Publication details
Mater semper certa est, pater incertus : Religious mate-guarding as a tool for paternal investment
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Religious norms and practices often control human behavior. Such limitation of human freedom is significantly apparent in the area of sexual behavior, especially for women. Here, the question of why such various ideas about faithfulness and rules related to women’s sexuality and reproduction exist (such as veiling, genital mutilations, menstrual taboos, prohibition of free movement, child marriage, penalties for transgressing the sexual norms, violence, honor killing, infanticide, etc.) is approached in terms of inherent paternal uncertainty. Given that from an evolutionary standpoint, fathers would lose by investing in a child with someone else’s genes, cultural technologies may reflect the need to increase paternal certainty through diverse mate-guarding practices. On the opposite side, mothers cannot effectively reproduce without help with the care of the offspring. There is often an enormous need for aid from alloparenting, including care provided by the father. Moreover, the form and the amount of paternal investment depend on the demands of the particular socio-ecological context. Finding a link between this variation of paternal care and the variation in religious mate-guarding would provide a vital insight into the potential reproductive functions of religious norms and practices. Such findings would further illustrate the evolution of cultural forms supporting individual fitness. The potential of using cross-cultural data (drawn from ethnographic databases such as eHRAF) in this research lies in finding cross-cultural patterns of culturally shaped human behavior in response to socio-ecological conditions to promote fertility by extending paternal care through an increase in paternity certainty. |
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