Any successful human culture, at least a culture that lasts more than one generation, has to have evolved some mechanism for raising children. At the same time, humans are hard-wired to want sex on a year round-basis (unlike most other mammals). Given these constraints, humans have evolved a lot of different cultural traditions regarding sex and child-rearing.

By and large, the most successful cultures are those that provide a stable environment for raising children. Cultures that practice polygamy tend not to do as well, since the powerful males hoover up more females, leaving fewer for the rest of the males. As a consequence, in those cultures, there are larger numbers of sexually-frustrated young men. This leads to violence and instability.

In the West, for various historical and cultural reasons, monogamy was the rule for thousands of years. It survived because it was advantageous for both males and females. But monogamy has been breaking down over the last 70 years.

There are lots of reasons for this. 2nd-wave feminism, that pushed a lot of women into the workforce, plus the rise of the welfare state, enabled women to avoid financial disaster in the face of poor mating decisions. The pill, leading to the sexual revolution, decreased the motivation for marriage among men. The tilt of the law in favor of women and against men, no-fault divorce, all increased the costs of marriage.

It took 2-3 generations for the lesson to sink in because of social inertia, but you can see from statistics that fewer and fewer men are getting married.

Now, the Internet has made matters worse (from the stable culture perspective). We know that due to female narcissism, 80% of women prefer the top 10% of men. As a result, we see a de facto polygamous culture developing. Again, we have a rise in sexually-frustrated young males.

Not good.

Any thoughts?