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It was reported today that a large and increasing number of men are raising another man's child.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4137506.stm

Who cares, and why ?

Presumably the father in question would care. It could mean their partner was/is having an affair or something similar.

I think an important point to make is whether the 'father' is raising the child knowing that they are/are not the father of the child. Then it becomes more of a choice than a secret.
It could also stop any future repercussions.

If I read the article well, it's more a case of more and more men discovering that they are not the father of their partner's child (through higher frequency of paternity tests). Another case of (bio)technology evolving faster than people can cope with morally & psychologically?

I remember reading an article that this is actually something stimulated by evolution: woman enters into long term relationship with a nurturing man, but has escapades with hunky strong man thus occasionally combining two things: a healthy (natural) father with a nurturing (social) father. I'll try to dig it up (but I don't remember whether the article was in English or Dutch).

Of course, people cannot be reduced to mindless executants of evolution.

[QUOTE=Lestat]If I read the article well, it's more a case of more and more men discovering that they are not the father of their partner's child (through higher frequency of paternity tests). Another case of (bio)technology evolving faster than people can cope with morally & psychologically?

I remember reading an article that this is actually something stimulated by evolution: woman enters into long term relationship with a nurturing man, but has escapades with hunky strong man thus occasionally combining two things: a healthy (natural) father with a nurturing (social) father. I'll try to dig it up (but I don't remember whether the article was in English or Dutch).

Of course, people cannot be reduced to mindless executants of evolution.[/QUOTE]

That article sounds fascinating, please do dig it up if you can.
I admit to being sceptical at the idea that "a hunky man," is necessarily healthy, while "nurturing men," are smaller and/or weaker... since it seems to indicate some definite stereotyping. But still, sounds like interesting stuff.

Regarding the original link in the thread... I would think that the same aspects of secret affairs versus open relationships apply...
Certainly, if the man didn't know and found out, I could see it being extremely difficult to deal with emotionally and psychologically.
I am also trying to put myself in the place of a woman in that sort of a situation... What are the choices?
*telling one's husband/partner and risking becoming a single mother
*an abortion

None of the above would be easy...

I find this interesting given that I spent from the beginning of February or so, straight through until the end of June watching a newborn daughter of someone I knew. Who, happened to have two possible father's and has yet to bother with finding out who the father is. The little girl turns 1 in 4 months, she'll begin to wonder who "daddy" is once she can understand the concept and hears other people discussing fathers and realizes she doesn't have that for herself.

I think it happens to not be all that important to know to be honest. I would have been happier I believe having my step-father as my true father, or even having just had him raise me from day 1. Whether he was who helped concieve me is irrevelant, I love the man and he has been absolutely wonderful to me since I've met him.

Now I tend to be extremely emotional and sensative to emotions and such. My mood can change quickly, and I tend to stay upset or angry for quite some time at people who have hurt me. I don't tolerate being lied to, or having information I find important held back from me, for any reason. I tore into my parents for not telling me what was going on, bluntly, all the time when I was little. I'm not a moron, I'm not fragile, even if I was only 8 at the time. I can handle the truth, and it should be given to me, that's my right IMHO.

If, I found out that my parents weren't really my parents, and they knew for some time before I did, and kept that from me I would be very, very unhappy with them. It may not change how I feel for them truly if they treated me well and as parents. Yet, I know if I say, adopted someone, I would let them know our relationship. If for some reason, I was married to a girl (hypothetical here, I'm against marriage by principal), she cheated on me, had a baby and we found out the child was not mine, but that of the man she had cheated on me with I would make sure the child knew what went on with that.

A child of even 2 years old who is reasonably intelligent can understand the world around them if it is explained to them. My little brother Jacob knew that he and his older sister Jasmine had a different mother and the same father as my brother Matt and myself by that age. We were still brother's in his eyes, he loved me still, yet he knew the difference between his mommy, and my mommy.

The problem is, how to handle discussing such a thing with your children, and partner. Treating anyone in the family in a negative, abusive manner in front of the children in the family is damaging to them. Treating the child in an abusive manner for something they have no responsibility is going to do some serious damage to them mentally and emotionally. The fact that one of the parents involved with raising the child happens to not have had part in actually making the child doesn't quite matter, unless the child or parents make it matter. If all parties involved still want to be a "family", then what does it matter?

I haven't read the article; I'm too lazy, and my dial-up's being extraordinarily slow today, even for dial-up. But does the article talk about step-dad's? There's also the issue of the high divorce rate, and there are a lot of women with kids getting remarried (two friends of mine are examples of this, although one of them isn't divorce-related so much as his dad died and the mother is with another man now).

@ Lestat
Yes, I think it is a matter of more men discovering they are not the father.
When I heard the news item the representative of "Families need Fathers" said that this showed that there was a greater need for DNA testing. I was puzzled by that.

As to your recollection, I have also read that. I am deeply unhappy about it. One of the problems with evolutionary theory ( which, I hasten to add, I do not attack per se) was that it was interpreted through the standard prejudices of the day. Thus a lot of attention was paid to its impact on religion; less on the gender stereotypes which underpinned a lot of the conclusions which were reached. This continues in what I call " neo darwinism" ( not my coinage) for want of a better word. Essentially this school distorts facts to make them fit with a theory of evolution which is informed by gender stereotyping. It is used to justify a lot of social ideas which are not in keeping with the real world. Latterly a lot of women were involved in biology and evolutionary theory, and they did research which challenged those ideas. Simplistic (stereotypic) notions suggested that evolution was driven by the idea that males competed and females accepted the winner. Does that strike you as odd ? It did strike many women in the field as implausible. This led to research which showed that females have an active role in evolution. This was genuinely new. Bertand Russell, a truly intelligent thinker, reported that when he was young a well-educated man could believe that his wife was no more closely related to his children than the wife of the man next door. Leaving aside the obvious fact that peasants who were close to nature and who bred animals could not have shared those views, it is clear that Darwin ( not himself so ill informed) did not manage to shift the prevailing social wisdom with mere science. They did not mean that she might have been having an affair. She was a bag to carry his children in, no more.

The theory you have referred to strikes me as yet another attempt to fit the facts into a male oriented world view. Slightly more sophisticated, but still trying to explain female behaviour in terms of the importance of men. I don't buy it, or the male values about what make a good mate it tries to support. This boils down to:the things that men value about themselves are truly important. Valuable men might not make good fathers, however. Women agree, but are pragmatic. Ideally they would prefer to be monogamous (probably their true nature, as in "higamous hogamous") but they can't be, because the guys they fancy (real men) aren't very good fathers. Therefore they are promiscuous. Again, does that strike you as plausible ? It assumes that women are intrinsically duplicitious (a very old stereotype); that they are concerned with the raising of children before they have any; and that the extensive social structures which are primarily concerned to ensure that it is not only the very "wise man who knows his father", are in some sense redundant. At least two of these ideas are mutually contradictory, I think

We had a discussion a while back in which someone linked to an article in The New York Times about the evolution of female sexuality. It's a fairly common notion that our female ancestors were driven to choose the most masculine men they could find to impregnate them but at the same time they chose the most nurturing males they could find to stick around for years and help raise their children. (A simultaneous evolutionary pattern developed so that children's faces resembles their fathers', thus giving men a little more confidence in the paternity of their children.) I don't think people understand why they behave the way they do; they simply act on their desires without thinking. So if today's women are in fact repeating the habits of their ancestors, it shouldn't be a surprise.

I would have actually been happier if my dad had not been my dad... if that makes sense. I just didn't like him much. But my parents have been together for over 25 years, I think, but my dad had a wife before my mom, and they had a son. So in that case, it was actually a woman (my mom) with a kid who was not her own; but he--my half-brother--knew who his real mother was, although ultimately not what she was like (this coming from my dad; my half-brother tracked her down one day and went to be with her and discovered she was not a very pleasant person).

Frankly speaking, I think the whole monogamus idea is over. Samantha Jones probably said it best when she said monogomy came back for a few years but is on its way out again. Humans aren't really meant to be monogomus animals; some species of animals are, but it's contrary to their best interests. If an animal wants to ensure his/her seed gets spread, s/he has several mates; I recall there being studies done on some animals where it was indicated there was actually some kind of gene which determined if an animal would be monogomus or not (if I ever find an article pertaining to this, I'll post it, but I doubt I'll look any time soon; not until I'm at least temporarily off the dial-up anyway). Even the whole family structure is screwed up now: everyone is hooked on this idea that a family has to be a mother, a father, and kids. There was a rather embarrassing moment over a decade ago when Vice President Dan Quayle wailed on Murphy Brown (fictional character on a TV show of the same name) for being a single mother, citing it was bad to portray single moms as just another lifestyle choice. As if it's wrong for a woman to raise a child by herself; no, she can't do it without a man present.

As far as being raised by someone who's not your biological mother/father, who cares? As long as they're a good parent, that's all that really matters. With gay and lesbian couples with children becoming more and more a norm, it's obvious that at least one person in that relationship is not related by blood to the child (unless the child is conceived by a sister or brother, or something of that nature, to one of the couple). But as long as both people in the couple take care of their child/ren, make sure they're well looked after, learn what they need to, and so on, it doesn't matter that one of the parents doesn't happen to be related to the child. A child can get the same loving support from just one parent, from a mother and a father, a step-mother and father, a step-father and mother, two fathers, two mothers, or any other combination that can possibly exist. If the child doesn't know who they're biological mother/father is, what difference does it really make? The parent(s) they grew up with, who they love and who loved them, are all that should really be important (I've tried to refrain from using the term "real mother/father" since it implies a step-mom or step-dad would somehow be some kind of "fake" parent).

As for the parents' point of view, Fiona may've said it best: a woman might not think the man she wants is an ideal father (I'm going to say biologically speaking, for what I'm going to say). After all, thanks to my parents genetics, I'm pretty blind, I'm asthmatic, and I'm overweight; not a fun combination, but at least I'm reasonably smart (sometimes ). A woman might attach herself to a man who is very intelligent in the hopes that her children will be also, but he may be lacking substantial somethings that would make him her ideal husband, and yet he may still be a great father, genetically speaking. So, she'll have fun with the plumber or the pool boy for kicks. The same can be said about men; a man may choose a woman for specific biological features: maybe she's gorgeous, she's smart, etc. But while she may be an ideal person for him to have kids with, maybe he's a chubby chaser and he wants to fool around with a two hundred pound woman (these arguments about the "cheating" man and woman go back to my monogomy speech). So yes, maybe a woman has given birth to a son that's not biologically the "father's," but you seriously can't blame her for wanting what's best for her kids.

Anyway, to make a long post... even longer, to answer Fiona's original question, I don't care. Why? A good parent can be worth more than the biological parent. It will only matter to the father, if he finds out his wife cheated on him. For myself, I prefer my "mate" be happy, and if sleeping with someone else does it, then I'll live... although I think I'd rather discuss that option first instead of one day finding out I've been cheated on (hence why I brought up the whole monogomy paragraph to begin with).

Any scientific finding, fact, idea or hypothesis can be and has been used by an ideology to support specific opinions within that ideology. People use psychology to prove the superiority of a certain political system, physics to prove the existence of a god, chemistry to prove the existence of ghosts, or what have you. There are thousands of examples. Evolutionary biology, or more specifically, evolutionary behavioural science, has been used by feminists, patriarch chauvinists, biological determinists of all sorts...people who have an ideological agenda and like to use the "argument from nature", ie if something is natural is must be good and true and consistent with how humankind should live. It's a cheap excuse of an explanation model, and it's highly popular in media because it's easy to create sensationalist messages. Family and relationship issues is something most people are interested in, and a tabloid saying "Scientists say: Unfaithfulness is natural! will always sell some extra issues.

Not only in the UK but in other countries, studies have been made on the subject of biological fatherhood. Yes, these studies have shown that a relatively large % of fathers are not the biological fathers of their children, although they may have thought so. Not very nice for the family involved, since it's usually a traumatic event to realise that your partner has not only cheated on you but also kept it secret for a long time and let you believe you were the father. There is however no reason to look back an evolution to find an explanation for this. We just need to look at how homo sapiens sapiens behave, bond and raise offspring today. Our species did not live in core families originally, we lived in larger groups and the group reared the offspring together. Human males don't compete for mating the way walruses or baboons do, human groups did not have only one dominant male that fertilised all the females. Neither men nor women were monogamous. Sex in our species, like many other primates, is not only for reproduction, it has a lot of social group attachment functions.

In our society, monogamy has been a formal and relative concept for a very long time. Between 30%-50% of Western European men and women have been unfaithful to their partners, so it is certainly not surprising that children are conceived with another person than your spouse. Is it surprising that so many women don't tell? No, not really. Most people avoid difficult conflicts if they can, in some cases the woman may simply not know who is the biological father or believe it is the man she has a couple relationship with.

Does it matter? Yes, it matters a lot in my opinion, since it is a very serious lie to let your partner believe you are faithful and monogamous to him and he is the father of your child with another man. I simply think lies matter, especially in loving relationship where people expect trust. Does it matter for the child? Yes it does, when the truth leaks out, especially because it is likely to create severe conflicts between the parents.

[QUOTE=C Elegans]Any scientific finding, fact, idea or hypothesis can be and has been used by an ideology to support specific opinions within that ideology... Evolutionary biology, or more specifically, evolutionary behavioural science, has been used by feminists, patriarch chauvinists, biological determinists of all sorts...people who have an ideological agenda and like to use the "argument from nature", ie if something is natural is must be good and true and consistent with how humankind should live. It's a cheap excuse of an explanation model, and it's highly popular in media because it's easy to create sensationalist messages...

There is however no reason to look back an evolution to find an explanation for this. We just need to look at how homo sapiens sapiens behave, bond and raise offspring today...[/QUOTE]
I thought you would be interested in learning how humans became the way are now. Saying that we only need to look at the way humans are now is kind of like saying we don't need to study the origin of the universe because it exists right now and that's all we need to know. Even if there's no practical application for a theory or a bit of scientific knowledge, isn't it important just for the sake of curiosity? If we ever do gain any insight into human evolution, don't you think it might lead to other things we never thought of before?

Don't you wonder why human beings find certain things more attractive than others? There's a reason why people find certain facial features more attractive than others (just as there's a reason why a cat kneads and circles its bed before lying down). I'm personally interested in the evolution of art. Humans didn't start where they are now, so there's a history to be studied. Or are you content to look at statistics and say we don't need to know how people and art evolved because we know what people are attracted to or enjoy looking at now and that's all we need to know?

In addition to merely satisfying our curiosity (for those of us who do have some curiosity) there might also be some practical reasons for studyingI human evolution. For one thing, humans are still evolving, and it might be useful to predict what's happening to our species even now. Advances in genetics, drug therapies, and behavioral modifications also raise ethical questions that cannot be resolved in a scientific stasis, and I think that scientists should understand the implications of their work before they start trying to "play God".

I can see why you're afraid of what lay persons will do with scientific knowledge--using it to promote their own ideological agendas or using it to create sensations, for example. Just look at the way I use scientific findings. But I would think that people who are genuinely curious about human nature would not let that stop them from studying the evolution of human behavior.

@ Von Dondu

I don't think the study of the evolution of human behaviour is at all like the study of the origin of the universe. There is a chance we can find out about the latter. There is no chance we can find out about the former, as there is literally no data. This is not a case of lay people misusing science. In this field there is no science, only politics and social engineering.

VonDondu wrote:I thought you would be interested in learning how humans became the way are now.

Oh, I am extremely interested in that. I think you misunderstood what I meant. That something is interesting and meaningful, is not the same as saying it is necessary to explain a phenomena. What I meant was that in order to explain the phenomena Fiona posted in the first post, ie an increasing awareness of men raising a child that they are not the biological father of, you don't need to look back at evolution, you can look at our species as we are today. If we want to explain why we have an appendix, we absolutely need to look at phylogenesis (the evolutionary development of the species) because it has no function today, but if we want to explain why people are unfaithful or why people lie, we don't need to use phylogenetic explanation models.

Don't you wonder why human beings find certain things more attractive than others? There's a reason why people find certain facial features more attractive than others (just as there's a reason why a cat kneads and circles its bed before lying down). I'm personally interested in the evolution of art. Humans didn't start where they are now, so there's a history to be studied. Or are you content to look at statistics and say we don't need to know how people and art evolved because we know what people are attracted to or enjoy looking at now and that's all we need to know?

Of course I do, every day That's part of my research. Not exactly attractiveness or art, but other human behaviours like for instance complex memeroy functions and emotional response patterns. When you look at molecular genetics, you automatically tap the phylogenesis as well.

Advances in genetics, drug therapies, and behavioral modifications also raise ethical questions that cannot be resolved in a scientific stasis, and I think that scientists should understand the implications of their work before they start trying to "play God".

This is a major problem. Science is amoral, it can say nothing about what is "right" or "wrong" in a moral sense. We go on making discoveries regarding how things are and how they work. The problem is that the process of discovering novel things, is highly unpredictable and as I have said many times on this board, almost all major scientific findings are made serendipitously. So how do we take responsibility for our discoveries before we have found them? And how do we take responsibility for the fact that the same knowledge that can be used to cure common severe diseases, can also be used for unethical purposes? One example is apoptosis, programmed cell death. The people who discovered apoptosis got the Nobel prize, and they certainly deserved it. Apart from being a basic finding about how cells work, understanding of apoptosis have lead to huge improvement in cancer research and treatment, and also in understanding of how degenerative disorders work and future treatments. However, it has also lead to increased understanding of the possibility to increase longevity, a possibility that would have huge implications on human life.

However, even if we can't predict what we will find, and we can't predict exactly what a new finding may lead to in the future, we can of course decide to choose not to explore certain avenues. There, we are totally dependent on politicians. Politicans are dependent on what they think is the public opinion, and public opinion is in turn dependent both on how politicans describe a certain issue and how media is describing it. One major problem as I see it, is that for reason I've mentioned many times, the popular media and science don't go very well together, and most people are not actually interested in science so they don't read about scientific findings in the scientific media. It's too boring, to specific and too technical for most people. Another major problem is that there is no global organ for handling ethics considerations. For instance, a lot of countries but not all has signed the regulations that prohibit cloning of humans. That means some researchers can still perform (and claim to do so, although the rest of the scientific community doubts) human cloning if they set up a lab in a country that has not signed.

Well I could write a thesis about this subject, but in summary, let's just say that the world lacks high quality communication channels between scientists, politicians and the public, and it also lacks global agreements.

I can see why you're afraid of what lay persons will do with scientific knowledge--using it to promote their own ideological agendas or using it to create sensations, for example. Just look at the way I use scientific findings. But I would think that people who are genuinely curious about human nature would not let that stop them from studying the evolution of human behavior.

Heh, I haven't noticed you doing anything special with scientific findings. What I had in mind was directed to Fiona's post about how some people try to explain the by applying simplistic versions of evolutionary behavioural science

The scary part to me, is simply how ideologies use selected scientific findings or pseudoscience to give "credit" to their ideas, like Stalin and the Lemarckian evolution, like the US creationists/Intelligent Designers and astrophysics or the European colonialists and evolutionary "race" biology. In a smaller scale, you can see the same with the radical so called "biological feminists", who claim for instance that men "naturally", by "evolution" are genetically predisposed to be violent and hit women. By using this "argument from nature" and claim "it's in their genes", you automatically make a generalisation that all men must be violent and hit women, and because it is "natural" it cannot change. The aim with my last post was to shoot down the kind of simplistic and popularised ideas that Lestat, Fiona and you described previously in this thread. Obviously this aim was not very clear, since you seemed to have got the impression that I think evolutionary behavioural science is uninteresting!

[QUOTE=Lestat]I remember reading an article that this is actually something stimulated by evolution: woman enters into long term relationship with a nurturing man, but has escapades with hunky strong man thus occasionally combining two things: a healthy (natural) father with a nurturing (social) father. I'll try to dig it up (but I don't remember whether the article was in English or Dutch).[/QUOTE]
I can't seem to find it. In fact, searching for it is not even easy since I can't remember where I read it. And I have slow internet...
Sorry. :weeping smiley:
Since Fiona also remembers reading it and I can't find it on either the site of the Flemish newspaper I read on line, or the Economist site, it's maybe to be found on the Time/CNN or MSNBC/Newsweek sites which I also consult from time to time. But those are a bit to heavy in graphics/images to do an extensive search with the lousy connection I have.

part I

[QUOTE=Lestat]combining two things: a healthy (natural) father with a nurturing (social) father [/quote]

Please try to dig this up so I can check what the scientific sources are. I suspect this is popularised and simplified version of some really good studies, and if this is the case I describe these studies below in my comment to Fiona. I may however be wrong since sexual dimorphism and attractiveness issues are not my specialist area, so I cannot exclude that there may be new studies that I'm not familiar with that shows this. So please post links, any links.

[quote="Fiona]As to your recollection"]

First, let me say that how unhappy we are about scientific findings has no relationship to how correct they are. I used to be quite unhappy that intelligence measure in g-factor has shown to be at least 50% genetically determined. I have accepted it now, but when I was a student, I always wanted to think that intelligence was exclusively due to learning, that anyone (who was healthy of course) could become really, really smart and talented in the right environment. This is not true. Also, I was very unhappy about the findings that people with less intelligence cope less well with trauma in the sense that they have increased risk for developing PTSD (post traumatic stress syndrome. I think it is really unfair that at group level, people with lower cognitive functions suffer more and have significantly more lasting problems by traumatic events such as natural catastrophies or rape, than people with high cognitive functions. However, fair or not, nice or not, it's a fact.

part II

For the issue of females rating the attractiveness of males, let me describe what I believe is the background for the information Lestat reports, and we'll see later if this is what he meant or not? The studies I describe below are of high quality, very well performed and they were published in the worlds' absolute top scientific journal, Nature.

The first study is the British-Japanse study (Perrett DI, Lee KJ, Penton-Voak I, Rowland D, Yoshikawa S, Burt DM, Henzi SP, Castles DL, Akamatsu S. Effects of sexual dimorphism on facial attractiveness. Nature 1998 Aug 27;394(6696):884-7) where they used masculinized and feminized versions of the same face. Masculination and feminisation was done by using features that are sexually dimorphic (ie different between men and women) such as broader chin and larger distance between the pupils in men compared to women. The study showed that both heterosexual men and heterosexual women rated feminized faces of the opposite gender as most attractive. The subjects were also asked to rate certain characteristics in the faces, and increased masculination in males were associated with "stereotypes" such as dominance and violence. Feminized male faces were rated by women as more "warm", "honest", "cooperative" and "having higher quality as a parent". An interesting finding was that men did not rate feminised women faces as "better parent", instead it was the neutral female faces that got the highest rating for "good parent". Besides, it should also be noted that other attractiveness studies based on rating of faces, have shown that symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive, and also that average faces (faces composed by taking the average of many different faces) are rated as more attractive. (Symmetry is a feature associated with high immunocompetence, ie theability to produce an immune response to pathogens.)

Similar studies have also been done with smell, where hormonal levels, markers for immunocompetence, similarity in immune systems etc have been used, but let's stick to face attractiveness for the moment.

The second study reports that women change part of their attractiveness ratings depending on menstrual cycle phase ( Penton-Voak IS, Perrett DI, Castles DL, Kobayashi T, Burt DM, Murray LK, Minamisawa R. Menstrual cycle alters face preference. Nature 1999 Jun 24;399(6738):741-2). In the follicular phase (before ovulation), where chances to get pregnant are larger, women tend to rate less feminine male faces as more attractive for short-term relationships than in the lutheal phase (after ovulation, when conception risk is lower). The women in the study rated male faces with various degree of feminisation and masculination during different points in their menstrual cycle. The ratings for long-term relationship attractiveness did not change (they still preferred slightly feminised male faces), but the rating for attractiveness for short-term relationships changed so that when women were in follicular phase, they rated more masculinised phases as more attractive than when they were in lutheal phase. It should be noted that the study was done on one group of women that were not using hormonal contraceptives, and one group who were using hormonal contraceptives, and only the women who did not use hormonal contraceptives demonstrated this menstrual cycle dependent difference is short-term relationship preference. Thus, the result of this study supports the view that women's rating of men's attractiveness and their sexual behaviour, change depending on how fertile they are. High immunocompetence and rated long-term attractiveness is contradictory to each other in the women's ratings. Thus, the results of this study can be interpreted so that a solution to this trade-off situation is polyandry, ie women choosing different partners for different purposed. This is how the authors interpreted their results, and I can in no way see any of the stereotypes you posted. The authors suggest females may benefit evolutionary from polyandry (having more than one male sexual partner) and I totally fail to see how any of the interpretation suggests "male oriented world view", "trying to explain female behaviour in terms of the importance of men" or assumptions that "women are intrinsically duplicitious".

If these are the studies Lestat's info was referring to, I can assure you that you can save your feminist patos for more valid targets I quote from the last part of the discussion (can't post the whole article for copyright reasons, I'll see if I can find a free copy of them on the web later)

Perret et al wrote: Together, the results indicate that judgements of male attractiveness reflect multiple motives. Females may adopt different strategies, giving preference to characteristics that are associated with dominance and an effective immune system, or to characteristics that are related to paternal investment.

Sexual dimorphism in any species reflects compromises among diverse selection pressures. In humans, the greater upper body musculature and more rugged skeletal anatomy of males relative to females may reflect advantages in male–male competition and hunting. Because male attractiveness is an important determinant of relationships and sexual partnerships, the reduction in attractiveness of male face shape with masculinization represents a further selection pressure. This would act against 'run away' fisherian sexual selection for extreme male characteristics, and is consistent with the relative lack of sexual dimorphism in humans.

The preferences found here indicate a selection pressure on the evolution of face shape that acts against pronounced differences between males and females and, as more-feminine face shapes are perceived as younger, the preferences would encourage a youthful, neotonous appearance in the species generally.

Penton-Voak et al wrote:Dominance and quality as a parent are attributions made at opposite ends of the continuum relating to facial masculinity, and each might be associated with costs and benefits to reproductive success. A preference for males with a more masculine appearance might confer benefits for offspring in terms of resistance to disease but confer costs due to potentially decreased paternal investment.

In humans, concealed ovulation and limited visual similarity between offspring and their fathers can result in uncertainty of paternity. Such uncertainty, coupled with converging evidence for cyclic changes in female sexual behaviour and preferences for male characteristics, suggests that female mating strategy need not be entirely exclusive. As in some other species, selection might have favoured human females who pursued a mixed mating strategy under some ecological and social conditions. Women with a long-term sexual partner are more likely to have extra-pair copulations in the follicular phase of the cycle than during the luteal phase or menses. A female might choose a primary partner whose low masculine appearance suggests cooperation in parental care ('long-term' preferences are unchanged across the menstrual cycle) but occasionally copulate with a male with a more masculine appearance (indicating good immunocompetence) when conception is most likely. Sexual behaviour arising from cyclic preferences might allow individuals to accrue benefits from polyandry while maintaining the advantage of ostensive monandry.

Consistent with this hypothesis is studies showing that women's preference for the odour of men with high symmetry increases with the probability of conception across the menstrual cycle, and that symmetric men report they have more sexual contacts than assymmetric men. Furthermore, other studies show that women living in long term couple relationships are more prone to have extra-pair sexual contacts when they are in follicular phase. In summary, there is good evidence that at group level, women more sex partners when they are more likely to get pregnant, and during this period, they have a preference for men with high immunocompetence (ie men that tend to look symmetric and more masculine at the same time).

The reason why I don't like the simplified version Lestat referred to is firstly because the "woman enters into long term relationship with a nurturing man, but has escapades with hunky strong man" totally fails to address both the symmetry and immunocompetence factor, which there is more evidence for than masculination, and the "average"-preference and secondly, it must be noted that although these studies demonstrate some interesting findings, there are many factors that determine who a woman get children with, and we have no idea how large the effect of face preference during different periods in the menstrual cycle, is. We don't know how rated attractiveness of computer images of faces related to real partner choices. Maybe it would only explain 1% or less of the variation in reality, that we don't know. Thus, it is a very premature conclution to state that "women have long term relationships with men that are good parents but reproduce with men with masculinised features". This, only future research will reveal to us.

EDIT: Just to clarify: My critisism for simplification is not directed to Lestat here, but to the source, unless the source does indeed refer to some other studies that I am unaware of.

[QUOTE=C Elegans]EDIT: Just to clarify: My critisism for simplification is not directed to Lestat here, but to the source, unless the source does indeed refer to some other studies that I am unaware of.[/QUOTE]
You should direct at least part of your criticism to me because the wording is mine based on vague recollection of something I read probably weeks ago. As previously posted, I can't find the article nor do I remember its source, but what you're telling is vaguely familiar. So sorry again for the poor wording but I thought it would make things clearer. Though I understand your desire for scientific precision, sometimes simpler terms are in order for people to understand, but I went too far in that direction.

[QUOTE=C Elegans]
First, let me say that how unhappy we are about scientific findings has no relationship to how correct they are.[/QUOTE]

Really ?

In the first place the "explanation" I read did not purport to be scientific. I did not read it in one place, I read it more than once, though like Lestat I cannot remember where.

Secondly, you may have been misled by my idiomatic use of the word "unhappy". This was not an emotional response it was an intellectual one.

I cannot quote from the next part of your post here but I will continue and I hope people will forgive me for two consecutive posts - it's really only one reply, honest

Lestat wrote:You should direct at least part of your criticism to me because the wording is mine based on vague recollection of something I read probably weeks ago.

Ok, I redirect part of my critisism towards you then The reason why I'm careful with interpretations and picky with wordings, is because simplifications often lead to misunderstandings and generalisations that in turn set off debates, opinions and values that are misdirected in the first place, and also makes the whole topic even more vulnerable for exploitation by people looking for support for their ideological agendas.

Fiona] Really ? :rolleyes: In the first place the wrote:
No need to get offended (if you were) I am again just trying to demonstrate that before evaluating scientific findings and deciding ones opionion and something related to science, it's necessary to go to the original source of scientific findings rather than take it from the popular media. You posted a lot of opinions and reflections you had about something you have read that you said was similar to what Lestat posted. I posted what I think is the scientific source for what you and Lestat have read, with the reservation that I may be wrong if what you have read was indeed based on some other studies. (This we can only know if you manage to find out where you read it, of course.)

Secondly, you may have been misled by my idiomatic use of the word "unhappy". This was not an emotional response it was an intellectual one.

Yes, so were the examples I took from myself. To clarify, what I mean is that regardless of how much we like or dislike something or regardless of how we would like the world to be and humans to behave, this does not change how correct any scientific findings are.

Looking forward to your reply

C Elegans wrote:For the issue of females rating the attractiveness of malesThe first study is the British-Japanse study (Perrett DI, Lee KJ, Penton-Voak I, Rowland D, Yoshikawa S, Burt DM, Henzi SP, Castles DL, Akamatsu S. Effects of sexual dimorphism on facial attractiveness. Nature 1998 Aug 27;394(6696):884-7) where they used masculinized and feminized versions of the same face. Masculination and feminisation was done by using features that are sexually dimorphic (ie different between men and women) such as broader chin and larger distance between the pupils in men compared to women. The study showed that both heterosexual men and heterosexual women rated feminized faces of the opposite gender as most attractive. The subjects were also asked to rate certain characteristics in the faces, and increased masculination in males were associated with "stereotypes" such as dominance and violence. Feminized male faces were rated by women as more "warm", "honest", "cooperative" and "having higher quality as a parent". An interesting finding was that men did not rate feminised women faces as "better parent", instead it was the neutral female faces that got the highest rating for "good parent". Besides, it should also be noted that other attractiveness studies based on rating of faces, have shown that symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive, and also that average faces (faces composed by taking the average of many different faces) are rated as more attractive. (Symmetry is a feature associated with high immunocompetence, ie theability to produce an immune response to pathogen

I don't quarrel with your assertion that the study is well designed etc. However I do not see the relevance of the last sentence. From what you report women rate attractiveness in the same way as men. They apparently agree about what constitutes a more masculine or a more feminine face. They associate such faces with different characteristics. All of those characteristics are stereotypical. It is possible the stereotypes arose because they reflect something in our genes or in our evolution or whatever. It is equally possible that they reflect the media versions of these things which we are all bombarded with. After all it is a cliche that the plainer girl next door is the better mother. What more does your "interesting finding" say ?
snip

The second study reports that women change part of their attractiveness ratings depending on menstrual cycle phase ( Penton-Voak IS, Perrett DI, Castles DL, Kobayashi T, Burt DM, Murray LK, Minamisawa R. Menstrual cycle alters face preference. Nature 1999 Jun 24;399(6738):741-2). In the follicular phase (before ovulation), where chances to get pregnant are larger, women tend to rate less feminine male faces as more attractive for short-term relationships than in the lutheal phase (after ovulation, when conception risk is lower). The women in the study rated male faces with various degree of feminisation and masculination during different points in their menstrual cycle.The ratings for long-term relationship attractiveness did not change (they still preferred slightly feminised male faces), but the rating for attractiveness for short-term relationships changed so that when women were in follicular phase, they rated more masculinised phases as more attractive than when they were in lutheal phase. It should be noted that the study was done on one group of women that were not using hormonal contraceptives, and one group who were using hormonal contraceptives, and only the women who did not use hormonal contraceptives demonstrated this menstrual cycle dependent difference is short-term relationship preference. Thus, the result of this study supports the view that women's rating of men's attractiveness and their sexual behaviour, change depending on how fertile they are.

It is a big leap from a change in ratings of attractiveness to a change in sexual behaviour, is it not ? Maybe women who are fertile are just generally more randy. It could equally be that they are less randy when they are fertile and therefore don't judge men as prospective partners but rather than on some other criteria (eg aesthetic)

High immunocompetence and rated long-term attractiveness is contradictory to each other in the women's ratings.

I can't quite follow this. Do you mean that women find assymetrical faces more attractive in the long term ? In that case what do you mean when you say that symmetry is more attractive? I assume this is from different studies but I can't understand how you are reconciling it. I may not have understood your point.

Thus, the results of this study can be interpreted so that a solution to this trade-off situation is polyandry, ie women choosing different partners for different purposed. This is how the authors interpreted their results, and I can in no way see any of the stereotypes you posted. The authors suggest females may benefit evolutionary from polyandry (having more than one male sexual partner) and I totally fail to see how any of the interpretation suggests "male oriented world view", "trying to explain female behaviour in terms of the importance of men" or assumptions that "women are intrinsically duplicitious". If these are the studies Lestat's info was referring to, I can assure you that you can save your feminist patos for more valid targets I quote from the last part of the discussion (can't post the whole article for copyright reasons, I'll see if I can find a free copy of them on the web later)

I am sorry that you cannot see any stereotypes in the interpretation offered. I do not know of many polyandric societies (I gather that it is practised in, I think, Tibet, where a woman marries two or more brothers. That may be apocryphal). In societies where monogamy is the expectation polyandry is not acceptable, mostly. If women are biologically constrained to "solve" the trade off in this way they are presumably "biologically" duplicitous. As I said, this is an age old stereotype. Perhaps it is the truth; or perhaps we do not need to interpret any of the results in the way suggested. At the point of interpretation we move out of the realm of science and so long as we accept the facts as far as they are known, scientists have no more claim to "expertise" than the rest of us. With all due respect to the views expressed in your signature, you take rather too much upon yourself, imho

snip

Furthermore, other studies show that women living in long term couple relationships are more prone to have extra-pair sexual contacts when they are in follicular phase. In summary, there is good evidence that at group level, women more sex partners when they are more likely to get pregnant, and during this period, they have a preference for men with high immunocompetence (ie men that tend to look symmetric and more masculine at the same time).

Women also tend to feel better when they are in the "follicular" phase, since they don't have cramp etc. Maybe they go out more? That might well lead to more sexual partners but not for the reasons you are suggesting. "Symmetric men may have more sexual partners because they also go out more - after all they are not likely to be looking after the kids. Nothing propinks like propinquity, as my father used to say. Again the explanations seem designed to explain things in terms of female reproduction and that is arguably a stereotypical approach underpinned by a "male oriented world view".

The rest of your post actually acknowledges that the studies you cite have very little to do with what we are discussing. Since science can't help us very much can we acknowledge that and move on ?