She's Gotta Have It

Today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. Social psychologist Roy Baumeister calls this extraordinary nugget “the most underappreciated fact about gender”. The explanation is that while only 40 per cent of men managed to reproduce, 80 per cent of women did, many of them, one must assume, with the same lucky chap. To pass on their genes, argues Baumeister, women need only sit tight and play it safe and the likelihood was that a man would turn up and beg to have sex with them. Men meanwhile had to do, derringly, to separate themselves from the crowd of losers and kill the moose which wins the maiden’s heart. We are descended from babelicious, home-loving women and virile, risk-taking men. Oh. My. God. It explains a lot, no? Sensible girls still choose their partners for their ability to fulfill an absolutely

essential role in the life of any woman who wants children; that is, to provide and care for them while they raise the offspring. For very few women does it make economic or emotional sense to go back to work and pay for full-time childcare for pre-schoolers. (According to Baumeister, men give their love, money and commitment in return for sex. Ah, the delightful world of social psychology.) The trouble is that the hard reality of dependence rarely hits home until the squalling infant is in situ, meaning that modern, financially independent young women now select men for pointless good looks and a caring disposition. Could it be that we are breeding a generation of empty-headed pretty boys and girls terminally irritated by the hopelessness of men? Let’s hope not. But as I’m fond of pointing out to the so far unmarried: real men don’t come in pretty packages.
Laura Tennant