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-   -   Geo Will: "Basement Boys" (https://www.behavioronline.net/evolutionary-psychology/2272-geo-basement-boys/)

James Brody March 10th, 2010 07:05 PM

Geo Will: "Basement Boys"
 
One pattern occurs throughout Europe and Russia: marriages are delayed and childless and abortions more frequent. Mark Steyn has highlighted the advantages that result for high-birthrate Islam from secularism. So have Natan Sharansky, Kathleen Parker, and Christina Hoff-Sommers. Rush Limbaugh has for several years referred to the feminization of males and calls them “liberals”; Schwartznegger calls them “girly men.” Norman Podheretz talks about a parallel phenomenon in his new book, Why are Jews Liberals. Even Google publishes “bike maps” that show routes around steep hills. And I suspect that strong verbal skills are associated with timidity, guilt, anxiety, depression, and lying to avoid conflicts. (One lady explained that women lie easily because they have faked orgasms for millennia!)

The biologists Austin Burt and Robert Trivers describe parallel events in mice, events triggered in gestation and reflected in the wrestling contests between genes donated by the father and those same genes donated by the mother. That is, Dad’s genes favor larger size, larger motor areas, more brown fat (sometimes!), and more dental enamel but a smaller neocortex. Mom’s genes have the opposite effect while allowing her to keep control of her blood pressure and glucose during pregnancy. And genes from dad’s and granddads favor nesting, nursing, and retrieval of wandering infants. Research may yet show mom’s genes to favor social networking and saving for tomorrow; dad’s to favor experimentation, exploration, and aggression.

Bottom line surprise: environmental stability cuts birthrate and favors collectivism….Shades of MacArthur & Wilson!

“Although women are a majority of the workforce, perhaps as many as 80 percent of jobs lost were held by men. This injury to men is particularly unfortunate because it may exacerbate, and be exacerbated by, a culture of immaturity among the many young men who are reluctant to grow up.

“Increasingly, they are defecting from the meritocracy. Women now receive almost 58 percent of bachelor's degrees. This is why many colleges admit men with qualifications inferior to those of women applicants—which is one reason men have higher dropout rates. The Pew Research Center reports that 28 percent of wives between ages 30 and 44 have more education than their husbands, whereas only 19 percent of husbands in the same age group have more education than their wives. Twenty-three percent of men with some college education earn less than their wives. In law, medical, and doctoral programs, women are majorities or, if trends continue, will be.”

http://www.newsweek.com/id/234248


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