Why is Sex Fun?: the evolution of human sexuality Read Online Free PDF Page A

changes and inherited constraints that molded the evolution of our weird sexuality?

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    CHAPTER 2. THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES
    In the preceding chapter we saw that our effort to understand human sexuality must begin by our distancing ourselves from our warped human perspective. We're exceptional animals in that our fathers and mothers often remain together after copulating and are both involved in rearing the resulting child. No one could claim that men's and women's parental contributions are equal: they tend to be grossly unequal in most marriages and societies. But most fathers make some contribution to their children, even if it's just food or defense or land rights. We take such contributions so much for granted that they're written into law: divorced fathers owe child support, and even an unwed mother can sue a man for child support if genetic testing proves that he is her child's father.
    But that's our warped human perspective. Alas for sexual equality, we're aberrations in the animal world, and especially among mammals. If orangutans, giraffes, and most other mammal species could express their opinion, they would declare our child support laws absurd. Most male mammals have no involvement with either their offspring or their offspring's mother after inseminating her; they are too busy seeking other females to inseminate. Male animals in general, not just male mammals, provide much less parental care (if any) than do females.
    Yet there are quite a few exceptions to this chauvinist pattern. In some bird species, such as phalaropes and Spotted Sandpipers, it's the male that does the work of incubating the eggs and rearing the chicks, while the female