A Little Pregnant
Welcome to the 10th edition of Discover Intimacy!
Read time: 7 - 9 minutes
We continue our exploration of Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá.
If you didn’t have an opportunity to read our first piece on this book, you can do so HERE. It covers the first third of the book.
Before we get into this week’s material, here's a reminder about what we know so far...
The overall premise of the book is that monogamy is not a natural, biologically designed practice for human beings. This is the book’s foundation and everything after that seeks to provide historical, anthropological and scientific evidence as to why it is the case.
In our previous edition, we tackled evidence related to prehistoric foragers, science following societal beliefs and bonobo behavior. This week, we’re talking about conception practices and concepts of family in non-Western cultures.
A LITTLE PREGNANT
So often when we’re introduced to scientific and anthropological concepts – either in formal education or extra-curricular learning – we are presented with models based on Western geography, culture and practices as if they are the standard-bearers for the totality of Earth. And, that is simply not the case. There are people all over the world who have and continue to engage in practices that are diametrically opposed to our own ideas of conception, family, motherhood, fatherhood, communal living, care-taking, etc.
In the Amazon and throughout South America, as recently as in the last 50 years, there are ethnic groups who believe the process of conception requires the participation of multiple men. In their view, it takes a lot of sperm from different men to “build” a fetus. Scientifically, this is called “partible paternity.” Meaning that, “a fetus is made of accumulated semen.”
“Anthropologists Stephen Beckerman and Paul Valentine explain, ‘Pregnancy is viewed as a matter of degree, not clearly distinguished from gestation... all sexually active women are a little pregnant. Over time… semen accumulates in the womb, a fetus is formed, further acts of intercourse follow, and additional semen causes the fetus to grow more.'"
In these cultures, women will often seek out multiple men of varying characteristics, qualities and strengths to contribute to the development of the fetus. A man with good looks, a man with good humor, a man with intelligence, a man with integrity – all contributing their semen to the development of a fetus.
Consider what these beliefs and practices mean relative to the Western understanding of paternity. In Western cultures, paternity belongs to one man and even the slightest bit of confusion regarding that individual’s identity will lead to turbulent and potentially destructive behaviors and outcomes among involved parties. There are entire television programs dedicated to the identification of paternity. Ever see Maury? Paternity Court? The occasional paternity-based episode of Judge Mathis?
The Aché, a people of eastern Paraguay, distinguish four different types of fathers.
“Miare: the father who put it in;
Peroare: the fathers who mixed it;
Momboare: those who spilled it out; and
Bykuare: the fathers who provided the child’s essence.
Rather than being shunned as ‘bastards’ or ‘sons of bitches,’ children of multiple fathers benefit from having more than one man who takes a special interest in them. Anthropologists have calculated that their chances of surviving childhood are often significantly better than those of children in the same societies with just one recognized father.”
AN ARMY TO PROTECT
Ryan and Jethá rebut the widely accepted anthropological case for prehistoric monogamy - that a prehistoric mother and child needed the protection and provision offered by one man and in exchange for that, women engaged in sexual activity exclusively with that man, ensuring that the child for which the man was providing, was certainly his.
Ryan and Jethá say different. Instead of sexually engaging with one man for his protection and provision, prehistoric women engaged with multiple men to ensure collective protection and provision. If multiple men could be the father of a child and multiple men assume the duties of caring for that child, that child has more protection and provision than can be offered by one man alone.
In modern, Western terms, we imagine this would be the ideal outcome of having a highly involved and accountable “baby daddy” and a stepfather who approaches the child likewise. Two is better than one.
IT TAKES A VILLAGE
Shared responsibility among parents for a child is not exclusively seen in fatherhood. There’s evidence of it in motherhood as well.
Depending upon where and how you grew up, you may have experienced modified versions of this during childhood where your mother, grandmother, aunts, female cousins and female neighbors participated in your upbringing. This collective group of women may have been responsible for everything from feeding, cleaning, educating, entertaining and supervising you. You “belonged” to one woman biologically, but you belonged to the community as well.
The authors cite anthropological studies of women in African villages and Polynesian communities who breastfeed and look after each other’s children as their own.
“Recalling his childhood among the Dagara, in Burkina Faso, author and psychologist Malidoma Patrice Somé remembers how freely children wandered into houses throughout the village. Somé explains that this ‘gives the child a very broad sense of belonging,’ and that ‘everybody chips in to help raise the child.’ Apart from the many obvious benefits to parents, Somé sees distinct psychological advantages for the children saying, ‘It’s very rare that a child feels isolated or develops psychological problems; everyone is very aware of where he or she belongs.’”
With so much Western emphasis placed on the “nuclear family” consisting of father, mother and child, Ryan and Jethá call into question the challenges today’s Western, nuclear family experiences.
Ever-increasing childcare needs to accommodate for evermore demanding work schedules
Ever-increasing childcare costs
Persistent dissatisfaction that the people and institutions taking care of your children are not doing a good job or worse
Long-term career and goal-based sacrifices to care for children with limited familial and community support
Resentment resulting from those sacrifices
And on, and on…
“Might the contemporary pandemics of fracturing families, parental exhaustion, and confused, resentful children be predictable consequences of what is, in truth, a distorted and distorting family structure inappropriate for our species?”
It begs the question, have we been doing it all wrong?
We’ll continue exploring Sex at Dawn in our next edition of Discover Intimacy.
We hope you feel educated and enlightened by our work. If you have suggestions for topics you’d like us to cover in future editions, reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you.
