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Pine & Mourning Doves, acrylic on canvas, 2009

Procreation is another of life’s imperative for obvious reasons. The various systems that have evolved to propagate life have been many and varied but sex has been the one most acclaimed and widespread. In most species which use a sexual process to reproduce the process is a primary and dominant part of the life cycle. This carries through to human beings. In nearly all contemporary human societies monogamy has been chosen as the preferred mating pattern for males and females. This seems a rather strange choice in that only about 3% of mammal species are monogamous. Nearly all other primates are not monogamous, instead preferring the dominate male with as group of females system. Human beings have the traits for such a arrangement – larger males, violent males, and innately competitive males. In monogamous relationships birds seem to lead the way with of 90% of the species forming pairs, but recent research shows that this monogamy is primarily social with only 10% showing sexual loyalty.

The question is why human beings have evolved this way. I am sure there are many reasons. A common reason is the long and difficult practice of human child rearing is more easily accomplished with two adults working at the task. Another is the suppression of women by locking them into a system of child production. Certainly monogamy was bonus in trying to lock in certainty of genetic heredity (it is estimated that about 94% of children have the fathers who are the true parentage – quite a successful system). Monogamy has had other genetic consequences as well. It has created a system where nearly all males have the opportunity to spread their genes. While this may have added more diversity to the human gene pool, it may have added some genetic properties that may damage the species as opposed to the harem system where the strongest or smartest spread their genes – this thinking has a terrible fascist ring to it.

As with birds, human social monogamy does not insure sexual monogamy. Between 25 and 50% of males admit to extra marital sexual activities and it is nearly the same number for women. Another criticism of the system renames our mating arrangement to “serial monogamy,” with the nearly half U. S. marriages ending in divorce. I cannot help but wonder if these high numbers are not somewhat stimulated by unrealistic sexual dissatisfaction with partners. As our consumer society has developed, a primary device to market a vast array of products, services, and entertainments has been sexuality. Marketers have found that this innate drive can very easily be triggered in human beings with outstanding results in monetary benefits. A problem arises when along with the desire to consume comes a disappointment in the person’s actual experience of sexuality, leaving them to desire “something else.” Sex is given meaning and importance in ways it cannot fulfill. Women may connect it their desirability, their sense of self-worth, their control over men. Men may connect it with their success, their virility, their power over women, their meaning in life. Nature put pleasure into the sexual act to enhance procreation. That pleasure for some people has taken on a very disproportionate place in their lives. In some ways it has replaced other pleasures that they have been unable to find – the pleasure of contentment, the pleasure of non-sexual love, the pleasure of a connection to the world around them.

The Christian church has been a strong proponent of monogamous relationships through the millennia making it a moral rather than a procreative issue — although the Catholic church, with its prohibition on birth control, kept the procreative issue in the forefront. It may be the moral and social dimension of monogamy that has its largest benefit to contemporary human culture. Many social bonds of human society have disintegrated over time. The support of the tribe and clan are a thing of the past. Extended family is now very extended, many times over thousands of miles. Elders are farmed out to retirement communities or homes. Children are swept around by the whims of education and economic opportunity. Monogamy, the committed relation between two people, is a surviving social institution to give a last human connection for many people.