Does Peter Orszag prove, yet again, that when it comes to finding mates nerds rule? You can't get much nerdier than a Princeton graduate with a PhD from the London School of Economics who is the White House Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Not too sexy, you think. But look at his personal life. He is the divorced father of two whose very recently ex-girlfriend gave birth to a daughter just before he announced his engagement to a not at all bad looking ABC News correspondent.
One could argue that it's not only his pocket that needed a protector, but his behavior and those of his mates appear to be more evidence for evolutionary truths with thousands if not millions of years of provenance.
Women mate with men who control resources, and men have an appetite to mate with a variety of women.
It may be an oversimplification of so-called primitive hunter-gatherer societies to say that women mated with men who could secure more game, and protect their offspring, but evolutionary psychologist, David M. Buss, studied marriage among 32 contemporary cultures and found that women desire a "good financial prospect" in a mate.
In effect, in primitive societies, strong men who are clever hunters were the nerds. Thinkers may have been pushed into becoming celibate priests and shamans.
In modern society, women "value qualities that are known to be linked to resource acquisition, such as ambition, industriousness, social status, and somewhat older age," Buss wrote in "The Evolution of Human Mating," (Acta Psychologica Sinica, 2007,39 (3): 502-512).
Conversely, what's good for the goose is not necessarily good for the gander. "Evolutionary psychology provides a powerful theory for the evolution of standards of female beauty," writes Buss. "Whatever observable cues are linked with fertility immediate probability of conception) or reproductive value (future reproductive potential) will evolve to become part what humans find attractive in females. These include cues to youth, such as full lips, smooth skin, lustrous hair, and a low ratio of hips to waist."
This can be summarized in this aphorism: "Beauty is in the psychological adaptations of the beholder."
Jane Austen, years before Darwin, understood this well. I recently re-read Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma.
The first two of these novels have female protagonists who are of the gentry but not wealthy. They feel the pressure to marry well, that is, marry men who have financial resources. True, they cannot deny their romantic attractions, and these attractions provide the dramatic tension. Will they be able to marry--so to speak--their desire for love with the necessity of marital and financial security?
Emma, in contrast, is independently wealthy. She is the heir to ￡30,000, worth millions in today's money. Her attitudes about marriage are quite different from the shabbily gentile Elizabeth Bennet or Eleanor Dashwood. She vows never to get married. She feels no need of marriage. She befriends poor Harriet and tries to find for her a mate, something she has no desire for herself and declares, "I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else."
It could be argued that we are on the edge of an evolutionary shift--that as women become more personally empowered in terms of career and finances the received wisdomof the old evolutionary paradigm may change. Not only will women have no need for marriage to support themselves, they will have no need for marriage to support their children.
Will there be more Emmas?
Will men become nothing more than sperm repositories?
Even as we hold up Peter Orszag as an example of a resource provider in today's society, a look at the details of his complicated romantic life indicates a move in the direction of Emmahood.
His ex-girlfriend, the one who gave birth without marriage or its expectation, will be raising the child on her own. Her mate is apparently out of the picture, but she is an investment banker with no need to tap into the resources of Orszag, who currently has to make do with a government bureaucrat's salary.
There is an important difference, of course, between today's women and the Emmas of Regency England. Her wealth was dependent on inheritance, and had she produced a child out of wedlock, she likely would have been disinherited. Not a problem today for women with their own resources.
As our society, if not our biology evolves, I see two adaptations.
Women will not need a relationship with a man beyond copulation or artificial insemination for our species to survive.
But this may also be the birth of a true era of romantic love. As women become less dependent on men for their resources, they may become more exclusively interested in men for their physical and emotional attractiveness.
In other words, women may become more like men--valuing what turns them on over what pays the bills.
After all, Emma--precisely because of her financial independence--is able, in the end, to marry purely for love.
And how else do we explain the cougar phenomenon?
