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Research - Fatherhood
Fatherhood as a Deterrent against Female Promiscuity
It is argued that the presence of a father,
during the daughter's
formative years, acts as a deterrent against his daughter-grown-to-
maturity becoming promiscuous. Given that multiple sexual
partners is the best predictor for contracting a sexually
transmitted disease, rates of sexually transmitted diseases
in the U.S. were compared to rates of out-of-wedlock births
across the U.S. The results were significant. As rates of
out-of-wedlock births increased, rates of sexually transmitted
diseases also increased. The association occurred (1) if rates
of
out-of-wedlock births and rates of sexually transmitted diseases
were surveyed from the same time frame as well as (2) if the
rates of out-of-wedlock births were surveyed from a prior
generation and the rates of sexually transmitted diseases
were surveyed from a subsequent generation. Neither pattern
held for rates of divorce and rates of sexually transmitted
diseases. It is further suggested that no extant theory on
the female psyche or motivation hierarchy would predict that
early father presence with his daughter would deter later
promiscuity on her part, but that such a theory or model would
be desirable.
Geneticists in the last decade have formulated a view of the
animal kingdom that describes what they call “altruism”
an inverse function of the genetic distance between the interacting
individuals or species. That is to say, individuals are indifferent
or hostile to others in proportion to their genetic unlikeness.
KEY WORDS: Father-child relations, out-of-wedlock births,
divorce, sexually transmitted diseases, psychology of women.
Rule #1: All politics are local. Rep. Tip O'Neill
Rule #2: All long term politics are reproduction strategies
Rule #3: Effective long term politics camouflage Rule #2.
Ipsoc Macquire
Homo sapiens is a separate species and thus,
by definition, is unique. In addition to their singularity
by achieving the rank of species, humans possess an oddity
which is rare in the biota and virtually idiosyncratic in
large, terrestrial primates. Humans have social fathers. Across
the world's community of cultures, men marry. Once married,
the overwhelming majority of the husbands become fathers.
Once fatherhood is achieved, the
fathers willingly share their treasure – their time,
their emotions, and their food and resources – with
their young (Hewlett 1992, HRAF 1949, Lamb 1987, Mackey 1985,
1996). Any rare exception to this trend receives much publicity
and analysis. For example, when the Ik of Kenya were experiencing
severe famine and deprivation, children were nurtured only
until the age of three and were then expected to fend for
themselves
(Turnbull 1972). Turnbull's ethnography of the Ik regularly
focused on the lack of normative parenting (from mothers and
fathers). The adult males of the (large) terrestrial primates,
viz. chimpanzees, gorillas, baboons, essentially leave parenting
to the mothers. The adult males will certainly challenge predators
that would threaten the troop's young. Nonetheless the day-to-day
care of the troop's young is left to the mothers (Fossey 1983,
Goodall 1986, 1988, Jolly 1985, Schaller 1964, Smuts
1985, Smuts et al. 1986, cf Hrdy 1977, Hausfater & Hrdy
1984). As a matter of contrast, canid adult males are highly
solicitous of their young and – not unlike men –
uniquely provision as well as protect their young, as with
wolves (Mech 1966, 1970; Mowat 1963, Murie, 1944), coyotes
(Dobie 1949, McMahan 1976, Ryden 1974, Young & Jackson
1951), jackals (Lawick &
Lawick-Goodall 1971, Moehiman 1980), hunting dogs (Kuhme 1965),
and foxes (Alderton 1994). That is, adult male canids (1)
leave the perimeter of their group, (2) procure food, (3)
return the food to the group, and (4) feed their young (and
their mates). No adult male primate, other than men, does
this. Virtually all adult male canids do. Convergent evolution
seems
like an appropriate concept to apply to this particular consonance
between men and adult male canids.
Because neither adult male chimpanzees nor adult male gorillas
systematically provision their young, but men do, the tendency
probably occurred after the Hominid/Pongid split. Thus, there
are several million years of evolution available during which
the psychologies of fathers and the psychologies of daughters
have had the opportunity to adapt to each other. This exercise
explores one such putative adaptation.
Intensive "mothering" is as old as mammals themselves.
Intensive "fathering", as seen above, is more erratic
and for large terrestrial primates non-existent. The question
can be asked: "What psychological adjustments may have
occurred between the father and the daughter as the
daughter grew to maturity under the aegis and the provisioning
of the father?" One dynamic seems clear: the father-daughter
relationship was not and is not sexual. Although father-daughter
incest does occur, and does seem to occur more than mother-son
incest, father-daughter incest is rare (de Young 1987, Kluft
1990, Shepher 1983 Kinsey, Pomeroy and Martin 1953,
Finkelhor 1979, Finkelhor and Dziuba-Leatherman 1994). The
young daughter is much more at risk of sexual abuse if her
social and biological father is not proximate. Adjunct boyfriends
of the mother and step-fathers are several orders of magnitude
more likely to abuse the immature girl than is the social
and biological father (Gordon and Creighton 1988, Russell
1986, Tyler 1986; see Immerman and Mackey [1997] for sequelae
to sexual abuse of a pre-pubescent girl). Such a father acts
as an insurance policy against his daughter's sexual exploitation.
It is argued below that an affiliative bond is constructed
between the father and his daughter and that one of the consequences
of that affiliative bond is a more coherent mating template
of the young-daughter-grown-to-maturity.
Three assumptions/premises are germane to this argument. First,
it is accepted here that women have not adopted a chimpanzee
mating strategy of multiple sexual partners per breeding season
(Goodall 1986,1988, Waal, 1982, 1984, 1990, Turke 1984). Whatever
the mix between nature and nurture, the end result is that
cultures effectively discourage married
women from having multiple partners (adultery) (Broude 1980,
Schlegel 1972, Van den Berghe 1979, Stephens 1963, Divale
and Harris 1976, Fisher 1972, 1992, cf Kurland 1979 and Immerman
and Mackey in press). To the extent that the Sex in America
survey is valid and generalizable, for any given year the
large majority of married women in the U.S. mate only with
their husbands (Michaels, et al., 1994. See Kost and Forrest,
1992, for a similar conclusion). While the incidence of cuckoldry
cum issue, which is unknown to husbands, is not zero, it appears
to be close to error variance (1 % - 3% of births). (Ellis
and Walsh 1997, Brock and Schrimpton 1991). Thus, when a girl
is born, she is normally born into and raised within a
biocultural mosaic wherein her mother has a very restricted
range of mating partners. For any given year – rather
than for a life-time or ever – the mean, median, and
mode of the mother's sexual partners is probably close to
one. Accordingly, the daughter's maternal role model would
reflect a tendency to have restricted numbers of mating partners.
Second, it is argued that for most females the first and most
intensive interaction with an adult male is with her father.
Because the father is, at base, a constant, she would have
a consistent, perhaps a constant,
image of a trusted and loved adult male figure. A lack of
a father would seem to create a more amorphous and nebulous
imagery of "adult masculinity". Accordingly, a constant
image of a father, i.e. of a man, would more crystallize for
the daughter-grown-to-adulthood an "adult male masculine
image". Conversely, a lack of a constant image of a man
– i.e.
the absence of a father – would create a more diffuse
image or template for evaluating the mating partners for the
daughter-grown-to-adulthood.
Framed differently, the notion of "imprinting"
seems appropriate. A generalized definition of "Imprinting"
would include the organization of a system which is time-specific,
permanent, and relatively resistant to extinction (see Freedman
and Gorman 1993, Hess 1973, Lorenz 1935, Tinbergen 1951, 1965,
cf Rossi and Rossi 1990 and Perusse et al. 1994; see Bornstein
[1989] and Leland [1994] for overviews). In this instance,
the
young girl's experiences with her father would be expected
to have lasting effects upon her development and organization
of an effective psycho-sexual template: her reproductive tactics.
Third, several countries, e.g. the U.S., Sweden, Denmark,
(i) have created a de facto social experiment in which a set
of expectations has been generated that treat social fathers
as either optional or supernumerary and (ii) tend to collect
fairly clean demographic data. (In 1993, 47% of all live births
in Denmark were to unmarried mothers. The analogous figures
in Sweden and the U.S. were 50% and 31% respectively (U.S.
Bureau of the Census 1996). Divorces, of course, would add
to the number of fatherless minor children to the extent that
mothers [rather than fathers] received custody). The U.S.
collects demographic data by state plus the District of Columbia.
Hence, if data are analyzed across states (plus
D.C.), an "n" of 51 becomes potential.
Using the above three constructs, the hypothesis can be generated
that girls raised without fathers (i.e. born-out-of-wedlock
or involved in a divorce) would have a less-well-developed
or coherent or organized mating-template when compared to
girls raised with their biological and social fathers. Thus,
it would be expected that girls who are raised without a father
would be less discerning, i.e. have more sexual partners,
than girls who are raised with a co-residing father.
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