“Whether it’s young students strutting around as the “Trump boys”, or submitting social science assignments with ‘trad-wife’ (traditional wife) ideologies, secondary school teacher Paul Stevens said the issue has reached ‘a tipping point’ in the past two years.”
It’s not just the ‘Trump boys’ who are in for a detention, but also the ‘trad-wife’ girls who want to get married and raise a family:
“Some female students had also embraced ‘trad-wife’ ideologies that promoted limiting women’s roles to homemaking and child-rearing, Stevens said.”
Stevens disparages the students for doing what students are supposed to do:
“A young student might submit an assignment, make a strong argument they probably see as coherent, presented in a persuasive manner to meet an assignment’s criteria, Stevens said. ‘But the argument is effectively about a traditional wife, arguing that a woman's role is meant to be in the household raising children.’”
Of course, a young student should be making sound logical and consistent arguments for what they understand to be the case. Furthermore, the school should teach them how to do that and provide a safe environment for them to practice it, including if they make a mistake. Instead, they are being chastened for it:
“Alongside students making arguments that even a few years ago ‘society would’ve utterly rejected’ Stevens said they were all part of a broader movement which pushes back on feminism.”
If a student submits an assignment which makes a strong argument they see as coherent and it is presented in a persuasive manner, as Stevens says, it is not good enough to dismiss it without an even more sound logical and consistent argument.
The problem that teachers now have when they try to override students with their ideology is that the information that is necessary to disprove their claims is easily available online, especially with the help of AI such as Copilot which provides summaries and references.
So, to demonstrate the point and with help from Copilot, I put together a hypothetical assignment from a Trump Boy for consideration.
The Purpose of Life is Life
By John Dee
Rangitoto College
With the present emphasis on LGBT communities, the reason for a traditional marriage leading to the benefits of a family unit are being ignored. In this assignment I identify the evolutionary basis of pair-bonding in humans and show how that fulfils the purpose of life.
Hypotheses
(1) That the purpose of life for a human is to have and to raise children until they are of an age when they can in turn reproduce.
(2) That pair-bonding is adaptive for humans and that the male and the female have different roles.
Derivation of the Purpose of Life
Premise: Life is brought about by evolution.
Evolution comprises replication, variation and selection. Replication is the mechanism which produces the variation upon which selection acts. So, for evolution to proceed to bring about the emergence of life requires replication and replication means producing individual life. So, the functional purpose of an emerging living population is producing living individuals: The purpose of life is life.
There are two strategies for replication: 1) An organism, such as a fish, may have many offspring and then desert them, in which case a few will survive to adulthood when they can in turn reproduce; and, 2) An organism, such as a human, may have few offspring and rear most of them to adulthood when they can in turn reproduce.
Because the functional purpose of a population is producing living individuals, then the purpose of life for a human is to have and to raise children until they are of an age when they can in turn reproduce. QED (1)
Fulfilling the Purpose of Life
Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene, p. 109) says, “The species with which we are most familiar – mammals and birds – tend to be great carers. A decision to bear a new child is usually followed by a decision to care for it.” He goes on to say (p. 161), “Individuals of either sex ‘want’ to maximize their total reproductive output during their lives.”
Weisfeld & Weisfeld say of humans (see References below), “Marriage is universal, and pair bonding is found in other species too with highly dependent young.” Birds are often monogamous; for example, Swans, Albatrosses, Macaroni Penguins, Bald Eagles and Scarlet Macaws. Lifelong partnerships are due to evolutionary advantages such as cooperative parenting, territory defence, and increased survival rates.
According to Mary K. Shenk, “Human marriage likely evolved from ancestral primate patterns of pair bonding and its universality in human societies suggests a deep evolutionary history.” While there is not necessarily a ‘Marriage Gene’ a deep evolutionary history suggests that there is a genetic or epigenetic factor to human marriage.
In “A Review of the Evolution of Pair-Bonding in Humans,” Schacht and Kramer conclude, “… the residential pair-bond is a ubiquitous feature of human mating relationships. This, at times, is expressed through polygyny and/or polyandry, but is most commonly observed in the form of monogamous marriage that is serial and characterized by low levels of extra-pair paternity and high levels of paternal care.”
Success of a genetic, epigenetic or cultural variant is determined by the increase or decrease of the population which has the variant. So, the large increase in human population could be due in part to monogamous marriage.
Dawkins also says (p. 164), “Many human societies are indeed monogamous. In our own society, parental investment by both parents is large and not obviously unbalanced. Mothers certainly do more direct work for children than fathers do, but fathers often work hard in a more indirect sense to provide the material resources that are poured into children.”
Dawkins also points out that in mammals (p. 146), “it is the female who incubates the foetus in her own body, the female who makes the milk to suckle when it is born, the female who bears the brunt of the load of bringing it up and protecting it.”
Weisfeld & Weisfeld say, “The sexes are not identical in their biological contributions to children’s survival, so they seek somewhat different attributes in a mate. Men seek a young, attractive, sexually faithful bride. Women seek a man who is older, taller, and (as in many other species) socially dominant.”
Weisfeld & Weisfeld continue, “Cross-cultural data suggest that cruel or subdominant men (e.g., poor providers) and unfaithful women are prone to divorce. Marriages in which the wife dominates the husband in economic contributions, nonverbal behavior, and decision making tend to be less satisfying. In societies in which wives are economically independent of husbands, divorce rates are high.”
Conclusion
In species which rear their offspring and have low reproduction rates, pair-bonding is adaptive. In humans, pair-bonding manifests as the cultural arrangement of marriage in which the male and female have different roles. The husband obtains the resources from the environment that are necessary to raise a family and the wife establishes and maintains a home for the family, where the children are raised to maturity. QED (2)
References
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1989.
“Are We Monogamous? A Review of the Evolution of Pair-Bonding in Humans and Its Contemporary Variation Cross-Culturally” Ryan Schacht and Karen L. Kramer
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2019.00230/full
Human Behavioral Ecology, “10 – Marriage,” Mary K. Shenk, Cambridge University Press, 7 March 2024.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/human-behavioral-ecology/marriage/F790B87B3F65F939DCFC08C247954CBB
“Marriage: An Evolutionary Perspective,” Glenn E. Weisfeld & Carol C. Weisfeld, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University and Department of Psychology, University of Detroit Mercy, USA, 4 September 2002.
https://www.nel.edu/userfiles/articlesnew/NEL231002R05.pdf
End
In the above hypothetical assignment, based on the available science, a male student has shown that the purpose of life for a human is to have and to raise children until they are of an age when they can in turn reproduce. He has also shown that pair-bonding is adaptive for humans and that the male and the female have different roles.
From Dawkins and Weisfeld & Weisfeld the males have an indirect role to provide material resources for the family whereas the females have a direct role delivering and nurturing the offspring. These roles correspond to what his teacher disparagingly calls a ‘trad-wife’ program for the girls and a ‘Trump boys’ program as providers for their family, just as President Trump is doing for his country.
The student has made a reasonable case, based on the available science, for establishing these roles as a fact of evolutionary history. Whether it is “part of a broader movement which pushes back on feminism” is irrelevant to his argument.
As he approaches sexual maturity and the possibility of reproduction, from his assignment he expects that typically he will marry, have children and raise them to maturity. That may have been an instinct which prompted him to research the topic. The teachers, however, warn of “rising student extremism”. That is apparently a false accusation based on hearsay and Stevens does not have data to substantiate it (see here). By voicing his views, Stevens may have a destabilizing influence on his students and a negative influence on fulfilling the functional purpose of life.
Barrie Davis is a retired telecommunications engineer, holds a PhD in the psychology of Christian beliefs, and can often be found gnashing his teeth reading The Post outside Floyd’s cafe at Island Bay.
3 comments:
Is teacher Stevens "woke"?
Nice article but just one little point of contention:
>"This, at times, is expressed through polygyny and/or polyandry, but is most commonly observed in the form of monogamous marriage"
When we look at primitive peoples and their laws and customs, we see mostly polygamous (in turn, mostly polygynous) marriage. It was only with the dissemination of Graeco-Roman-derived law through colonisation that monogamy became a global gold standard.
There is a relevant article in the Sunday Star-Times (p. 32) this morning regarding sex differences, which reads in part as follows:
“Mating rituals show why males die first,” The Times
Science
“Across all mammals, females were found to live 12% longer than males on average. Among the birds, the tables were turned: males outlived females by about 5%. … But among mammals, it was more common for males to compete fiercely for multiple mates. … Many birds, by contrast, are monogamous, forming long-term bonds with a single mate and sharing parental duties.”
Rather than focusing on factors of race differences in life expectancy – smoking, drinking and diet – perhaps MHA should stand instead for “Men’s Health Authority” which promotes the benefits of life-long monogamous marriage?
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