While doing research in birds with roughly the same pattern of monogamy and cheating as humans, biologists wondered why the trait to “cheat” was not more widespread, after all a male bird that nests down with a female mate, but runs off when she isn't looking to mate with another female - has DOUBLED his paternal contribution to the next generation.
They found out a very interesting thing.
When the male bird was off looking to cheat, his female was often entertaining offers to cheat from other male birds.
Humans are mostly monogamous, and this works well because children need a father, and we work much better as a pair than alone. But fully 10% of the human population is not born to the guy who mom said was their dad.
Momma’s baby. Daddy's maybe.
I don’t know where you get your data from but in many cultures men practicse serial polygamy and even in our culture when I was a boy I’d wager that 75% of the men I knew cheated and maybe a quarter of the women.
Monogamy is a religious construct...not the natural state.
I am open to any links you have with historical stats to bolster the argument.
I believe men choose to be faithful becasue they know it’s more often than not best but not because they inherently are driven to.
LOL..no way Jose.
I’ve lived all over the world....monogmay is most common in the US and Israel...Canada too
Female monogamy is of course rigid in Islamic nations
Human/animal comparisons always collapse when you get to the subject of children. Human children are so completely defenseless for so long—a helplessness that has no parallel in nature—that they will not last long without a protective mother and father.
Monogamy was likely a primary factor in the overwhelming natural-selection victory of humans. If, as the article posits, Neanderthals lived in promiscuous communal groups, this explains very well why there were so remarkably few of them. According to all the studies I’ve seen, there were never more than a few thousand Neanderthals in all of Europe at any given time.