[quote=temeculaguy]I’m not ready to blame our society or our changing gender roles on the problems we see today. Some of these things are primal, they predate money, it’s just that money has replaced geing a good hunter or protector in modern times. Some of these women chose their mate because he was financially successful, in some cases, that was his greatest attribute. Now that some men have lost their income, she has lost her desire and ability to ignore his other faults and shortcomings. Not all women are gold diggers, but the ones that can be put in that category have flooded the market, as there is less gold out there. Same thing happens to men who seek a mate for beauty as the primary selection criteria, as that goes, so does his enthusiasm, the difference is that those situations have a steady pace, while the other has highs and lows based on the economy. The couples that either selected or grew to care about something other than looks or money, can ride out bad economies and aging skin, always have, always will. But the looks and money are not a product of the media, they are just today’s version of what was probably how cavemen and cavewomen evaluated each other, same game, different criteria.
We live longer now, we have less religious or societal pressure to stay in unhappy marriages, so the landscape has changed. Is it good or bad, I say both, for every example of a selfish divorce, i can probably find an equal number of pre 1950’s cases of abuse, infidelity or misery where the marriage stayed together because they had to, the good old days weren’t always so good.[/quote]
TG, agree completely. Regarding the caveman analogy, I believe it was philosopher Gene Simmons who pointed out (and I’m paraphrasing) that the oldest profession in the world began over a million years ago when a cavewoman sidled up to a caveman and said – in so many hand motions and grunts – “If you go out there and get me some Mastadon meat, I’ll make it worth your while *wink wink*.” And so it began.
As I’ve said before here in the Piggington pages, 99% of human existence took place before civilization. Genetically, we are still mostly like our neanderthal ancestors. Our base impulses are really not too different, we’re just a little smarter and have more toys to play with. Generally, women want security for themselves and their offspring; men want to spread their seeds, so to speak.
I heard an evolutionary psychologist explain that many thousands of years ago, early human societies were not unlike those of apes whereby only the dominant males got to mate with females. Consequently, there was a severe shortage of females for most males. As “the masses” gained more power they used the churches to come up with this idea of marriage in order to restrict the dominant males to a limited number of females, thus freeing up females for the less dominant males. In other words, the notion of marriage – with all it entails – was invented to upset the then-natural order of things in order to benefit a larger number of men.
All that aside, based on what I’ve seen, marriage doesn’t appear to be a particularly good deal for whomever the primary bread winner is, which is usually a man.
