Archive for the ‘social evolution’ Category
monogamy’s future…
Most humans like to think we’re a monogamous species. Or so I think, but I might be wrong. After all, our closest living relatives, chimps and bonobos, are not monogamous. And what about our ancestors and cousins – Neanderthals, Denisovans, H heidelbergensis, H naledi, H erectus, H habilis, Australopithecus Afarensis and so on? I’m thinking we have no idea, and will probably never know. If you look the matter up, you’ll generally get the response that we’re socially monogamous, which is, I presume, a way of saying that there’s social pressure on us to be monogamous. So if that’s true, then why this social pressure? To attribute it to religion isn’t an answer, because religions might just as well pressure us to be as non-monogamous as our primate relatives (now that would be an interesting religion!). Of course there’s something very simple and neat about pairing off to produce offspring that the pair can mutually work to rear. It works well for birds, probably the most successful complex life-forms on the planet. And, I have to say, the most adorable.
In any case, with the slow retreat of religion in the WEIRD world, other arrangements are coming into play – single parent families of course, but also Kibbutzim, which are generally non-religious, and gay couples, threesomes and the like. Assuming – big assumption – that we as a species survive our own stupidities re global warming, nuclear armageddon and the like, what will our family or child-rearing structures be like in the coming centuries? We’re so ‘clever’ that we create increasingly complex problems for ourselves – galloping AI, controlled by the super-rich, is the latest one, IMHO – so the transformation of ye olde nuclear family seems the least of our worries (if in fact it’s a worry at all).
The thing is that other primates, as well as our immediate ancestors, lived more collectively. No separate homes until – when? The beginnings of agriculture, only about 10,000 years ago, or less. Australian Aboriginal culture was mostly monogamous, but polygyny was quite common – suggesting male dominance. Also, marriage wasn’t so much based on choice as on complex kinship connections. Polygyny, of course, was an issue throughout early societies that were hierarchically based, as Joseph Henrich explains, or explores, in The Weirdest People in the World. Where we have a belief in one gender’s superiority, as human societies have long suffered from, we’ll have polygyny along with male-dominated monogamy. As that belief continues to fade (though it will be a jolting ride) other experiments in sexual connection and child-rearing will be tried, ethnicities will continue to blend as the world becomes increasingly inter-connected, and with the reduction in male-female ‘ownership’, and fewer children, serial monogamy and other experiments will increasingly be tried.
I tend to agree that monogamy will aways be with us, and will perhaps always be the dominant form, partly due to human laziness – it’s hard work creating new intimate connections, and why bother if what you’ve got is working well enough, and of course there are issues of loyalty, and causing suffering. But that doesn’t have to be the case – think of bonobos again. Jealousy is about ownership – ‘to have and to hold (exclusively), from this day forward’. It just isn’t the bonobo way – everyone belongs to everyone, more or less – sisters more than brothers.
So what do others think? A ‘Psychology Today’ article of twelve and a half years ago (so not quite today) generally agrees with my view:
Classic monogamy—when people married as (at least in theory) virginal teenagers and remained sexually exclusive through their entire lives until one died and the other became celibate — is no longer the norm in many industrialized nations. Longer life-spans, increasing independence for women, and relaxing sexual mores mean that many people in industrialized nations now prefer serial monogamy, in which people couple exclusively for a time before breaking up and then re-coupling exclusively with someone else.
They should be so lucky. (I should say that the author of the article, one Elizabeth Sheff, PhD, is a ‘polyamory expert’, which sounds very more-ish to me). I myself, being haplessly shy in relation to girls when I was a boy – and it didn’t get any better in my twenties and thirties – did fall into marriage in my early forties, with a woman almost ten years older. It didn’t last but we’re still good friends. So my sex life has been mostly fantasy – that way I don’t get to be a bother to real flesh and blood women.
Another personal note: having been brought up in a none-too-happy marriage, cut off from uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents through emigration to Australia from Scotland at age five, I’ve never been too keen on the monogamy thing, though I did tend to get obsessed with one girl at a time when I was young, without ever getting anywhere. No wonder that I haplessly hope for a bonobo humanity. And I also often fantasised about being a girl – a very lesbian girl – when I was a teenager. How bonobo can you get?
The good thing is that, in the WEIRD world, these fantasies have become less shameful, so are a little more capable of being realised. We’re still a long way from the bonobo world of companionable mutual masturbation – female-female (most common of course), male-male, male-female, adult-child, child-child, elder-younger, elder-elder, large group, and I don’t know if I’ve missed anything. All of which, I like to believe, leads to group-orientated, well-adjusted individuals, by and large. Am I being too utopian?
Somewhat along these lines, a recent (2025) study didn’t find monogamy to be the ne plus ultra of relationships:
The study, which analysed data from 35 studies involving 24,489 people in the United States, Canada, Australia, Portugal, Italy and other countries, found no significant differences in relationship or sexual satisfaction levels between individuals in monogamous and non-monogamous relationships.
What they did find is something unsurprising, but hopefully changing – prejudice against those who don’t follow established norms:
“What we see is that those non-monogamous relationships have great relationships and great sex, in spite of the fact that their relationships come under scrutiny in most societies, and in spite of the fact that they experience differential or even prejudiced treatment because of their relationships structures, which are viewed as out of the norm.
“This study highlights the need for more inclusive perspectives on different relationship structures. Healthcare professionals, therapists, and policymakers must recognise and support diverse relationship structures rather than assuming monogamy as the default or ideal.”
This seems to be how things are trending, slowly but surely. You have to be an oldie, as I’m becoming, to feel how things have moved. Very slowly, in individual terms, but quite quickly in terms of evolution, even social evolution. And of course, these trends wouldn’t be global, they’d be much more about that WEIRD world of my familiars.
References
Joseph Henrich, The Weirdest People in the World: how the west became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous, 2021
https://www.latrobe.edu.au/news/articles/2025/release/study-challenges-monogamy-superiority-myth