Is the nuclear family in line with our natural biological urges?

JurassicVibes · 2017-03-02T14:47:06+00:00

We are not by nature monogamous creatures. Serial monogamy, polygamy, hypergamy, are our nature as human beings. The nuclear family has utility as a unit of production and child-rearing. In other words, by all accounts, it's a fairly useful social construct.

blackedoutfast · 2017-03-02T19:21:52+00:00

no. for a purely biological answer, sexual dimorphism is correlated with more polygamous mating behavior due to mating competition. human males are about 15% larger than females and significantly stronger and more muscular, which indicates humans were originally mildly polygamous. if having a single mating partner for life (marriage) was "natural," male and female humans would be the same size.

the nuclear family was a social construct that developed after humans shifted from nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyles to an agricultural society.

for early humans, recreational sex outside of strict mating pairs was used to strengthen social connections. they were not very concerned about actual paternity, since no one owned anything very valuable and most labor was done as a group for survival. certainly some individuals were more successful, but no one was really rich. it was actually beneficial in some situations if all the men in a tribe felt a sense of paternity toward all of the children in the group. partible paternity: the concept in some non-monogamous cultures that still exist where a child is believed to have multiple partners.

farming meant that fertile land was extremely valuable, exponentially more valuable than whatever valuable objects that nomads could carry with them. men also had a much stronger desire to insure that valuable land that they spent their lives improving and cultivating would be passed on to their true genetic descendants. women always know that a child is theirs, but a man (pre-DNA testing) can never be sure, especially if the woman has been fucking a lot of other males (as they tend to do). marriage/monogamy was created so that men could be more confident about the paternity of that the children they were raising and eventually would be passing their estates onto.

MattyAnon · 2017-03-02T16:08:32+00:00

Question. Is having a nuclear family something humans are evolved to do. Is it a complete social construct that is unnatural to us or is it very natural to have this kind of social unit?

Good question.

We are adapted to support this as an ideal for the other person. But men and women both benefit genetically from straying (so long as they don't get caught).

So we perpetually want the other person to be faithful (this is good for us) but we ourselves do better by straying.

Society solved this with marriage 1.0.

Women and feminism destroyed this with marriage 2.0 (no-fault divorce with cash-and-prizes-and-alimony, otherwise known as "paying her to break up the family").

But is it natural what are the new social units emerging and are they more inline with our natural instincts?

There are no new social units emerging. It's all blended families and child support and single parents. It fucking sucks for the kids.

ecosci · 2017-03-03T02:34:35+00:00

Yes it is in line but society has fucked up everything with marriage laws and feminism making men useless in a family unit thats why women and kids are out of order today because the state profits off it via gangs,teen age pregancy,and no fault divorce, a patriarchy is very natural and needed for human family survival.

dawnlander · 2017-03-03T08:23:25+00:00

Long-time biological and cultural anthropology nerd, as well as big time interest in primatology:

I'm going to focus on keeping this really abbreviated because I could go on a lot of long tangents but, as to your core question:

If not what is the most natural social unit to have?

Short answer, yes: there are a lot of other arrangements historically and currently in various indigenous and traditional cultures. Many of the more functional ones still have issues with jealousy but also have means of allowing people to separate and go their way more fluidly than other cultures that have "lifetime monogamy" as a goal. See: Kalihari Bushman as an example.

As another commenter mentioned, "partible paternity" is sometimes present, where the father isn't necessarily aware or attached to his biological off-spring -- he may not even know they are his. In primates (and humans as an extension) this can benefit the tribal unit immensely and curb the phenomena of 'male infanticide' -- when outsider males find females with offspring and no male to defend them (or having driven off the male(s)), they kill the babies as they instinctually know that they are not their genetics and therefore a waste of resources.

I'm fascinated by cultures where the sons around the age of 6-8 (a traditional age in indigenous cultures when the children start to learn the skills of an adult but are not expected to be adults yet), are put in the charge of the mother's brothers... Typically the boys and girls learn what they need so that by the time they're 12-13, they can be "full adults" (often with a rite-of-passage that occurs, "killing the boy" and "birthing the man" which involves a greater responsibility and sophisticated understanding of the identity of the tribe in relation to its members and the environment).

Its interesting that uncles would still have a genetic relationship to their nephews, from an evo-psych perspective (although you don't have to go there).

These arrangements still can have "nuclear families" (google pictures of tribal villages and they look like cells with large communal bodies and smaller, familial shelters, as a visual), but that might be organized around the female mother and her direct relatives.

I'm of the inclination that the "isolated nuclear family" of today, is not at all "traditional" or "natural". Not so long ago, we were still close to our extended families and neighbors and my instinct is that children should be "freer" to roam and explore without structure and be "raised" by the tribe-village-extended family-etc -- a larger "family hub" within which the smaller "nuclear family" hubs exist.

I'm gonna cut myself off here, feel free to ask questions, anthropology is a cool subject with several different main branches.

RPSigmaStigma · 2017-03-02T16:07:31+00:00

No but we are more than just biology.

"We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a physical experience."

Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Title	Is the nuclear family in line with our natural biological urges?
Author	JurassicVibes
Upvotes	1
Comments	16
Date	March 2, 2017 2:39 PM UTC (9 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/5x3jiy/is_the_nuclear_family_in_line_with_our_natural/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/is-the-nuclear-family-in-line-with-our-natural.83536 https://theredarchive.com/post/83536

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