The Myth of Monogamy: Fidelity and Infidelity in Animals and People

by David Philip Barash, Judith Eve Lipton

Applying new research to sex in the animal world, esteemed scientists David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton dispel the notion that monogamy comes naturally. In fact, as The Myth of Monogamy reveals, biologists have discovered that for nearly every species, cheating is the rule -- for both sexes.

Reviewing findings from the same DNA fingerprinting science employed in the courtroom, Barash and Lipton take readers from chickadee nests to chimpanzee packs to explain why animals cheat. (Some prostitute themselves for food or protection, while others strive to couple with genetically superior or multiple mates.) The Myth of Monogamy then illuminates the implications of these dramatic new findings for humans, in our relationships, as parents, and more.

The Myth of Monogamy at last brings scientific insight into this emotionally charged aspect of the ultimate dating and marriage quandary.

Genres: Nonfiction, Sexuality, Science, Psychology, Polyamory, Sociology, Relationships

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

David P. Barash is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, and is notable for books on Human aggression, Peace Studies, and the sexual behavior of animals and people. He has written approximately 30 books in total. He received his bachelor's degree in biology from Harpur College, Binghamton University, and a Ph.D. in zoology from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970. He taught at the State University of New York at Oneonta, and then accepted a permanent position at the University of Washington.

His book Natural Selections: selfish altruists, honest liars and other realities of evolution is based on articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and published in 2007 by Bellevue Literary Press. Immediately before that was Madame Bovary's Ovaries: a Darwinian look at literature, a popular but serious presentation of Darwinian literary criticism, jointly written with his daughter, Nanelle Rose Barash. He has also written over 230 scholarly articles and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, along with many other honors.

In 2008, a second edition of the textbook Peace and Conflict Studies co-authored with Charles P. Webel was published by Sage. In 2009, Columbia University Press published How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories, a book on sex differentiation co-authored with Judith Eve Lipton. This was followed in 2010 by Strange Bedfellows: the surprising connection between sex, evolution and monogamy published by Bellevue Literary Press, and, in 2011, Payback: why we retaliate, redirect aggression and seek revenge, coauthored with Judith Eve Lipton and published by Oxford University Press. His book Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary puzzles of human nature appeared in 2012, also published by Oxford University Press, and in 2013, Sage published the 3rd edition of his text, Peace and Conflict Studies.

Reviews

[Big H · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you cut this book directly in half, you would have two separate books. The first would be called "Why and How Ducks Gang Rape One Another." The second would be called "Are Humans Meant to be Monogamous? F*ck If We Know, But This Is What Other People Say." I also wondered while reading if the authors (not just Dave, but also his wife Judith Eve Lipton) supported monogamy or extramarital affairs...

[Jennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and surprisingly humorous given the potential for this book to be agonizingly didactic. I thought the authors provided a balanced analytical assessment of their findings however, I wish they had addressed modern couples who engage in ECPs (extra pair couplings)in the form of open relationships or swinging. I thought this was a disappointing oversight for an otherwise in depth study.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I took a human sexuality course to fulfill my sciences requirements freshman year of college, along with about 500 other dazed freshman (it was an 8 AM class), and retained about 2% of the course content, I'm embarrassed to say. This book is written by professors from my alma mater -- as it turns out, the UW is a hotbed of sexual behavior research. I was just fascinated by this book, Professors Lipton and Barash (married, by the way) are great story tellers. I have to warn the females out there: You will get bummed out by this book. It turns out Mother Nature isn't really on our side. Those precious eggs of ours make us hot commodities, and very vulnerable.

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/170643...

Not exactly the book I was looking for, but then again, I am never sure what that is until I find it. Rare is the manuscript that satisfies my curiosity. And though an important study needed to get to the root of our human predicament, this is a book mostly for the birds among us. And as certainly noted, science is interesting and beneficial to our understanding of how things actually work. But basically, as in all relationships, monogamy comes down to making a deal. Even in light of it being unnatural, monogamy can be achieved if the agreeable parties work hard at maintaining their contract. Social pressure, commandments, morals, parenting needs, financial dependance, and state laws all contribute to couples practicing monogamy. But denying one’s feelings and natural tendencies is surely unproductive in achieving a satisfactory arrangement. More important would be learning ways in which to live happily together in this natural world. Having a partner who agrees with you is paramount to garnering success. Human beings have been gifted over the rest of creation with brains that develop reasoning skills and fantasies. Doubtful any birds watch porn, read erotic literature, or role play with their sexual partners. Exploring sexuality together with a willing partner not only instructs but also achieves levels of satisfaction that have no ceiling. Partners imagining countless scenarios in which one or both might achieve their sexual needs keeps both partners honest and relieved. That does not mean to go through with them. However, the levels of jeopardy one or both might enjoy furthers the excitement to often fitful degrees and blows the top off any suppressed desire itching for expression. Taking a sexual fantasy as far as comfortably possible not only serves as self-discovery but also entertains each other for minutes and days previously unimaginable. Whether one or both commits to conducting the illicit behavior is another affair. But nowhere does it state that consummation is necessary in achieving the result sought out by dealing honestly with one’s natural desires. All of us know the process is fun when looking for what we might want, but it does not mean we need it. But take the freedom of shopping away and the natural tendency becomes a need to break out and escape the prison that has been created. Better to take a peek now and then at what you might want and what might be out there. And then decide together what to do about it. Makes for a rather happy and satisfied relationship while practicing the varied and unnatural status of monogamy.

[Ashlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to get the positive things out of the way first: I found it really interesting, blah blah blah. They generalized animal behavior related to nonmonogamy (infidelity only, for the most part) and showed how humans exhibit those traits. I was rather gleeful, to be honest.

That said, I took issue with a few things.

1. The speciesism of their language. Humans are animals; the word "animals" does not actually exclude human beings. Thinking of ourselves as different (and better) than other animals is a lot of why we have the rampant abuse of nonhuman beings.

2. Their language is also monogamist. One gets the idea from their language that they believe monogamy to be the only correct or worthwhile way for humans to relationship. We get enough social enforcement of monogamy from everyone else, I don't want it from my book about nonmonogamy. (And they even pointed that people have the ability to love multiple people at once and sometimes choose to relationship with multiple people and they still were really biased!)

3. Most of the book is based on factual evidence. They cite studies showing everything, for all the behaviors. Everything is all nice and proven/suggested by science and then they conclude something to the effect of, "monogamy is obviously the best way to relationship, that's been proven beyond doubt, even though it's unnatural for us and difficult, but isn't it so nice? Growing old with you best friend?"

a) That isn't how most marriages end.
b) You don't need a monogamous marriage to spend your elder years with your best friend.
c) Why would you spend two-hundred pages disproving everything that people believe only to agree with them at the end?

[Christine · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book will make absolutely enthralling reading...in another ten years. I feel like we're riding a whole wave of new research in sexuality, history and psychology; and this book was just written 10 years too early. There's tonnes of information, but it can be read in so many different ways and interpreted in so many different ways that it's extremely difficult to draw conclusions. And which, for the most part, title nonwithstanding, the authors don't do. They offer suggestions, make connections, point out flaws and issues, but there's nothing solid anywhere. And if solid is what you're looking for, you're about 10 years too early.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

the subject matter was interesting, but the writing was cringe-worthy. there was a distinct 'tee-hee!' feeling about the descriptions of female animals who copulated outside their social coupling, and an equally repellent disapproval toward males who did the same thing. if the goal is to describe how monogamy is unnatural, then why the snickering?

[Libertine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book shows how people are not naturally monogamous, but I think it cops out by stopping short of recommending that people explore nontraditional relationship options. Still very useful, however.

[Kristina Moses · Rating 1 out of 5]

To be fair to my review, I only read to page 40 when I decided I was too bored with reading it and gave up. It was very detailed into the biology of many different species, and very early on made the point that monogamy is generally not a natural thing. However there were two points that I felt were lacking: with all the biological reasons for EPC (extra pair coupling) there was no mention (at least that I had seen yet) as to why monogamy isn't natural for lgbt couples, also, there was a consistent focus on the way humans have EPCs being cheating on your spouse rather than consensual open relationships.

[Elena Prieto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buena documentación y gran cantidad de información de interés y neutral, reflejando varias posibles teorías, aunque esperaba una perspectiva social y no tanto etológica.

Más de la mitad del libro trata sobre cómo son algunas especies animales para con sus parejas sexuales y sociales. Es realmente interesante si lo vemos desde un punto de vista zoológico, pienso, para comprenderlos a ellos. No obstante, tiene poca aplicación, según yo lo veo, a la esfera humana. Lo mismo que cada animal tiene sus características sociales y sexuales, los humanos también son únicos, entonces parece que todas las explicaciones evolutivas sobre los animales que se están detallando en el libro son con el fin de compararlo con la vida humana, y esto pienso que está mal planteado. Quizá no sea buena idea juntar en el mismo libro una suma importante de información sorbe comportamiento de otros animales con menor información sobre el comportamiento humano, ya que parece que el autor quiere que llegues a justificar las infidelidades o las fidelidades de las personas basándote en la experiencia animal. Yo esto lo veo un poco erróneo.

Por otra parte, hay datos y datos sobre animales que, personalmente pienso que si no eres zoólogo, biólogo o algo similar, no te interesen tanto, e incluso te puede abrumar tanta información sobre tantas especies que ni conocías. Se hace repetitivo en ocasiones, y en cualquier momento se hace referencia otra vez a algo que ya se había detallado y tienes que recordar a ver cómo era el comportamiento de esa especie.

Claro que cuanto más conocimiento tienes, más comprensión puedes tener respecto a tema de infidelidades o de vida no-monógama, que es lo no hegemónico o lo socialmente más aceptado. Aun tratándose de animales, puedes encontrarle un sentido, y eso está bien. La información nos aporta tranquilidad. En el final del libro se atisban teorías sobre por qué los humanos se comportan como se comportan con respecto a algunas tendencias sexuales, y esto es muy interesante, aunque este libro seguramente no tenga la verdad absoluta, e incluso puede que con los años se sugieran teorías diferentes.

Con todo lo dicho y aunque falta información, como puede ser alguna referencia a la homosexualidad o bisexualidad, este libro merece la pena.

[Gabriele · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book could have been a bit shorter without loosing the power of the arguments authors made. Other than that, it's an interesting read.

[H.K. Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would've liked a bit more cross cultural analysis and a bit less reference to birds/animals/bugs, but overall the book does a pretty good job of providing info to support its claim (that monogamy is as unnatural for us as it is for many of our winged or 4 to 8 legged friends in the wild. Or, at least that there should be room for diversity in human preference. Of course we do have a level of intellect not afforded to animals, but the books does a good job of explaining our biological inclinations, as well as additional reasons why more inclusive relationship types have been implemented.

[Eli · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main problem with the book is that it purports to go about dispelling the myth of monogamy, but it goes about doing so using monogamous language. The term bandied about most in the book, "EPC," stands for "extra-pair coupling." The term assumes that coupling should take place in what researchers perceive as a pairing and anything outside of that is extra when perhaps, what is seen as a pair has nothing to do with coupling. The authors also use words like marriage/marital to refer to animal pairings, which makes no sense at all, and don't even bother to use quotes around it; by contrast, when they refer to female primates bonding platonically with males so that those males might protect them, they call it "friendship" in quotes. Other terms they use without quotes that are questionable include lady-love, serenade, cad, divorce, jealousy, wives, girlfriends, Mrs., and bachelor. Sometimes, they even switch back and forth between using quotes for a word and then not.returnreturnQuote marks are not the only forms of punctuation with whose proper use the authors seem to be unfamiliar. One of the most infuriating things the authors do is speculate extensively in parentheses. The most egregious example is when they speculate about how women within harems compete. Instead of just researching the behavior of women in households with multiple female partners and only one male, which is a common occurrence all over the world, they decided to ask an easily-answerable question as if it were the biggest mystery in the universe. Another form of punctuation that the authors abuse is the exclamation point. When used sparingly, the exclamation point can be a functional part of a good piece of writing, but they use it in excess -- even in the index (!)returnreturnOne example on which the book spends considerable time is that of predatory birds. Because the male of the pair tends to spend a lot of time hunting and the female on child-rearing, the birds do not have time to seek other partners. When discussing this, the authors frame it in language that implies that the female of the pair allows the male to mate with her because supposedly, if she is already raising a brood with that male, there would be no reason for her to mate with him. Sadly, the authors completely ignore the fact that the male would have no reason to mate with the female, either, and there's no way to assess which male is "allowing" which to mate. Here, as in with other parts of the book, patriarchal thinking trumps science.returnreturnThe analogies used in the book, especially in reference to female behavior, tend to be questionable. In some cases, they are downright disgusting. One such case is when they compare a female mating and acting favorably with each of her multiple male partners as analogous to a grandmother telling each of her grandchildren that he or she is her favorite. Not only is this obviously somewhat stomach-churning, the fact that they could only think of a platonic family situation to compare to a highly sexual one speaks to the authors' lack of imagination.returnreturnThe book's points on pornography are unforgivably biased. The book talks about how men are aroused by hetero porn, but not about how women are physically aroused by ALL kinds of porn, from depictions of gay men, straight couples, lesbian pairs, and even animal sex. The book doesn't talk about female response to porn at all. I don't know how new the study that shows that is, but I doubt all research on the topic of female response to porn is newer than 2001.returnreturnThe authors' dismissal of rape is particularly troubling. They imagine a scenario where a woman "happens" to visit a man's hotel room at night as a way in which a woman might have sex outside a pairing, something that too closely resembles the way in which rape apologists speak. Furthermore, their only mention of feminism or even writings against rape is in criticism of a single point in Brownmiller's important work, Against Our Will: they call her out on her claim that only human beings rape. While they might be right about her being wrong, to describe a rape apologists' fantasy for victim-blaming in nudge-wink terms and then to reduce Brownmiller's work to nothing but a single claim to disprove is to bulldoze over the importance of the fight against sexual violence.returnreturnThe authors, even aside from their troubling discussion of rape and glossing over of women's response to pornography, do very poorly on women's issues. The books' criticism of property theory as a solution for the problem of the worldwide poor treatment of women sets up a strawman instead of actually addressing the heart of that particular theory: the fact that women are often treated as property. Instead of actually debunking that claim, they just decide that the theory is wrong because men supposedly amass property to attract women and don't even address the fact that women are often seen as property to be amassed. Furthermore, their choice of language re female animals tends towards "feisty" while males are described as "aggressive," a clear projection of human feelings on animal behavior.returnreturnI can forgive a book for being outdated or uninformed, but I cannot forgive all of the assumptions, horrible misuse of language, and overbearing, forced informality of this book. I had to actually stop in the middle of reading this book to take notes on what was so wrong with it in order to be able to finish it in relative mental peace. Even as an artifact representative of outmoded thinking (and the book is less than ten years old), it's not worth the time I spent reading it. In the end, I had far more notes than could be fit into a coherent review, and so I will just say, again, that the book is not worth reading.

[Jaclyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be a fascinating study on why humans do and do not remain monogamous. This book explores all the various findings to support both why it goes against our evolutionary nature to remain monogamous, as well as why it remains a societally favored way of life. I happened upon this book entirely by coincidence, picked it up to flick through it and see what it was about, and found I couldn't put it down. It did take me a little while to get through in it's entirety, but it was an interesting enough topic that it was well worth sticking through to the end. I learned quite a few things I never knew before about human sexuality.

[Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really excellent read. Far more even-handed and scientifically responsible than Sex at Dawn. This book sticks to the facts and doesn't come off as value-driven. It makes a very strong case for monogamy being "unnatural" in a strictly biological sense while still making a big effort to look at the positive side of monogamy and take into account the things about humans that separate us from animals (notably our ability to make promises and reflect on our actions). Wouldn't have given it five stars except that the last couple chapters were really wonderful, focusing more on people and less on animal sexuality.

[Anita · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was recommended on the Savage Love podcast, and it was at the library, so I gave it a try. Frankly, it was boring. It was like a dry journal article in a wildlife biology publication, but spread out for hundreds of pages. They made all their points in the first chapter, and really only the last chapter was interesting. Here's the point they made a million times: monogamy is not a biologically natural state, so don't be shocked that it's so difficult to maintain among humans.

[Tom Menner · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title was intriguing, but while I don't disagree with some of the arguments it is just a very dry read.

[Greg Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

fascinating discussion of an overlooked topic; many examples provide compelling evidence; puts the human condition in a new light; strongly recommend

[Henry · Rating 4 out of 5]

- (A really confusing book as I fail to grasp the point of the book)

- The main thesis of the book is rather simple, that monogamy is actually not universally found. And biology has shown that it's very hard for human to stay monogamous

- The book then began studying other animals and comes to some conclusions such as: female aren't necessarily more monogamous than male, the strategy for female mating is to find the best possible male mate (and they settle down for it too) or male are not always non-monogamous

- Then, the author began speculating on the reason why monogamy or polygamy is practiced

And here are my confusions:

- What's the point of the book? The book seemed to believe humans are monogamous by nature, which is a false assumption to begin with. Take the Chinese history for example, polygamy was a common practice just few decades ago. The modern founder of China, Sun Yat-Sun (1866-1925) had numerous wives. Passing the KMT era to the Communist era, Zhu De (1886-1976) too, had numerous wives. We don't even have to go that far geographically - in the continental US, Mormon was known to practice polygamy too and monogamy only became a common practice for them in the last few generations (as the Morrill Anti-bigamy Act of 1862 was passed). Even as I'm writing this review today, there are still countries in the world that practice polygamy

- Why spent so much time speculating on why monogamy/polygamy is practiced? Can't the author just... ask people from different cultures? This reminds me of an old-tale: a traveler came upon a group of philosophers who are debating with each other about how many teeth does an elephant have. They've spent all week debating it but still can't settle on the correct answer. The traveler asked them, "instead of debating, why don't you find an elephant nearby and just count yourself?" The group of philosophers stared at the traveler, implying the traveler is insulting their intelligence, then proceed to continue the debate.

[Shathu Entayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

La verdad, me compré este libro por el título, pero no por la sinopsis. Como persona que practica la no-monogamia ética, y curiosa sobre el amor y las relaciones, buscaba algo más cercano a la antropología. Para mi sorpresa, ¡me topé con un libro de biología evolutiva! Algo que no había leído nunca.

Este libro tiene dos partes diferenciadas: los capítulos del 1-4, que es biología y etología animal, y el resto hasta el final, que ya hablan de seres humanos, mezclando conceptos anteriores.

Se me hizo tediosa la primera parte por los saltos entre temas, por lo nuevo para mí que eran etc. Pero mereció la pena leerlo porque al llegar al final he tenido una sensación de comprensión y admiración por la complejidad que es la biología. La cantidad de procesos que median es increíble, y casi todo (especialmente en humanos) tiene muchas interpretaciones.

Algo curioso es que casi todo en la monogamia puede explicarse por 1. competición entre machos, 2. gestión de los recursos. Y la monogamia resulta un "factor que controla la competición" que se da en la poliginia y la poliandria.

Pero, ¿acaso no hay otras formas de hacer esto?

La conclusión que saco es la misma que la del mismo libro: puede que seamos "biológicamente poligínicos" pero es que da igual, porque la biología habla de tendencias, no determina las cosas. Y de hecho, el comportamiento también hace la biología. Entonces al final (como en el resto de animales) depende de la organización social más que de otra cosa: de cómo usamos nuestras cartas biológicas. El libro anima a que, si queremos, podemos ser monógamos si nos organizamos como tal, y de hecho así ocurre, aunque sea ya "contranatura".

Pero quien dice "monogamia" en este caso, también dice otros modelos relacionales, ¿no? Jeje...

[Jace · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Myth of Monogamy by David Philip Barash is about the different mating and relationship dynamics in humans and animals.

Thoughts while reading:
-I’m not particularly interested in nonmonogamy among humans, but after reading Lucy Cooke’s book on females of various species, learning more about pair bonding (or lackthereof) among animals really interests me
-It’s kind of fascinating that so many male species are aroused after a female has recently copulated, even in socially monogamous animals. It makes sense that when it comes to sperm competition, it’s advantageous to be aroused by something like that
-interesting that there’s a link between secondary sexual features being highly desirable (in males) leading to being poorer fathers for offspring, since the highly desirable males are able to find many females willing to mate with them
-The idea of the ‘sexy son’ or ‘sexy sperm’ hypothesis was quite interesting, with females of a species preferring males that that are more desirable to females so that they can have desirable sons, or having sperm that is especially fit, to traverse the difficult passage to the egg
-I had no idea that there were some female birds, outside of nest parasites like cuckoos, that dump their eggs in others’ nests to raise
-I enjoyed hearing about the variation in what kind of relationships are allowed in different cultures (like some where sleeping with a husband's brother wouldn't be cheating)

Overall, it was a fairly interesting read. The writing could be a little dry, but I loved hearing about the different animals and the kinds of bonds they form (with the advantages and disadvantages that resulted). I would give it 4 out of 5

[Chris Merola · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating info marred by some chunky sentences and limited scope.

The authors explore and define the concept of monogamy in the animal world, then work their way towards what this means for human beings. The two keep things light and charming, though their sentence structure is exhausting at points. I enjoyed the even-handed analysis on display; a lot of evidence is presented, a lot of counter arguments are considered, and the authors aren't afraid to make claims at the end of it all.

Monogamy as a concept is so interesting to me, and it's analyzed incredibly well here from a biological standpoint. On the psychological/sociological front, we are rarely treated to more than a few quotes from prominent figures to sum up the canon of Western thought. I wish we could have seen more data on monogamy in practice, including open relationships, gay monogamy, and so on. Perhaps the world just didn't have the data at the time this was written.

Either way, the prime biological info makes this a great read on monogamy, though it isn't THE read because of the aforementioned issues.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a great read! Tantalizingly circles its ideas about human sexuality for long enough for a reader to gain a sense of biological context, then brings that evidence forward to make a reasonable claim. Half a star off for flinching at that claim at the very end, making a (to me) morally lazy and unconfident point about how everything just kinda ‘is what it is’ and we should just work with that, and another half a star off for being incredibly dense in sections, even for an evolutionary biologist used to reading these sorts of texts. Otherwise a solid book!

[Constantia Munda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Main Points -

1 - Jealousy and love travel together.

2 - Love and hate are related and helps the evolution of both.

3 - Sex and Christianity never existed harmoniously.

4 - Christians thought that ownership of a women would stop, retard adultery/extramarital affairs because the poor men and women would police each other.

4 - Christian whip themselves over wet-dreams.

5 - Jewish high priests had multiple wives.

[Sydney Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

So let’s take some interesting biological and anthropological studies, and construct a really poor argument of nonmonogamy using every cliche of behavior we can. It’s pedantic. It’s frustratingly thoughtful sometimes, and at others it’s frustratingly poorly written. I’m all for questioning ideas of monogamy, but this isn’t the way to do it.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

i feel monogamy for humans is just a myth. and i wanted to see some arguments. not here. this volume is just bullsh* built on bullsh*. fish, 19th century writings, anything is there to have a special meaning attached.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Why does it seem like David Barash is up to something? I've seen a number of genuinely bizarre things from him, and they all seem to be pointing in a certain direction.

[Alfredo Flores · Rating 3 out of 5]

El libro da muchos ejemplos sobre el comportamiento de los animales en relación al sexo. Muchos ejemplos del comportamiento de las aves que en su mayoría son socialmente monógamos sin embargo tienen relaciones extra matrimoniales sin consentimiento. Luego dedica una pequeña parte al comportamiento de primates, mamíferos y humanos. Siendo los humanos más parecidos a las aves con respecto a su comportamiento (monogamia social, el Macho invierte en paternidad, infidelidad y querer evitar infidelidades de su pareja). A mi parecer se torna demasiado repetitivo y pierde tiempo inclusive en teorías muy dudosas según el mismo autor. Pudo estar mejor ordenado y reducir su tamaño para que sea más claro y fácil de leer. Sin embargo abre los ojos y ayuda a entender y cuestionar el
Comportamiento sexual en gran parte de la naturaleza (nada amigable). Si quieres saber sobre los humanos puedes ir directo a los últimos dos capítulos. Algunos puntos importantes: No existe la monogamia / hombres y mujeres quieren sexo extra matrimonial si se da la oportunidad / los hombres tienen más miedo de las infidelidades porque no quieren criar un hijo que no es suyo / el 50% de culturas aceptan las relaciones extra matrimoniales / los celos son súper pendejos en hombres y mujeres / el humano es el único mamífero donde en ciertos casos el el hombre invierte tanto en cuidar a su hijo /

[Genoa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enlightening.

[FARSHAD · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome book about one of our most cherished social ideals: monogamy. It is not that stable, mind you though. It fractures upon careful analysis and that is what Brash does terrifically