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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told you?

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Speaker 1: From house top works dot com. Hello, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. This is Molly and I'm Kristen Kristin. Here's

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Speaker 1: your day's question for this podcast, Our humans meant to

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Speaker 1: be monogamous? No? Well, thanks for listening. This has been stuff,

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Speaker 1: but I've never told you. This is an email if

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Speaker 1: you've got any thoughts Mom stuff at how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. Just kidding. Okay, I guess we should probably

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Speaker 1: discuss how how we came to that conclusion, but how

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Speaker 1: I reached that pitch perfect note Ye, that was glasses

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Speaker 1: breaking everywhere. Now I feel kind of bad auto tune

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Speaker 1: it later, sbjecting ears to that. But let's get down

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Speaker 1: to business. Molly. Yes, the answer is no. And to

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Speaker 1: to start our examination of human monogamy, we started with

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Speaker 1: all the animals. We went first to the wild Kingdom. Yes,

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Speaker 1: because you know, I mean, what, let's learn from from

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Speaker 1: other creatures how to do things they seem to They

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Speaker 1: seem to not have the the fights, the drawn out

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Speaker 1: divorces that we humans do. Maybe get onto something they

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Speaker 1: can share a nest, I mean, and that's a small

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Speaker 1: space and get along. It's like a studio in New York.

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Speaker 1: So back in the day before we had things like

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Speaker 1: DNA testing that we could do on animals, we used

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Speaker 1: to think that a lot of different kinds of animals

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Speaker 1: were monogamous, such as swans, oh birds, all birds and

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Speaker 1: lots of birds. They were really held up as these

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Speaker 1: standards of monogamy in the animal kingdom. But once we

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Speaker 1: got this DNA tests and we learned that these birds

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Speaker 1: are flying away from the nest for a little hanky panky,

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Speaker 1: if you will, especially the ladybirds. Yes, there have even

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Speaker 1: been studies done where they gave the male birds vasectomies.

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Speaker 1: Some of the male birds vasectomyes too control the population,

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Speaker 1: right to control the population, not just for cruel And

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Speaker 1: they've nested up with their ladybirds. So you got you

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Speaker 1: got your female bird and then your male bird with

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Speaker 1: a vasectomy, and lo and behold, the females keep having baby. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: she somehow magically laying some eggs, and so the researchers went, huh,

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Speaker 1: something's going on. So now that we've started doing all

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Speaker 1: of this DNA research in these animal populations come to

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Speaker 1: find out animals are way less monogamous than we used

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Speaker 1: to think, and there is a huge distinction between social

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Speaker 1: monogamy and sexual monogamy. A lot of animals will pair

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Speaker 1: up in quote unquote pair bonds such as you know,

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Speaker 1: kind of like the way humans do form pair bonds.

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Speaker 1: But while they might hang out a lot together and

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Speaker 1: children together and raised children exactly, the children may not

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Speaker 1: all belong to the male bird. And that's where the

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Speaker 1: DNA testing comes in. They come in and they test

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Speaker 1: these these baby birds and find out that maybe thirty

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Speaker 1: percent of the of the kids, however many you know,

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Speaker 1: kids these birds are raising don't belong to the father

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Speaker 1: who has settled down with this woman. And it kind

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Speaker 1: of makes me wonder if those um TV shows that

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Speaker 1: are on during the daytime then I only see when

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Speaker 1: I'm sick, Kristen, like the Morey's and the Jerry Springers

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Speaker 1: where they do the paternity testing. I wonder if it

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Speaker 1: will become more widespread because now it's like we're DNA

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Speaker 1: testing every bird to see who its father is. I

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Speaker 1: wonder what would happen if we did the same to humans.

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Speaker 1: I don't even know if I'd want to know the

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Speaker 1: results of that, and I don't think we do. I

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Speaker 1: think maybe in our in our conscious places, we know

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Speaker 1: that humans might be stepping out as much as these birds.

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Speaker 1: But there are still a couple of monogamous examples in

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Speaker 1: the animal kingdom. A lot of times we hear about

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Speaker 1: prairie vowals. They are known for their bogamy. Apparently, when

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Speaker 1: a little boy pray bowl and a little girl prairie

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Speaker 1: prairie bowl meet up, they will make prairie voll love

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Speaker 1: for days. Yeah, for hours and hours and hours on end,

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Speaker 1: and that's all it takes for them to be in

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Speaker 1: love forever. And we are using these terms lightly. I

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Speaker 1: know that we were anthropomorphizing these prairie bowls, but still

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Speaker 1: they're they're studied specifically because of their monogamous habits, and

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Speaker 1: scientists have compared their habits to a cousin of theirs

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Speaker 1: called the mead oval, who is far more promiscuous than

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Speaker 1: the prairie Yes, the dondre Per bowls excellent. And they've

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Speaker 1: compared their brain structures and found that prairie bowls have

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Speaker 1: far more vasopressin receptors and their brains and vaso presson

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Speaker 1: is associated with pair bonding and feeling of attachment and

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Speaker 1: romantic attachment, I should say. And scientists went in and

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Speaker 1: stimulated vasopressin receptor growth in meadow vole brains, and all

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Speaker 1: of a sudden, these don drapers started settling down. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: like instantaneously, the scientists said, I mean, it was just

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Speaker 1: you know, as soon as that that vaso pressing kicked in,

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Speaker 1: it was like, hello, love of my life, who I

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Speaker 1: will be with? And this is all linked up to

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Speaker 1: the brain's reward system because we've gone over this territory

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Speaker 1: many times and stuff I've never told you, but when

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Speaker 1: you have sex with someone, there are certain chemicals that

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Speaker 1: are released in your brain that stimulate your dopamine reward system,

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Speaker 1: which is why noted anthropologists Helen Fisher compares love and

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Speaker 1: attraction to cocaine addictions, because it does set off this

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Speaker 1: this really strong reaction in your brain, and the vasopress

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Speaker 1: and receptors are associated with that. So it's possible, I mean,

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Speaker 1: this is only one aspect of the question our humans

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Speaker 1: meant to be monogamous. It's possible that some humans just

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Speaker 1: don't have that brain wiring that allows them to be monogamous.

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Speaker 1: But for anyone out there contemplating an affair, I don't

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Speaker 1: think brain chemistry is going to be in valid excuse

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Speaker 1: should your partner not want not be wanting you to

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Speaker 1: have an affair. Sort of those prominent ideas about monogamy

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Speaker 1: today from an academic perspective is that it's more of

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Speaker 1: a cultural construct rather than a biological imperative. Scientists have

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Speaker 1: even gone back and studied Lucy, the famous auster Lepipocus

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Speaker 1: hominid to try to trace back monogamy in human societies.

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Speaker 1: And while originally they used to think that monogamy went

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Speaker 1: way way back, you know, this pair bonding was happening,

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Speaker 1: so of course we were. We were shacking up with

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Speaker 1: just one other hominid. But indeed no new newer studies

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Speaker 1: show that when they compare the sizes of male and

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Speaker 1: female hominids, the difference in sizes indicate that the men

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Speaker 1: were certainly not monogamous. And how do they know that.

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Speaker 1: It's because if the man is substantially larger than the woman,

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Speaker 1: they figured that is not a monogamous society, because the

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Speaker 1: man has to be strong enough to fight off other

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Speaker 1: predators who might be after his lady and his lady

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Speaker 1: might be interested in these, so the menu are are bigger,

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Speaker 1: so that they can save their save their women. And

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Speaker 1: when you're reading all of this research only I don't

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Speaker 1: know about you, but I have yet to come across

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Speaker 1: one study concluding that absolutely, you know, like monogamy is

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Speaker 1: something that humans are born with. We talked about on

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Speaker 1: the podcast um De Men and women cheat for different reasons. Cheating,

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Speaker 1: an adultery, and infidelity, all those different words for the

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Speaker 1: same thing. Goes back eons in human history. We've always

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Speaker 1: had a wandering eye for someone else. Now this is

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Speaker 1: also again where the important distinction comes up between social

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Speaker 1: monogamy and sexual monogamy. Seems like we have we've definitely

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Speaker 1: smashed the two together. In human culture, we shack up

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Speaker 1: with someone and so socially we want the child rearing support,

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Speaker 1: we keep house together. We get all these social benefits

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Speaker 1: from being monogamous with someone else. But at the same time,

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Speaker 1: it's really hard for a lot of people to be

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Speaker 1: sexually monogamous for the long haul. So that's that's sort

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Speaker 1: of what those birds were doing. They would pick their

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Speaker 1: one bird friend and they would maintain social monogamy raising

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Speaker 1: those children. You know, protecting the nest, etcetera. The sexual

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Speaker 1: monogamy was up for debate, and what we found where

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Speaker 1: a lot of articles in which human couples were trying

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Speaker 1: to negotiate this own distinction between the two for themselves

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Speaker 1: and maybe realizing that requiring absolute monogamy from a partner

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Speaker 1: isn't the most realistic way to go right. Chris Ryan,

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Speaker 1: who wrote Sex at Dawn, has been a big proponent

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Speaker 1: of this idea, a that monogamy isn't really the natural

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Speaker 1: human way, and he is a fan of more of

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Speaker 1: this quote unquote new monogamy and then um recently in July,

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Speaker 1: there was an article written by Tammy Nelson, who is

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Speaker 1: a relationship psychologists, and she outlined different couples process of

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Speaker 1: establishing these new monogamous types of relationships. All these couples

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Speaker 1: were married and in some cases one or the other

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Speaker 1: person had cheated and sexually sexually, Yeah, they still they

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Speaker 1: wanted to keep the relationship intact if at all possible. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think they need to clarify here between this new

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Speaker 1: monogamy and something like polyamory. Polyamory is the belief that

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Speaker 1: you can emotionally love, emotionally love more than one person,

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Speaker 1: and when we're talking about sexual monogamy, we're talking strictly

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Speaker 1: about the physical act. And what these couples in Nelson's

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Speaker 1: article found was that if it was just sex, if

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Speaker 1: there was no emotion tied to it, they could live

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Speaker 1: with it. They would still maintain that social monogamy having

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Speaker 1: the emotional support and fidelity of a partner, but they

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Speaker 1: didn't require the sexual support and absolute fidelity of a partner. Right.

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Speaker 1: So with this concept of new monogamy, it's more thinking

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Speaker 1: of monogamy in terms of strictly the social and establishing

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Speaker 1: kind of a monogamy contract with the other person. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: different people and different couples will have different boundaries. Some

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Speaker 1: people could not imagine their their partner being sexually unfaithful

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Speaker 1: to them and then being able to carry out a

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Speaker 1: day to day social relationship with them. Some people are

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Speaker 1: fine with it. You know, some of these new monogamous

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Speaker 1: couples have both of them have a lover, and yet

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Speaker 1: they still carry on a household together. And in our

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Speaker 1: mon noormative yes, it's a new word that I learned

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Speaker 1: this week, mono noormative society, where obviously monogamy is upheld

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Speaker 1: as cultural ideal. This seems like a pretty radical idea. Well,

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Speaker 1: let's talk specifically about some of the couples that were

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Speaker 1: presented in Nelson's article, because that might help some people understand.

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Speaker 1: She talks about one couple she sees who were in

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Speaker 1: their fifties. They both got married. I mean they got

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Speaker 1: married to each other when they were very young. Uh

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Speaker 1: they were you know, each other's high school sweethearts. They've

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Speaker 1: never been with anyone else, and they both you know,

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Speaker 1: had that itch to explore, but they didn't want to

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Speaker 1: break up the marriage. You know, they'd raised kids together,

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Speaker 1: they had invested and made this life together, and they

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Speaker 1: didn't want to destroy that it was solely a physical thing,

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Speaker 1: and they came to the realization that, you know, this

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Speaker 1: marriage is never going to fall apart no matter you know,

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Speaker 1: who else I have sex with. At the end of

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Speaker 1: the day, I'm gonna want to come home to this person.

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Speaker 1: So I give this other person permission to explore that

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Speaker 1: physical side of themselves. But I think with this couple,

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Speaker 1: they were only allowed to have sex with someone else

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Speaker 1: if they were traveling, and then when they came home,

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Speaker 1: they had to disclose the little sexual interlude with the

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Speaker 1: husband or wife. It seems you know that honesty and

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Speaker 1: upfront communication is essential, and a lot of confidence in

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Speaker 1: the strength of that social monogamy. Well in one rule

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Speaker 1: that another couple had that I thought was kind of

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Speaker 1: interesting was that, um, if if one of the partners

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Speaker 1: had sex with someone else, it could only have sex

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Speaker 1: with someone else once, and that they thought that that

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Speaker 1: was sort of the way that they could prevent that

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Speaker 1: emotional bond from being formed. Because again, it's not about

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Speaker 1: falling in love with multiple people, um, which you know

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Speaker 1: can sometimes be okay if you've got a polyamorous situation

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Speaker 1: or an open marriage. It's strictly about what you're doing

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Speaker 1: with your lady parts and your male parts right kind

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Speaker 1: of satisfying those chemical quote unquote needs inside of you.

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Speaker 1: And again, Molly and I aren't sitting here advocating the

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Speaker 1: new monogami saying that this is how it should be.

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Speaker 1: But Nelson was making the point that you know, we

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Speaker 1: live longer than ever before couples, when couples A I do,

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Speaker 1: it's for longer than ever before. So maybe it's time

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Speaker 1: for us to broaden our definition of monogamy and maybe

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Speaker 1: take a cue from the Animal Kingdom all of those

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Speaker 1: birds that are happily socially monogamous, whereas uh might not

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Speaker 1: be hanging out the same chickadee every night. Well, you know,

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Speaker 1: we've I think we've talked about bore on this podcast

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Speaker 1: a few times about how you can expect too much

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Speaker 1: from one person. The new ideal that we've been raised

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Speaker 1: with thanks to movies and songs and all this, is

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Speaker 1: that one person is going to be your everything. It's

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Speaker 1: going to fulfill you sexually, emotionally, give you children, and

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Speaker 1: take out the garbage. And uh, you know I've talked

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Speaker 1: about is that too much to expect from marriage? Marriage

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Speaker 1: used to be a financial contract between two people. Um

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Speaker 1: or you used to get married because you know, you

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Speaker 1: wanted to have kids, but now you don't have to

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Speaker 1: necessarily get married to do that. So they're saying that

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Speaker 1: these couples who do choose to uh undertake the ideal

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Speaker 1: of marriage to participate in that system, want to maintain

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Speaker 1: all the you know, social trappings of it, but you know,

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Speaker 1: they don't put all that pressure on the one person.

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Speaker 1: For example, another one of the couples from the Nelson

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Speaker 1: article I thought was kind of interesting was this woman

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Speaker 1: who had affairs. She was still in love with her husband,

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Speaker 1: but she would have never divorced her husband over these

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Speaker 1: affairs because she knew it hurt his career because he

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Speaker 1: worked at a very conservative law firm. So she was

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Speaker 1: happy to maintain that facade of you know, the wife,

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Speaker 1: the kids in the white picket fence as long as

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Speaker 1: she and the husband had the agreement about who could

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Speaker 1: do what. And some people might argue that this idea

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Speaker 1: of new monogamy is just threatening the very institution of marriage.

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Speaker 1: What are we doing this? You need to downfall of families.

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Speaker 1: But I will sit and play devil's advocate for a

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Speaker 1: minute and point to the most recent survey statistics that

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Speaker 1: show that between um fifteen, around of wives and of

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Speaker 1: husbands will sleep with someone who is not their spouse

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Speaker 1: or have a full blown affair at some point. And

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Speaker 1: then you can pile up the divorce statistics on top

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Speaker 1: of that, and I think that maybe, you know, maybe

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Speaker 1: there is room for some people, if if it's right

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Speaker 1: for the couple. Again, this is going to be on

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Speaker 1: a per couple basis, but maybe it's time for us

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Speaker 1: to perhaps stopped kidding ourselves about monogamy being this innate

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Speaker 1: natural thing that we have. I mean, it sounds very romantic,

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Speaker 1: but maybe it's not all that realistic. But then again,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I know there are probably gonna be people

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Speaker 1: out there who think that people who are practicing new

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Speaker 1: monogamy are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

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Speaker 1: They get all the benefits of that great home life

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Speaker 1: with the perfect spouse, and they get to have sex

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Speaker 1: with whoever they want as long as they figured out

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Speaker 1: the rules, you know, with that person. And and I

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Speaker 1: think that you know, that's that's a valid point of

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Speaker 1: view to have to because you know, jealousy can take

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Speaker 1: over in ways that you didn't expect. And the key

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Speaker 1: to all of these couples that Nelson worked with was

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Speaker 1: acknowledging the fact that there might be jealousy, there might

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Speaker 1: be complex but making that commitment to negotiate it with

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Speaker 1: each other and figure out if it was this was

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Speaker 1: a system that worked for them, because it's like she said,

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Speaker 1: it isn't for everyone. So there you have it. As

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Speaker 1: as animals, humans are certainly not a monogamous species. We

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Speaker 1: attempt it, but maybe maybe we're confusing social and sexual monogamy.

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Speaker 1: That's not a question that Molly and I can answer,

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Speaker 1: and I don't think that that's a question that anyone

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Speaker 1: can answer for and make a blanket answer for, because,

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Speaker 1: like we said at the beginning, different people have different

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Speaker 1: brain structures that will determine how monogamous they might or

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Speaker 1: might not be. So at this time, I think it's

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Speaker 1: it's time to hear from you guys. Let us know

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Speaker 1: your thoughts mom stuff at how stuff works dot com,

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Speaker 1: or share your thoughts with everyone over on our Facebook page.

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Speaker 1: And now we shall read some listener mail. This one

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Speaker 1: is from Damon It's about the home at podcast and

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Speaker 1: Damon Rights. I'm a thirty nine year old man who

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Speaker 1: grew up in Detroit, Michigan. I took home economics when

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Speaker 1: I was in the seventh eighth grade, and I can

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Speaker 1: say it was one of the most valuable classes I

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Speaker 1: ever took. I learned how to sew and I learned

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Speaker 1: a little bit of cooking. I didn't mind taking the

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Speaker 1: class at the time. I had no clue that I

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Speaker 1: would use with things I learned to help me survive

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Speaker 1: in college. I had a roommate who had problems making

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Speaker 1: teeny dinners while I was cooking full meals. I am

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Speaker 1: married now and I of what my wife and I

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Speaker 1: eat while I'm not making my own clothes. I don't

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Speaker 1: have a problem if I get a hole or need

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Speaker 1: to make minor adjustments. My wife and I both think

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Speaker 1: home economics and mom of course for teaching me these skills.

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Speaker 1: I think everyone male and female should be required to

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Speaker 1: take this class. Well, I've got another home at email

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Speaker 1: here and it is from Ada, and Adora writes. I

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Speaker 1: went to co ed Roman Catholic High School in Hong

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Speaker 1: Kong that was originally built as an all boys school.

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Speaker 1: We did not have the facilities for home at classes. Instead,

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Speaker 1: we had design and Technology, which is learned to shop

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Speaker 1: class in the US. We made useless stuff such as

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Speaker 1: plastic letter openers, and it sound too useless. In an

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Speaker 1: average secondary school in Hong Kong, girls go to home

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Speaker 1: at classes while boys go to shop class. I was

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Speaker 1: proud that we had shop class instead of home mat

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Speaker 1: because I could already cook and knit at home, and

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Speaker 1: I'd rather learn how to use a drill. It comes

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Speaker 1: in handy or it came in handy later, when I

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Speaker 1: worked at a theater scene shop in college and built

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Speaker 1: wood models for my architecture podcast. After listening to your podcast.

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Speaker 1: So I wish we had home Mack, but I wouldn't

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Speaker 1: give up shop class. Both Homemech and shop class should

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Speaker 1: be taught to both boys and girls. Every time I

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Speaker 1: get food poisoning, it's from a friend's cooking rather than

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Speaker 1: restaurant food. In denth grade, we had to close theater

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Speaker 1: very early due to undercook chicken at the pot. Look.

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Speaker 1: Oh no, Over Christmas, I ate a pasta my friend

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Speaker 1: prepared that got me very sick. She added the milk

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Speaker 1: before adding the uncooked meat. The boiling point of milk

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Speaker 1: is much lower than the temperature required for cooking meat.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god, I had a fever of thirty nine

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Speaker 1: degrees celsius and threw up a munch at. A bit

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Speaker 1: of my brain came out. Everyone has to eat, you know.

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Speaker 1: You need to know how to prepare food safely. Oh

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Speaker 1: and by the way, Molly, this is this is a

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Speaker 1: little bit for you, Dora Rice. I was buying a

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Speaker 1: Molly bolt at home Depot and thought about how Molly

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Speaker 1: would probably love that. There is an awesome bold with

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Speaker 1: her name. It's the best bolt for hanging wall shelves

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Speaker 1: on drywall. There you go at that email I might

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Speaker 1: have done a little Google image search for the Molly

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Speaker 1: board for the holidays, I'm buying someone a bag of

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Speaker 1: molly bolts. Wonder who it is? So if you have

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Speaker 1: an email, you can send it to us at mom

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Speaker 1: Stuff at how stuff works dot com. We would also

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Speaker 1: love you to take advantage of our Facebook page and

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Speaker 1: share your thoughts there. You can also follow us on

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Speaker 1: Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. And lastly, you can head

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Speaker 1: over to our blog during the week, It is stuff

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Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You at how stuff works dot com

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Speaker 1: for moral this and thousands of other topics. This is

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,

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Speaker 1: click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner

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