Just as most of the Red Pill's understanding of the sexual marketplace can be derived from the simple principle that "Sperm is cheap and eggs are expensive", most anything you need to know about childhood, and the raising of children can be derived from the simple principle that "Humans are incredibly smart, and being smart is incredibly expensive".

Now, you may not think humans are all that smart if you peruse the Huffington Post, or the average YouTube comments section, but all that really means is that the average human isn't all that smart compared to a smart human, the sort whose writing tends to grab our attention. No, the mere act of watching a YouTube video and commenting on it at all requires an incredible degree of intelligence as compared to most other species on the planet.

Now, we can also see that this intelligence is incredibly costly from a biological standpoint. We lack almost all of the advantages that other organisms possess: strength, stamina, agility, endurance, speed, claws, wings, fur, and so on. We put all the resources those things would have cost into building a giant information processor... and then use it to build tools that not only substitute for what we lack, but far surpass the natural versions they substitute for.

Due to our magnificent brains, we can survive where no other animal can, and do what no other animal can. Only one other organism in the history of the known universe has been brainier. (And humans who still have some of their genes are among the smartest of the modern human race.)

But how does our need for maximum brainpower shape us as evolved animals? The important thing to understand is that everything has been sacrificed to build those big brains.

Human babies need to be born with huge heads. But, while you can evolve a vagina to stretch a hell of a lot, ultimately it must pass through the pelvic girdle, which is a ring of bone. And sure, you can widen the female pelvic girdle some, but that ends up being the reason women can't run very well, so you can only take that so far.

Ultimately, an infant's head can only be so big before he must be delivered. Can't spend more time in the oven. This means that from the viewpoint of the average animal species, human infants are born prematurely. A newborn horse can stand up within about 30 minutes of birth, and can run in under two hours. Human infants can't crawl for months. And are physically helpless to some degree for many, many years after that, while all the hard work goes into building and training that giant brain.

So how does humanity evolve in response to that? Simple. Half of the entire race is optimized for child-rearing and very little else. It has to be that way. Human children are so uniquely helpless and needy that they must have close to 24/7 care, month after month, year after year. As an obvious consequence, the half who are totally optimized for child-rearing require constant support themselves from those who aren't. Evolution has exploited the opportunity represented by sexual dimorphism to specialize the human species.

If children are totally dependent on women, and women are totally dependent on men, then for the species to survive, women cannot be on their own. A female mountain lion can mate with a male and never see him again, because she can bear her kittens on her own, hunt on her own, feed them on her own, and teach them to hunt on her own. A female human cannot... she needs the continued presence of a male.

Which brings us at last to the Family.

The Family is a series of social structure designs which transfer support and resources from men to women, and from women to children. Because humans can directly transfer information between themselves using culture and language, the Family does not need to have a single, instinctively programmed structure. It can be redesigned on the fly by culture. This has happened several times.

  • Family 0.0.1: This predates written records, so no one really knows for sure. Did hominid bands have the concept of a father? Did all males take care of all females, and all females of all children? We don't really have a clear idea. We only know that human society was structured into small hunter-gatherer bands of about 100+ people.

  • Family 0.1: Introduced with Marriage 0.1. A family is a man, his children, and their mothers.

  • Family 1.0: Introduced with Marriage 1.0. A family is a man, one woman, and their children. (This gets messy if a man impregnates more than one woman, or a woman is impregnated by more than one man).

  • Family 2.0: Introduced with Marriage 2.0. A family is a woman, her children, and whatever man she is currently having sex with. <----------- YOU ARE HERE

  • Family 3.0: Introduced with the utter dissolution of marriage. A family is a woman and her children. They are supported by state-mandated transfer of resources from men in general... a sort of "man-tax" in lieu of fatherhood. Whether this tax explicitly targets men, or just higher income-earners, doesn't really matter. <------ THIS IS COMING

"Excuse me, Professor Whisper, that's very interesting and all, but what does this mean for ME? How do I go about having children in the Land of Marriage 2.0?"

You can't. Notice how the possessives change:

  • Marriage 0.1 ---> HIS children.
  • Marriage 1.0 ---> THEIR children.
  • Marriage 2.0 ----> HER children.

You cannot have children.

You can sire children. You can possibly raise children. But you cannot have them. Because they are not YOUR children. They are HER children. And your level of involvement in their lives will be exactly what she decides, and no more.

So, if you wish to sire and raise (not have) children, here's what you are up against.

You are entering a voluntary but irreversible state of permanent oneitis, because while women are interchangeable, children are not. You will always have oneitis for those kids. And she controls those kids. Which means you are committed to keeping Briffault's Law from biting you until the last one becomes an adult.

"Hey, Professor! Haven't you already said that Marriage 2.0 is a benefit solely to women? If that's true, doesn't it make a good bribe to offer in exchange for permanent access to my kids? I've been hanging out on RPW and they told me marriage was important for child rearing!"

No, and go to the back of the class, and don't hang out on RPW.

Remember we are dealing with Briffault's Law here, not reciprocity. Reciprocity is giving something in exchange for what you have already received. Men do reciprocity. Briffault's Law is what women do instead... giving something in the hope of future benefit. Nothing you have given her in the past buys you anything, because she already has it.

If you marry a woman, you have permanently committed to supporting her, and she still gets that if she blows up the marriage.

If you sire children on a woman, you have permanently committed to giving her resources for them, and she still gets that if she withdraws your privilege of access.

Neither of these will stave off Briffault's Law in any way, shape, or form.

So, if you have the dream of siring and raising children, you have two choices:

  • Find one single woman on which you wish to stake everything you have or will have, gambling on your ability to keep her in check permanently, come whatever may, without any ability to leave or run dread game. Don't even think about marrying her. That just makes the job harder.

  • Exchange your dream for a less silly dream.

  • Expatriate to Saudi Arabia perhaps.

Sorry, class, there's no magic technique here. If you want to do this, you simply have to abandon favourable ground, and get in a rock throwing contest while standing at the bottom of a well. Remember that this is how a lot of the early PUA guys got punked out in the end. Remember how many high-status "chad" types got shafted the same way.

Won't tell you not to do this, but you pays your money, and you takes your chances. Or you wise up and get a dog.