Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Family Values 469"optimal," they will be a shorthand for the strategies that would have ledto reproductive success in that world. I will not be referring to what ismorally right, attainable in the modern world, or conducive to happiness,which are different matters altogether.The first question of strategy is how many partners to want. Rememberthat when the minimum investment in offspring is greater for females, amale can have more offspring if he mates with many females, but afemale does not have more offspring if she mates with many males—oneper conception is enough. Suppose a foraging man with one wife canexpect two to five children with her. A premarital or extramarital liaisonthat conceives a child would increase his reproductive output by twentyto fifty percent. Of course, if the child starves or is killed because thefather isn't around, the father is genetically no better off. The optimalliaison, then, is with a married woman whose husband would bring upthe child. In foraging societies, fertile women are almost always married,so sex with a woman is usually sex with a married woman. Even if she isnot, more fatherless children live than die, so a liaison with an unmarriedpartner can increase reproduction, too. None of this math applies towomen. A part of the male mind, then, should want a variety of sexualpartners for the sheer sake of having a variety of sexual partners.Do you think that the only difference between men and women isthat men like women and women like men? Any bartender or grandmotheryou ask would say that men are more likely to have a wanderingeye, but perhaps that is just an old-fashioned stereotype. The psychologistDavid Buss has looked for the stereotype in the people most likely torefute it—men and women in elite liberal American universities a generationafter the feminist revolution, in the heyday of politically correctsensibilities. The methods are refreshingly direct.Confidential questionnaires asked a series of questions. Howstrongly are you seeking a spouse? The answers were on average identicalfor men and women. How strongly are you seeking a one-nightstand? The women said, Not very strongly; the men said, Pretty strongly.How many sexual partners would you like to have in the next month? Inthe next two years? In your lifetime? Women said that in the next montheight-tenths of a sexual partner would be just about right. They wanted