - the sort of hurt which requires much parental presence. Four is when extreme jealousies of little new-born siblings strikes, should mum & dad achieve that contemplated nirvana  Four is the real beginning of the education process, when, before the concept of schools, parents had to begin inculcating the skills really necessary for survival, the ones which didn't have stage 1: run to parent. Four is possibly the time when both parents need eyes in the backs of their heads.


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## cuchuflete

Suppose that once upon a time in a land called anthropologia, women carried and suckled little ones around until roughly the age of four years.  Assuming good, hard scientific evidence of this, rather than conjecture, what should it lead us to believe about the possibility of sex between mates?   Has male biology 'evolved' such that 9000 years ago men abstained from sex for 4.75 years after inseminating a female, and today males are following different instincts?

If a male had an "itch" for sex and procreation, wouldn't it be logical to assume that he would have sought another female sooner?    How about males and females who remain in stable marriages for decades today, then split and seek new partners?  How does this theory address that?


If the questions are not worthy of reply, in the view of some, they still stand as a challange to the theory.


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## .   1

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> Suppose that once upon a time in a land called anthropologia, women carried and suckled little ones around until roughly the age of four years. Assuming good, hard scientific evidence of this, rather than conjecture, what should it lead us to believe about the possibility of sex between mates? Has male biology 'evolved' such that 9000 years ago men abstained from sex for 4.75 years after inseminating a female, and today males are following different instincts?
> 
> If a male had an "itch" for sex and procreation, wouldn't it be logical to assume that he would have sought another female sooner? How about males and females who remain in stable marriages for decades today, then split and seek new partners? How does this theory address that?
> 
> 
> If the questions are not worthy of reply, in the view of some, they still stand as a challange to the theory.


I do not remember any posts saying that suckling stops intercourse.
I have posted that suckling inhibits insemination.
I was also not aware that we were discussing this theory as the reason for every marriage that failed.

.,,
I think that many questions are worthy of reply.


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## french4beth

cuchuflete said:
			
		

> Suppose that once upon a time in a land called anthropologia, women carried and suckled little ones around until roughly the age of four years. Assuming good, hard scientific evidence of this, rather than conjecture, what should it lead us to believe about the possibility of sex between mates? Has male biology 'evolved' such that 9000 years ago men abstained from sex for 4.75 years after inseminating a female, and today males are following different instincts?
> 
> If the questions are not worthy of reply, in the view of some, they still stand as a challange to the theory.


Here's an abstract from the La Leche League - and note the use of the word contraception, meaning lots of people _do_ have intercourse after child-bearing:



> The most common myth surrounding the use of contraception in lactating women is that lactation alone cannot be depended on to prevent pregnancy. The Lactational Amenorrhea Method (LAM) has been found to be better than _98 percent effective_... 1) the baby should not be receiving any supplemental foods or artificial infant formula, 2) the baby must be less _than 6 months old,_ and 3) the mother must not have _resumed_ _her menstrual cycle_.


 
And more here:



> An anthropologist would say that the timing of weaning is culturally defined and varies from one culture to another, ranging from birth (no breastfeeding) to approximately _seven years_.


 



> If a male had an "itch" for sex and procreation, wouldn't it be logical to assume that he would have sought another female sooner? How about males and females who remain in stable marriages for decades today, then split and seek new partners? How does this theory address that?


I find it to be quite presumptuous to assume that only men want sex - women want it, too, cuchu!  Maybe not after an infant's growth spurt, with seemingly non-stop nursing, clothing reeking of spit-up, soiled nappies, etc.  As for partners splitting up and seeking new partners (not just for procreation), my theory is "the grass is always greener" - people think that they're going to find something new and exciting, and don't realize that they're marrying the same person (with a different face & a different name).  

Or in many cases, both men _and_ women are fleeing abusive relationships - they've finally worked up the courage to face their abuser (emotional, physical, sexual, or all of the above), despite years of indoctrination to believe that they don't deserve respect, don't deserve to be treated well, and don't deserve to be happy (this is my observation after 2 1/2 years as a divorce support group volunteer moderator).


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