By allowing his wife to take a lover, the husband is doing all he can to ensure the survival of his children. So we went down the list of her children and asked about other fathers. She said no, no, no for each child, and then the husband interrupted when we got to one and said, 'That's not true, don't you remember, there was that guy. He also takes responsibility for his older brother's older son in his role as secondary father. Map by Matt Zang. Not all women take lovers. Manuel Lizarralde has discovered through interviews that one-third of women were faithful to their husbands during their pregnancies.
The same belief is shared by indigenous groups in New Guinea and India, suggesting that multiple paternity has been part of human behavior for a long time, undermining all previous descriptions of how human mating behavior evolved.
At dawn a woman walks back home from the river after bathing with these children. Domesticated pigs abound now: They replace wild game that dwindled away as forests were cut to make way for cattle and farming. Since the s, when anthropologists began to construct scenarios of early human mating, they had always assumed that the model family started with a mom and dad bonded for life to raise the kids, a model that fit well with acceptable Western behavior.
In in an article titled "The Origin of Man," C. Owen Lovejoy, an anthropologist at Kent State University, outlined the standard story of human evolution as it was used in the field—and is still presented in textbooks today: Human infants with their big brains and long periods of growth and learning have always been dependent on adults, a dependence that separates the humans from the apes.
Mothers alone couldn't possibly find enough food for these dependent young, so women have always needed to find a mate who would stick close to home and bring in supplies for the family.
Unfortunately for women, as evolutionary psychologists suggest, men are compelled by their biology to mate with as many partners as possible to pass along their genes. However, each of these men might be manipulated into staying with one woman who offered him sex and a promise of fidelity. The man, under those conditions, would be assured of paternity, and he might just stay around and make sure his kids survived. This scenario presents humans as naturally monogamous, forming nuclear families as an evolutionary necessity.
The only problem is that around the world families don't always operate this way. The Na of Yunnan Province in China, for example, have a female-centric society in which husbands are not part of the picture. At least one study suggests that men who are stressed before conception may predispose their offspring to high blood sugar. Until the s, experts seldom encouraged dads to take part in parent groups, to participate during labor, or to care for infants. It was generally understood that dads existed to teach their toddlers to walk and their kids to play catch, not to handle baby stuff.
But the past few decades of research suggest that the earlier a dad gets involved, the better. In a book on the subject , researchers argued that fathers who are actively involved in labor are effectively developing relationships albeit one-way relationships with their children. Subsequent studies have suggested this leads to stronger early attachment to the baby. And, as numerous studies have shown, more paternal involvement means better outcomes for kids. To foster this connection, some scientists have argued that healthy women and newborns should return home as soon as possible after delivery, especially if the father is not allowed to stay overnight in the hospital.
But pregnancy and labor are when the groundwork for the father effect begins, and its importance cannot be overstated. First of all, showing up is half the battle. Dads who live with their kids and take time out of their days to attend important events are far more likely to have a positive impact than absent fathers.
For dads who live apart from their kids, there are limited options. Being around is one thing; being engaged is another. Warmth is also a key factor.
Fathers who spend a lot of time with their kids but are dismissive or insulting tend to have only negative impacts. These short-term reactions are very different than the long-term effects of dad being around.
One study found that infants attained higher cognitive scores at age 1 if their fathers were involved in their lives when they were 1 month old. Preterm infants similarly score higher at 36 months if their dads play an active role from birth. A separate study found that infants who played with their dads at 9 months enjoyed similar benefits.
When infants transition into toddlers, the father effect becomes even more pronounced. While all OECD countries except the US provide nationwide, publicly-funded, paid maternity leave, only half provide paid paternity leave that lasts for at least two months.
Meanwhile, given the persisting gender wage gap, it often simply makes economic sense for new mothers rather than fathers to stay at home. Across the OECD, women earn This helps to explain why parental leave alone is not the answer. In fact, even among the much-praised Aka, the women do the majority of the childcare. They hunt and forage with their babies snuggled against them in a sling.
But involving dads more from the start can have many benefits, research has shown. They found that early father-baby interactions are much more important than previously assumed.
Babies whose dads were more active and engaged during play had fewer behavioural difficulties at age one compared to those with more distant or detached dads. They also did better in cognitive tests at two, for example in their ability to recognise shapes. Ramchandani cautions that the results should not be interpreted as a clear causal link. But Ramchandani says it can be as simple as sitting the baby on your lap, making eye contact, and observing what they enjoy.
Across 23 middle- and high-income countries, the unpaid care gap has closed by just seven minutes over the past several decades. Globally, women spend significantly more time than men — sometimes up to ten times as much — on unpaid care, volunteer, and domestic work and spend more time on unpaid and paid work combined. Analysis of time use data finds that if men took on at least 50 minutes more care per day and women did 50 minutes less , we would tip the scale toward equality.
One proven policy solution to support the redistribution of unpaid care work — equal, paid, nontransferable leave for all parents, including fathers — has yet to see widespread uptake.
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