And there was another perk. “The helpful guys got laid,” Bohannon writes. “A lot. That means males who had friendly relationships with females and offspring were more likely to pass on their genes. So they got an advantage by being aggressive with other males, but they also got an advantage by changing out those behaviours with the females who were really running the place.”
Sounds pretty good. But here enters a very hominid problem: in matriarchal societies, competitive females were a significant problem for the powers that were.
So early women struck what Bohannon calls a devil’s bargain. “The devil’s bargain wasn’t just a deal women made with men; it was a deal they made with other women,” she argues. Women invented sexist social behaviour such as slut-shaming to go alongside monogamy as a way to control conception. It helped space births so that the leaders’ babies got a good share of the resources.
By the middle of the 20th century, we’d invented very effective contraception and didn’t need slut-shaming. But by then we’d long forgotten that patriarchy was just a social tool.
Men, no longer roped into family structures which had acted as contraception, got to benefit from a patriarchal system without the strings attached to sex.
Meanwhile, most women still want babies – for many of us, the desire to have children, when it arrives, is not so much an appetite as a gnawing hunger.
The kids seem to like them, too.Credit: Ted Golding
Bohannon throws up her hands on solving the social policing of women, though I think understanding why we engage in such behaviour could help to unwind it.
On the baby hunger, for which husband technology can still be very handy, I think there’s a clearer plan. Contraception gives women the opportunity to try men before they marry them. And “starter relationships” are an excellent way to work out who’s wrong for you and why. It helped me work out that it’s always wise to keep a separate bank account. It also taught me that people don’t change, so you’d better be happy with the fundamentals of a person you’re planning to procreate with.
Falling in love a couple of times is also a great way to learn that limerent love isn’t the point. The ability to find lasting laughter with someone whose breathing will come to annoy you is all-important.
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As women find their way back into the workforce, invested men are extremely handy to help raise children. Also, the kids seem to like them. If our ancestresses managed to select for helpful male genes, perhaps so can we.
My husband technology can be a bit frustrating, but right now he’s in top working order. He’s taken himself and the progeny on a special daddy holiday, leaving me with the second-best invention after fathers: a couple of weeks of heavenly peace.
Turns out the technology was never broken, we just needed to uninstall the patriarchy OS.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at award-winning campaigns firm Agenda C.
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