by Ed West
As they say in Hackney, when God closes a door he sometimes smashes open a window. The UK riots, bad as they are, may be a turning point for Britain – the shock we needed to change course. We can no longer ignore the existence of people over whom the rest of us have little control, and who fear no figures of authority.
Fathers are, of course, major authority figures, and the issue that was first raised by Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1965 may be up for debate once again. As that unlikely moral crusader Guido Fawkes has pointed out (with a hat-tip to Andrew Neil), in areas like Tottenham up to 80 per cent of children are raised without a father. Where there are few other figures of male authority around, that is deeply problematic.
The effect on children is one thing: various studies show fatherlessness to be a serious disadvantage, while others argue that taking aside socio-economic status this makes little difference (and certainly fatherless children raised by highly educated women suffer far fewer drawbacks). But what about the effect on the men themselves?
When we discuss “fatherlessness” in urban areas what we are talking about, effectively, is polygamy. And countless studies have shown that, the more polygamous a society, the more aggressive its males. Polygamous hunter-gather societies are absurdly violent.
Why? Because where male parental investment is low, the qualities that define a good male mate are strength, aggression and status. Where male parental investment is high, the most important quality becomes monogamy – because without it a woman’s children will starve. These qualities are partly hereditary, and on the male side this tendency for deadbeat lotharios to produce unfaithful sons was noted long before science dared to tread its feet into the field of evolutionary psychology. Science still cannot tell us to what degree male monogamy is influenced by nature; “allele 34” may influence vasopressin, the hormone associated with monogamy in male mammals, but then it may not (and even if it influences behaviour, men can still be “trained”).
This is why the traditional good guys in romantic fables, fairy tales, novels and films display the characteristics associated with monogamy and male parental investment; women in romantic comedies always end up marrying the Mark Darcy character rather than the Daniel Cleaver, even if they are attracted to the latter. In contrast the heroes of sagas, epic poems and action films, aimed at male audiences, are alpha male polygamous types; European civilisation begins with Achilles and Agamemnon having a remarkably childish argument over who gets a slave girl.
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