HENRY HARPENDING: When Public Policy Meets Elementary Biology.

Males can devote most of their effort to mating effort, usually involving competition with other males. Male commitment to parenting effort is not common in mammals but there are familiar examples like beavers, coyotes, gibbons, and some humans. In the jargon the polar strategies of male mammals are called “cad” and “dad” strategies. . . .

At one extreme a human female can seek a dadly male who provides resources like food and protection to their joint offspring. At the other extreme, a human female can pay little or no attention to her mate choice, instead letting the guys work things out. In the jargon these female alternatives are called “coy” and “fast”. . . .

We are likely to find dad males/coy females in ecological situations where male labor and resources are critical for successful reproduction. Think of labor-intensive agriculture . . .

Social organization with cad males and fast females is found prominently among tropical gardeners where women provide most of the food . . .

In cad/fast social systems neither a coy female nor a dad male does very well while in dad/coy systems neither a fast female nor a cad male does very well. The two polar social types are deeply rooted in contemporary politics. The zany feminism of the 1980s (“a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”) precisely advocated the cad/fast setup. Our religious right with its chatter about “the natural family” and “stable marriages” and the like pushes hard for a dad/coy world.

Back to our our social engineers who know biology. They share a goal of a society in which dad males mate with coy females because children enjoy the care and security of a stable home and streets safe from gunfire. The new policy is simple: welfare payments are to be given only to males.

UPDATE: Related: Compassion Creates More Cads. “The result of all this government largesse is the substitution of handouts for husbands. When provider males who are predisposed to marry and support a family are worth less on the market than they used to be they are slowly replaced by playboys taking advantage of the sexual climate. Women who have their security needs met by Big Government (in combination with their own economic empowerment) begin to favor their desire for sexy, noncommital alpha males at the expense of their attraction for men who will foot the bills.”