Why do only females select males?

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by aaqucnaona, Dec 18, 2011.

  1. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    Makes sense.
    But how does the sex that invests more get selected? How did it get that way that female bisons invest more and male seahorses invest more than their opposite sexes?
    Why were females mammals selected to lactate? Males, since they only contribute the sperm, could have well taken the responsiblity of lactation and the loss of nutrition for the female would stop as soon as the placenta was snipped and she could be in heat quicker. I wonder why this wasn't so.
    Does anybody have anything on the evolution of lactation?
     
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  3. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Polyandry in specific?

    In the few places where this happens, brothers usually get together to afford a wife.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry_in_Tibet
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyandry
    Not sure how wife-sharing would work when everyone's an only child...

    I think polygyny in China might lead to public outrage towards the man hoarding several women.

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  5. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Probably because in for a penny, in for a pound. In mammalian species, the female has already invested a great deal in the in utero development. If anyone is going to support the investment further, it should be her.
     
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  7. Gustav Banned Banned

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    that's just absurd and explains nothing. there is zero assurance of a male's presence in an infant's life after its birth while a female's one is assured by virtue of the very fact of the birthing itself

    i mean shit
    why not sprout some wings since we invested so much on legs
    really, geoff!

    in for a penny, in for a pound.

    /gibber

    one for the money, two for the show

    /blather
     
  8. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    Actually the mother is the one who invests the LEAST in westen society and probably most others. If you want to talk finantial its still the case that the father provides the most income on adverage and if we look at time and energy its the community which invests the most in a child. Childcare, schools, after school care, if its awake its probably not with the parents in this society.
     
  9. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, I suspect that you do mean that. However, if you'll peruse my post - written in actual English, mind - you may detect the fact that your comment above is not in contradiction with my own. In fact, it's almost entirely in parallel. Asguard, who has English as a actual second language, seems to have got my meaning just fine. So what's your excuse?

    That's a good point. A mother spends (assuming the old patriarchal mold here, you understand) more time with her children than the father does. He will (on average) invest more postpartum than she does, monetarily and (caveman model) through the provenance of meat supplies. However, financial investment isn't the only kind of investment that a human child requires: they also need emotional and intellectual support to develop properly (Read a book recently about the idea of Gyna sapiens: that the female drives human evolution. Good idea, some parts a bit specious, but if any argument were particularly strong in that book it was the above.).

    Females also presumably (caveman model again) provided scrounging for rare but critical trace nutrients. I've no idea what the relative energetic costs and risks (i.e. marauding lions) might have been, but if work really was gender-partitioned like we all used to talk about, then female energetic contributions would have been high. The modern system is sort of a modified parallel of that ancient supposition, and can't be expected to resemble it completely, sociobiological imperative notwithstanding.
     
  10. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    to go a step further, even when the parents DO have the child they are quite often more interested in the child doing work and learning from the people it has spent its day with than from themselves, eg "have you done your homework?" "go and do your homework". The knowledge and culture isn't passed down from mum, most of it is passed down from "the village".

    I also neglected one other group in the last post who fall into that "community" banner and that's grandparents. While the parents are working the grandparents are often the carers for those children who DON'T attend Daycare, childcare, kindergarten etc.
     
  11. Gustav Banned Banned

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    no it is not
    you clearly imply that... if this organ, then necessarily that organ
    all you have by way of substantiation is.......might as well

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  12. GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Three guesses

    That was not your contrast, above.

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  13. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    What makes you think that?

    From a study done in Kagera, Tanzania:
    http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2010/100315_1.html

    Among dual career Western married couples, mothers still seem to spend more time with their kids:
    http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dod-idx?c=mfr;idno=4919087.0013.102 (pg 9)

    I can't seem to pull up whether mothers contribute more dollars in Western society...females still tend to earn less than men

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    .
    But...
    http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/moms/content/survey-moms-focus-more-finances

    Sorry, but my mom contributed more time AND more money (and some measure of sanity) to my upbringing. She was very far from perfect, but nonetheless busted a$$, came home to do housework after doing 8 hours a night at a far more physical job than my dad...who couldn't be bothered to lift a finger.
    ...And there are a lot of mothers out there like her.
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2011
  14. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    Irrelevant I didn't state males spend more time with there offspring, I said on average they commit more financial resources. If this wasn't the case there would be no such thing as a "dead beat dad" because society wouldn't have that expectation of men. I said the COMMUNITY puts more time and effort into raising children than the mother does

    Good luck finding it

    And you spent how long at day care? how long at kindergarten? how long at school every day, how long with relatives or other babysitters? how long doing homework SET BY SOMEONE ELSE SUCH AS A TEACHER, etc.


    As for the Oxford study you quote, again its an irrelevance. If anything it proves my point as it talks about school performance. Lots of children grow up with out the women who birthed them, my second cousin for instance is raised by his grandparents and sees his mother less than 1 hour a day and doesn't even know shes his mother I don't think. Then there are children in foster care and adopted and in state care. What the study doesn't look at is how well a child does if not exposed to COMMUNITY, ie if the mother is the ONLY person a child sees (and she isn't teaching by government curriculum). How well adjusted is THAT child going to be? certainly wouldn't be able to survive in our society and probably wouldn't be able to survive in ANY society

    "It takes a village to raise a child"
     
  15. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Rubbish.

    Mothers, by and large, bear the greatest burden of child-rearing in western societies (and elsewhere too, I'll wager). If you want to put a financial value on the mother's work, look up what a child-care worker earns per hour, then calculate how much time the average mother spends looking after her child, then do the maths. The fact that this is unpaid work does not mean that it has no value and does not count as an "investment" in the child.

    In the traditional patriarchal nuclear family the mother frees up the father to go and earn a wage. She does the child care (unpaid), while he goes off to earn money to support the family. He is not expected to pay the mother for her child care. In return, he is expected to support the child in other ways, and also to suppor the mother.

    Of course, in the 21st century, not all family relationships work in this patriarchal way. For example, in many modern relationships, the mother also does some paid work, and the father may actually spend some time with the kids.

    Up to when a child starts school, the primary influence on a child in a western society is usually its immediate relatives, and most often its mother.

    It is really not until the child becomes a teenager than the peer group approaches becoming an equal influence on the child compared to its parents and siblings.

    "Culture" is a broad term. Culture comes from all kinds of places - family, peers, teachers, the guy at the greengrocer's shop, the internet, TV, books, etc. etc.


    Obviously you don't have children. Or, if you do, you really ought to find out how much effort your wife/partner actually puts in - and you should spend some time at home with your children.
     
  16. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    Wrong sorry, most children spend at least some time in child care almost from BIRTH now and the goverment is now mandating that children attend kindergarten/pre school. In my own case mum was back at work the week after i was born and i was looked after by my grandparents and when i turned 3 i was in kindergarten. Also i dont belive i said peer group, i belive i said COMMUNITY.

    You can belive whatever you want but through goverment funding, tax breaks, child care, kindergarten, school, afterschool care, afterschool activities, homework and all the rest the biggest investment comes from the community and thats not even taking acount of kids in state care
     
  17. Asguard Kiss my dark side Valued Senior Member

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    Oh and on the issue of pay for child care workers and teachers you come from NSW i beluve, your goverment just slashed in real terms the pay for those teachers who are raising your kids
     
  18. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Wrong about what?

    And so...? If a child is in child care from 8 am to 4 pm, that's 8 hours out of 24, 5 days a week. That makes 40 hours total per week of child care. That leaves 128 hours per week in the care of Mum.

    And so...? You can't generalise from one anecdote.

    And I'm saying that for teenagers, peer group is a much greater influence than "community".

    All government funding comes from taxes. Taxes are paid by "working families". Remember?

    And don't get me started on what great lives kids in state care have.

    And you're still trying to restrict the term "investment" to some financial amount on a ledger somewhere.

    Child-care workers and teachers of all kinds from kindergarten to university level, are vastly undervalued and underpaid. The reason is that teaching has traditionally been considered a "female" profession, and the patriarchy imposes its values once again.
     
  19. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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  20. aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    BTW, in for a penny, in for a pound makes perfect sense. Once a sex is determined as a child bearer and raiser, it is advantageous to give that sex more child-related duties, leaving the other free for food collection and protection. Dunno why Gustav is comparing it to morphology.
     
  21. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    It talks about height and weight.
    In Africa that means the children are eating better.
    Get it?
    Too, it's not performance I highlighted, but how many years they go-meaning that they can stay in school and not drop out to work.
    It's a third-world country, Asguard, and you just applied your Western assumptions to it.

    I never went to daycare. In grade school, due to an undiagnosed learning disability, mom had to spend time drilling and drilling and drilling basic math...with her because my dad would end up hitting me out of frustration.

    Yes, and thank you.
    Too, throw in how much you'd have to pay for a maid service and linen service, if my experience is any gauge.

    Asguard...I do hope you and your wife will succeed in reproducing soon, as I know you both really want a baby.

    How well are paramedics paid again?
     
    Last edited: Dec 24, 2011
  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Hmm. I have two sisters. Our mother put far more effort into raising us than the community did.

    My sisters have three kids each. They each put far more effort into raising them than the community did.

    I have a son. My wife put far more effort into raising him than the community did.

    I have perhaps 200 female friends/relatives with children ranging from newborns to age 45 or so. They all put far more effort into raising their children than the community did.

    Perhaps things are different where you live. But here, even while a child is in school, the child spends 40 hours a week or so at school and doing homework, and 70 hours or so awake with their parents.

    Well, if homework time doesn't count as mother time since someone else told them what to do, school time doesn't count as community time since someone else told them how to behave.

    MUCH better adjusted than a child raised by strangers.
     
  23. keith1 Guest

    What women look for in a high intelligent male these days (if that's what they are seeking) is not my concern here, at first glance. But to isolate what that would entail is.
    Here is a male being who must first be indoctrinated normally, as all males are:

    --Slowly a donning of higher intelligence emerges.
    --Next, he looses trust in those not as intelligent as himself, especially those of scholarly authority, as he is young, and in a learning phase.
    --He will then show signs of hesitancy, as if there is something wrong with the whole institution of the indoctrination.
    --He then must question the bedrock of all institutions.
    --He must go thru a self-examination of his surroundings--a quiet, private relearning.
    --He must maintain an agreeable appearance to his surroundings, not to instill alarm.
    --He becomes noticeably disassociated.
    --Surrounding young low intellect men and women who need a kick in the teeth are protected by the law system.
    --Normal procedural indoctrination weeds out the disassociated from advancement.
    --The system breeds success in the lower intelligent subjects.
    --Work positions requiring high intellect are filled by incompetent lower intellects.
    --System failure.
     

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