Promiscuity: why slutting around is good for the species

There's a funny line in the Toni Collette movie Little Miss Sunshine in which the grandfather character, played by Alan Arkin (Yossarian from Catch 22 for movie buffs) gives his grandson Dwayne the benefit of his questionable wisdom.

They're sitting in the back of the family van, 15-year-old Dwayne looking as bored as a conscious human being can, when Arkin gives him the gold.

"Listen to me kid, I got no reason to lie to you," he says. "Don't make the same mistakes I made when I was young. F--- a lotta women, kid, not just one woman, a lotta women."

Needless to say, I had a huge laugh in the cinema when I heard this line because it's exactly what I'll be telling my son, and my daughter ...

As I've discussed in other posts there used to be serious political and religious reasons for keeping men and women monogamous while every one of a man's instincts cried out for the opposite.

No doubt you've heard it argued that, while men sharing it around helps them genetically by spreading their DNA far and wide, it's bad news for women, because it means her protector and provider might be lured to protect and provide for someone who's a better shag.

Aside from this, promiscuity and its ugly cousin, adultery, can cause all sorts of problems for humans: broken hearts, shattered marriages, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and bad country and western music.

What I want to know is, if promiscuity is such a bad thing, why has this behaviour not been bred out of us over millennia through natural selection?

If remaining monogamous was truly an evolutionary plus, why are we not seeing a higher variant of humanity for whom rooting around is not an issue; because when they mate, they imprint on each other so profoundly that they cease to find alternative mates sexually exciting?

Some animals (penguins, swans, mallard ducks) have managed this evolutionary leap, so why are we dragging the chain?

Perhaps the answer is because "slutting" around is actually good for the species.

In a 2002 article that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, writer Sally Lehrman reported that some anthropologists now argue that "female promiscuity binds communities closer together and improves the gene pool".

Quoting Pennsylvania anthropologist, Stephen Beckerman, she wrote that "more than 20 tribal societies accept the principle that a child could, and ideally ought to, have more than one father."

"As one looks, it begins to crop up in a lot of places," she quotes Beckerman, who in his work has "reviewed dozens of reports on tribes from South America, New Guinea, Polynesia and India as co-editor of the book Cultures of Multiple Fathers.

"Less than 50 years ago, Canela women, who live in Amazonian Brazil, enjoyed the delights of as many as 40 men one after another in festive rituals. When it was time to have a child, they'd select their favorite dozen or so lovers to help their husband with the all-important task," says Lehrman.

"Even today, when the dalliances of married Bari ladies in Columbia and Venezuela result in a child, they proudly announce the long list of probable fathers."

Other anthropologists argue that women instinctively want to capture maximum genetic variation in their offspring, to help their kids survive the challenges of evolving environmental threats, such as diseases and bad eccies.

So while it makes sense for a woman to have most of her children with one stable protector and provider, it makes greater evolutionary sense to slip another child into the mix, by another father who has exhibited good genes; is hot-looking, smart or can kick a football really far or displayed other, socially-predicated signs of desirability such as wealth or having his own network game show.

I guess, the greater question is where does all this instinct leave us in a world where so many sexual acts are rendered evolutionarily moot by contraception? Are our instincts still catching up to the condom and the pill?

Personally, I don't think that promiscuity is the danger that many portray it to be, when practised safely; it teaches people what they do and don't like in the bedroom which, according to 135,893,674 magazines, is the best way to judge whether your relationship's doing well.

It's also fun, perfectly natural, and ensures you don't have lingering "what ifs" when it does come time to hang up the boots, and that's why I'll be telling my kids to try before they buy.

Link.