How paternity testing is like international trade
Nonpaternity rate % N Switzerland 0.83 1607 USA, Michigan, white 1.49 1417 USA, California, white 2.1 6960 USA, Hawaii 2.3 2839 UK, West London 3.7 2596 Paternity Testing Laboratories UK 16.6 1702 USA, Los Angeles, white 24.9 1393 Sweden 38.7 5018 South Africa, Cape Coloured 40 1156 The results above are from Kermyt Anderson’s How […]
The cuckoldry rate in complex agricultural societies is probably ~1%
One of the most interesting and strange things I’ve ever posted about has to do with extra-pair paternity rates. Basically, the rate of cuckoldry. I first got interested in the topic because people get bringing up the chestnut that 10% of children have misattributed biological paternity. That is, their biological father is different than the […]
Our forefathers were fierce & our foremothers were faithful
One of the peculiarities of human historical genetics is that people can simultaneously accept the existence of aggressive polygynous males such as Genghis Khan, and promiscuous females who give rise to the idea that 1 out of 10 children have an incorrect assigned paternity. I’ve mentioned the cuckoldry myth before. It is a common evolutionary […]
The post Our forefathers were fierce & our foremothers were faithful appeared first on Gene Expression.
Our forefathers were fierce & our foremothers were faithful
One of the peculiarities of human historical genetics is that people can simultaneously accept the existence of aggressive polygynous males such as Genghis Khan, and promiscuous females who give rise to the idea that 1 out of 10 children have an incorrect assigned paternity. I’ve mentioned the cuckoldry myth before. It is a common evolutionary […]
The post Our forefathers were fierce & our foremothers were faithful appeared first on Gene Expression.
Cuckoldry more common in past generations
We have some data that in fact older generations were more sexually promiscuous, contrary to the moral panic perpetually ascendant. As a follow up to my previous post, there is some scholarship which suggests that misattributed paternity rates have been declining. Recent decline in nonpaternity rates: a cross-temporal meta-analysis:
Nonpaternity (i.e., discrepant biological versus social fatherhood) […]
The paternity myth: the rarity of cuckoldry
An urban myth, often asserted with a wink & a nod in some circles, is that a very high proportion of children in Western countries are not raised by their biological father, and in fact are not aware that their putative biological father is not their real biological father. The numbers I see and hear […]