As I have mentioned before, there are two issues that are most often raised when critiquing marriage: The naturalness of marriage/monogamy/coupling (this can also come in the form of a universality claim) and the benefit to children of being raised in a “stable home.” Both are brought up to argue for marriage. And there are problems with both. In this post, I want to look at the coupling as natural claim: Is coupling natural?

The assumption that is underneath the claim that monogamous, life-long coupling is natural seems to be that since it is natural, we should support marriage as the best way of organizing human beings. That is, the underlying assumption is that since we can see what is – the vast majority of people couple – this ought to be. This is what G.E. Moore called a naturalistic fallacy. Just because something is natural does not mean that it is a good thing (the flu is natural, for example…). The universality claim is similarly fallacious: Just because “everybody does it” doesn’t make something morally right (this is called an argumentum ad populum). So, the underlying motivation for the claim is fallacious. Nevertheless, it seems to be a fascinating question and there are several researchers who have looked into the evidence of sexual pair-bonding or coupling. Most of these researchers are evolutionary psychologists, so I approach their findings somewhat cautiously. Their findings are also supported by evidence from other animals, in particular our closest primate relatives, chimps and bonobos.

In her article “The Evolution of Human Serial Pair Bonding,” Helen Fisher presents evidence that indicates that coupling makes evolutionary sense – but only for about the first four years of a child’s life. This is about the amount of time that a human infant is completely dependent on the care from his/her parents. Fisher suggests that this care is provided by both parents because the mother cannot take care of the infant by herself. Various ways of ensuring that the father stays around long enough supposedly evolved (including female orgasm, which Fisher claims evolved for pair-bonding reasons – something highly questioned by Elisabeth Lloyd). Fisher presents anthropological evidence to support her hypothesis, as well as evidence from primates. She does not, however, look at alternative explanations. For example, why is the father the second adult who cares for the child? Sarah Blaffer Hrdy has developed the idea of alloparents – adults who are not biologically related yet care for an infant. Alloparents could just as well provide the help a mother needs (and they in fact do in the case of many primates). It does not have to be the father. So, although on the face of it, Fisher’s hypothesis seems plausible, it does not sufficiently exclude alternate explanations. Yet, it casts at least some doubt on the “coupling is natural” claim…

I know of two books who specifically address this question: The The Myth of Monogamy by David Barash and Judith Eve Lipton and the forthcoming Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. Both books were written by married couples, which is interesting but probably completely irrelevant… More relevant is that they both present evidence that monogamy is, well, a myth. (Since I have not read either book, I will have to leave my biased reviews for another post or two…). More doubt casting…

To me, the bottom line of all this is that even though the evidence might not be complete and absolutely scientifically rigorous, there is evidence to at least question the assumption that coupling/pair-bonding is based on an innate desire/drive/gene/whatever. There is evidence that in fact suggests the opposite. However, marriage and coupling are nearly universal. How can that be if they aren’t based on a natural predisposition?

This leads me to my conclusion regarding the naturalistic question: Who cares whether coupling is natural or not – the fact is that it is done a lot – and that leads to the more interesting question, at least to me: Why is coupling so prevalent? Obviously, in part, the claim that coupling is natural attempts to answer this question: If coupling is a natural drive – like eating food to stem hunger – clearly it would be very prevalent. But, as I have sketched, there is evidence to doubt the naturalness – at least as an all-encompassing answer. I would like to suggest that the best way to answer this question is through a systems approach. There are a lot of variables that are at play to produce this result. Clearly, human beings and other animals are very social. We thrive on interacting with others. This suggests that there is at least a tendency to bond. That tendency, I think, has been channeled into marriage because alternative ways to bond have been culturally downplayed and often even tabooed, like friendships between men and women. Matrimania and singlism are essential elements in the legitimization of marriage as an institution. They work so well because we have innate biases that predispose us to conform with the status quo (conformist bias) and we love to copy what famous/important people do (prestige bias) (see this article for more information on how these biases work).

So, why is coupling so prevalent? It is because of innate tendencies to bond as well as biases that make cultural legitimization possible, plus the legitimization pressures themselves, as well as the delegimitization of being single (take a look, for example, at the history of the word “spinster” to see that at work) and decreasing importance placed on friendship. That is, there is an interplay at work between nature and nurture (and then some). Exactly how all this works, I don’t know yet but I am hoping to get a better idea as I do more research.

Here, I make another point: Even if coupling is natural for certain things, matrimania still takes this way beyond nature…

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