The evolutionary perspective on sexual selection makes predictions consistent with observed behavioral and cultural phenomena. Women should prefer higher status mates because such men could better assist them in providing for offspring. Men should prefer women who are somewhat younger than themselves and higher in fertility. Men in all cultures examined to date tend to seek mates near their own age when they are young, yet seek and find progressively younger women as they age. Yet, contrary to socio-cultural power explanations for mate selection criteria, teenage males are attracted to substantially older women.
Sex differences in the division of labor in mating relationships are addressed by adaptionist theory. It is thought that the sexual division of labor during hominid evolution produced the diverging characteristics evident today. The increase in brain size experienced by our ancestors also resulted in a more difficult childbirth due to the enlargement of the skull. In order to compensate for this difficulty, childbirth occurred earlier in development, and human infants were born relatively immature as compared to other animals. While other animals became more and more independent within a matter of months, humans remained dependent on their parents at least until their teenage years (Fisher, 1992). Since women breast-fed infants, they were the likely candidate to care for small children, and became increasingly more burdened by child care as the span of development elongated. This resulted in a division of labor between men and women, with women gathering and performing other tasks close to home, while men hunted for animals and other resources (Buss, 1996).
Adaptionist theory produces a portrait of nurturing women and competitive men. In most species, mating efforts are most likely to be male, parenting efforts female. Mating and parental efforts have different "return curves." Mating effort has a high fixed cost, typically.......
