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Simultaneous with the emergence of non-seasonal sex was the emergence of couple love.[1] The gender motivations were very different. The female was ÔlovingÕ the male so that he would provide and protect her and her children in her time of child bearing and rearing. Her ÔloveÕ was based upon attaining his services as a father. Of course, her initial choice of partner was probably based upon his potential gene pool. This would define his attractiveness. However, the non-seasonal sex, while having a procreational aspect, had more to do with keeping him around to provide father duties and less to do with a strong gene pool.
The love of the male for the female was based more upon her ability to provide pleasure and domestic comfort. Although part of the package the children had less to do his initial motivations.
Man: "Hmmm? This creature provides me with warmth and affection, why not hang out a while to enjoy the good life." Many seasons later: "Whoa! Out comes this little screamer. Well it's not much and causes much headache, but the female creature seems to find it important, so I guess IÕll stay and help out. Besides it sort of looks like me. I seem to have a strange affection for it." Years later: "The little creature is growing bigger. I have this odd desire to teach it all I know."
Hence while the couple love serves the same function of holding the nuclear family together, it has different motivations for the male and female. While the female ÔlovesÕ the male for his ÔfatherlyÕ duties, the male ÔlovesÕ the female for the creature comforts she provides. Now while this couple love held the nuclear family together, it also provided another selective tool. The men who stuck around, not all of them did, were selected for their ÔloveÕ of children. Those who ÔlovedÕ their children the most, protected, provided and transmitted the most, and hence survived to procreate.
I put love in quotation marks to emphasize its specific context. This ÔloveÕ has only to do with the emotional bonding that ties beings together to the extent that they will go out of their way to provide services that have nothing to do with their own survival. Hence this ÔloveÕ, while related to the modern romantic love of chocolates, flowers, and ValentineÕs Day, is much more fundamental. While potentially emotionally based, it is the behavior that concerns us here. If a beingÕs behavior facilitates the survival of another entity without furthering the beingÕs own survival, we define that as ÔloveÕ.
Men could survive fine by themselves. Of course the species would quickly become extinct and I wouldnÕt be writing this paper. Hence the female urge for procreation combined with maternal love, pulls the male into the tribe, selects for his paternal and tribal characteristics, the human species survives and I write this paper.
Another aspect of the domestication of the male is the cooperative aspect. The female, in addition to being physically weaker, has her children to take care of. She canÕt confine or trap the male physically. She must entice him to provide services. Also he doesnÕt have to provide services, unless he wants to. Hence the association is purely voluntary and in no way mandatory or forced.
The early Deal between man and woman was that if the woman provided comfort and pleasure that the man would provide the fatherly duties mentioned. Hence if the woman did not provide her services the Stone Age man was not required to provide his. This is predicated upon the initial tribal concept that paternal love was a secondary issue to his participation in the family.
We see this Stone Age mentality frequently played out. The Home, for whatever reason becomes uncomfortable to the man, i.e. the woman bitches, the kids are crying, he doesnÕt get enough attention, and the man leaves the family. From the female perspective this is unacceptable behavior because the man has a responsibility to the family. From the perspective of the Tribal man, the woman has broken the Deal by providing him with anguish rather than comfort. Because she hasnÕt provided the services of the Deal, he quits providing his services to the family and leaves. Of course in modern times we have institutionalized the family relations with laws that have only recently sided with the Woman. The man is now legally responsible to the children he bears regardless of the irresponsibility of the woman in fulfilling her Tribal obligations to the man. The Law is merely acknowledging that while we have many Stone Age residuals bouncing around our mind, that the times have changed and are a changinÕ continually.
In some ways the cruelest manifestation of modern times is the single mother, raising her children and providing her own support without assistance from partner or tribal female support group. Within the Tribe the woman did not really need a man to assist her in the raising of her brood. She needed the Man to provide and protect the Collective Family or Tribe during childhood, which was fairly continuous. Hence monogamy, although nice, was in no way a universal. The Man was tied to the Tribal structure to provide his collective tribal duties, while the Woman was there to bear and raise the Children. The Collective Men provided their collective duties while the collective women provided their collective duties. Hence while women could raise their children without specific assistance from the father they had a huge support group of women to assist in the lengthy child bearing and rearing process and an extensive support group of collective men fulfilling their collective tribal duties. There was no such thing as a single mother in the Tribe.
These Tribal times were the Golden Age of Motherhood in the sense of community support and respect. This Age while comprising the majority of human existence ended long ago. While a great time for mothers, it wasnÕt necessarily a great time for all women. Motherhood was the only choice. If a woman wasnÕt into being a mother it wasnÕt so great. The reverence for mothers is shown in the relative abundance of fertility figures that have been found.
[1]Remember that no evidence exists for or against these speculative theories. Hence these theories are merely attempts to recreate a possible scenario that is a foundation for what follows.