Fathers contribute little except their semen to the survival of the human species, according to a new book on human behaviour by a British evolutionary biologist and his wife. And given all the flak single mothers have taken, it's hard not to stand up and cheer now that some people finally feel they have scientific proof of what many such women have been telling us all along.
It could be that our attachment to the father figure is purely sentimental. In nature, lone parenthood is the rule not the exception, and the notion that bi-parental care is the ultimate system is a misconception, says Robin Baker in Baby Wars: Parenthood And Family Strife which he has written with his partner and the mother of his children, Elizabeth Oram.
Baker sees the world not as a moral system, but as a genetic puzzle in which each species - humans included - is compelled to reproduce in the most successful way. Women subconsciously choose the fathers of their children not because they necessarily think the men will stick by them and provide for them, but because they sense that a particular man's genes will be beneficial to the ultimate survival of their children and grandchildren, he maintains. In his first book, Sperm Wars (1996), Baker argued that the average woman is perfectly capable of roping in one man to support her materially, while discreetly choosing other men to father her children. The quick "affair" with a genetically desirable mate is so common that at least one in 10, and as many as one in three, children have been biologically fathered by men other than their "fathers", is his famous theory.
Baby Wars continues the theme, describing how genetic warfare is at the base of much family conflict. For example, parental favouritism, according to Baker's reasoning, exists because parents subconsciously know which child has the best chances of reproductive survival and wish to ensure that child's success. "Evolutionary biology is concerned with what people actually do, rather than what they think, say or feel," Baker declares. We may like to think that we have evolved into highly moral beings, but the naked truth - for Baker - is that the urge for sex drives civilisation.
People may say and even believe that a family needs two parents, but in reality people are abandoning the two-parent nuclear family. Lone parenthood is on the increase in the Republic to the extent that 25 per cent of all births are now outside marriage. Every time an unmarried teenager gets herself pregnant she is following an uncontrollable subconscious desire to fulfil her genetic destiny, according to Baker's theory.
After impregnation, fathers have little to contribute to enhance their children's survival, except on the financial front. Baker acknowledges that with a man around to help as an extra pair of hands and eyes, a woman's children are more likely to escape accident and disease and to grow into healthy, fertile adults. But that is assuming that the father takes an active role in child-rearing.
In fact, the average father could learn something from watching the monkeys in Dublin Zoo. "As fathers men are by no means in the top division compared with some other primate males. They may look very caring alongside the average orang-utan or chimpanzee but they fare badly in comparison with the tamarin monkey or Barbary macaque," Baker writes. Human fathers are "affiliators" rather than "intensive caretakers" and generally have low rates of interaction with infants. In a survey of 80 human cultures, there was a close father-infant relationship in only four per cent. The most active fathers in industrial societies spend three hours per day interacting with their children, although some spend as little as 45 minutes each week interacting with their offspring.
Many studies have shown that the children of lone-parent families are socially and psychologically disadvantaged. "Most of the studies that have been able to unravel the relative importance of the different factors suggest that, more often than not, the cause is financial. The nature of the parenting is at most only a secondary factor, and in many cases is not a factor at all," says Baker.
More than 50 per cent of lone-mother families in Australia, the US and Canada live below the poverty line. However, in Denmark, Finland and Sweden - where social welfare and childcare provision are excellent - there are very high proportions of solo mothers and only 10 per cent live below the poverty line.
Children who have experienced parental separation tend to do worse socially and psychologically, on average. However, "the differences between those children of separated parents and those living in intact families to a large extent obtain even before parental separation, and do not necessarily worsen afterwards," says Baker. "It is the quality of family relationships, of which separation is only a part, that seems to be most influential.
"Apart from accident, ill-health and the consequences of reduced income, there is no indication that children suffer in any other major way from having just one parent. In particular, much as traditionalists might prefer it to be otherwise, the absence of a live-in male role model seems to have little influence on the child's performance in later life," Baker asserts.
In primates and in many human societies, he points out, offspring are reared by female groups of mothers, sisters, aunts, nieces and grandmothers, just as in days gone by, human lone mothers were absorbed into their extended families where there were plenty of extra hands and eyes to help keep children safe. In many primate societies, males come and go about their occasional "paternal" care, while spending most time collecting food and trying to inseminate other females. (In human terms, think of the busy executive who plays a token fathering role in the home at weekends, but spends most of his waking hours making money and having the occasional fling.) "There is no reason, therefore, for children in industrial societies suddenly to have evolved with a need for a live-in male role model. There are plenty of males in the wider environment from whom children can learn what they need to learn," Baker asserts.
Lone mothers sometimes find new sex partners and move them into the family as step-fathers in the belief that their income and influence will provide stability. Beneath the surface, the overwhelming reason may be that the mother's body yearns for more children and she needs the new father in residence in order to reproduce again. But the "blended family" is fraught with danger, Baker warns. "Men may gain reproductively from sexual access, for themselves and their sons, to any daughters their new partner may have," he argues. He produces convincing evidence that step-families are rife with sexual conflict and contact between step-relations. Sexual relations between step-relations may be irresistible because the genetic variation which they subconsciously crave is there for the taking. Bodies yearning to reproduce - as the human body inevitably does - will always find ways to mate despite taboos. Baker also warns that in blended families, children are likely to be pitted against each other to compete for resources. "The partner who will gain even more from the blended family is the one who manages to make it his or her children who gain the major share of the total family resources. To achieve this, he or she may need only to show favouritism to his or her own children, but under more extreme conditions he or she may begin to abuse his or her stepchildren," says Baker.
For lone mothers to remain independent - regardless of whether they allow themselves to continue to be inseminated by other male partners - would appear, according to Baker's brave new genetically-driven world, to be the best for the children. "With ever more favourable child-support legislation in industrial societies and with more and more women of independent means, we might expect increasingly more women to opt for lone parenthood - and benefit as a result," he suggests. Could it be that we have not only organised our society to make women dependent, but that we have romanticised the view of the father to justify it? By objective measurement, happy families with fathers and mothers do the best - but is this because there are two parents or because they have more money? A lack of money can, in itself, lead to separation and divorce, according to US statistics.
When the male's financial input is stripped away, what can he offer? Research shows that lone mothers can do very well on their own, provided they have the financial resources. To encourage well-being among lone mothers, we would have to reorganise the Irish workplace to be more family-friendly so that more lone mothers could earn good incomes. Whether or not he's approaching it the right way, in this regard it's worth looking at what Tony Blair is trying to do in Britain to encourage lone mothers to achieve financial independence via work. But considering the stigma against lone motherhood here, any such thinking seems a long way off in the Republic. Even more crucially, men are the dominant policy-makers and they are unlikely to make themselves redundant by encouraging working women to have successful families on their own.
Baby Wars: Parenthood And Family Strife by Robin Baker and Elizabeth Oram will be published on Thursday by 4th Estate. Price £12.99.
