Question For the Ladies: Why do you raise your son to be a “Nice Guy”
This post is addressed to Mothers. The premise is a simple one, why do you raise your sons to be Beta males or “Nice Guys” when this is counter to the principles they need to successfully date and reproduce? It seems women are nearly universally in denial about what causes attraction in them. If you are familiar with my site, or any numbers of others in the PUA or Alpha/Beta Male genre, you know that being a “Nice Guy” is the kiss of death in dating.
This paradox has consigned most men to years of unlearning the feminist claptrap of just be yourself and women will find you sexy, or just be a nice guy and respect her and she will get wet for you. Puh-leez. Unless you want to be known as the guy who is just like a brother to every woman he knows, you need to disabuse yourself of this Hogwash this instant.
Women are attracted to Alpha Males. These men do not defer to her or supplicate her. Since a woman’s reproductive success is indirectly contingent on her son’s ability to attract women, it would be logical that she instill the attitudes and skills in him while young that will aid him in attracting women. Unlike all other men, she has a vested interest in his knowing the ugly truth. Bad-boys make her hot. Churchmouse guys do not. Despite this, women across the board raise their sons to “respect women” and be “chivalrous.” This idea of differential treatment of women flies directly in the face of the supposed goal of feminism, equal treatment of the sexes. This issue is even more a concern today, when the greatest number of children in American history are being born to single mothers. These sons are being unilaterally denied the male influence that could counter the inane teachings of his mother. What gives?
Here we see the perpetuation of these values:
Nice guys . . .
- Never ask a girl out via IM, text message, or e-mail.
- Never discuss details of the relationship with their friends, or anyone, for that matter. It will almost always come back to haunt them.
- Never flirt with someone else’s girlfriend. There will be many insecure girls who initiate the flirting to bait the attention they crave, but most guys see through this behavior and recognize that they are one of many boys being flirted with.
- Stay true to their friends. If they are considering asking out a friend of a past girlfriend or a buddy’s past girlfriend, they will wait a suitable amount of time and, if need be, give the friend or past girlfriend the heads-up beforehand.
- Will not engage in physical intimacies (hand-holding, kissing, etc.) with someone he is not going out with.
- Do not believe in “going Dutch” when they have a girlfriend. Some exceptions might be made (expensive concerts, etc.), but they should not be the rule.
- Make every effort to introduce themselves to the parents of the girl they are dating. With confidence and assurance, they know how to give a firm handshake to the girl’s dad, make proper eye contact with him and the girl’s mom, use proper manners (“Yes, sir,” “No, ma’am”), be responsive to any questions they ask, and initiate conversation with them from time to time.
- Do not build a relationship with a girlfriend solely by means of IM and text messaging. Some conversations were meant to occur by phone call or face-to-face.
- Are not in the habit of belching, passing gas, swearing, and other abominable behaviors in front of the opposite sex. Girls should be treated as girls—not “one of the guys.”
- Open car doors and doors, allow their girlfriends to pass through doors ahead of them, as well as display other common acts of courtesy.
- Never engage in sexual banter with the opposite sex. Insecure girls may laugh along with them, but deep inside they feel disrespected and devalued.
- Recognize the importance of prayer for making wise choices and avoiding temptations in a relationship.
- Flee tempting situations. No need to explain. If need be, they run for their lives and explain later.
- Never expect the girl they are dating to set the physical limits in the relationship. They have determined their own limits according to God, up front.
- Never end relationships over the telephone or by IM, e-mail, or text messaging. Further, they do not ask friends to deliver the bad news. If she was important enough to ask out in the first place, she is important enough to end the relationship in person.
- Behave nobly after the breakup. They do not vent their hurt or anger publicly or seek revenge.
Treat past girlfriends with honor and respect. They do not betray them by sharing personal information with others.
Many of these fly directly in the face of what works in today’s world and presume the end result of the dalliance is a relationship. It also assumes the women aren’t totally scandalous, which is a stretch for most American women today. The only thing I can say in their defense is that it’s a Christian website, and their goal is to train a meek, submissive flock. Otherwise, this is essentially worthless advice.
So there you have it ladies. Why do you train your son to be a chump when it comes to women? Please enlighten us.
WoW, ok AD, I am quite impressed with your research, writings, questions, and answers.
As this is my first post, i thought i’d start here and give my opinion on why I want my boy, if i ever have one, to be a “chump” so to speak. I don’t agree with most of these “niceguy values”. However, there are some pet peeves I have about men that drive me up the wall!
For example: Flirting while having a significant other is most annoying. I went to a club with a boyfriend once while we were on vacation, and he ended up checking out this hot dancing chick…winking at her, dancing with her, while I danced by myself. I want a man who will give me his full attention, and yes, i think that it’s very sweet when he opens a door for me.
The only other behavior i found i agreed with was the “abominable behaviors” part…lol. Farting is a man thing…a man’s joke. Do it with men, leave me out of it. I really don’t find it that funny.
If I ever get to have a little boy someday, I don’t plan to raise him with these “values” that you found, but I do want him to learn to respect women, and treat them with dignity. I love the picture up top with the flowers…i only wish my man would give me flowers.
By the way, my boyfriend doesn’t open doors for me, has been to jail twice, hangs out with his ex, has tats, and yet, he plays guitar and sings love songs to me everyday, and that makes up for all else.
Amy,
Sounds like you have a man who tends more to the independent bad boy end of the spectrum, but that also cares about you. I think this is optimal for successful relationships. This is the goal for your son as well if you wish him to be successful and respected by the ladies. I embrace integrity and honest as core values, and I don’t find them to be incompatible with being a strong man. The problem arises when a son is trained to place women ahead of himself and to supplicate them. Women won’t stay with and be faithful to a man they can’t respect. The fella’s lose themselves when they become willing to go to any lengths to obtain or keep a woman and as the linked article states, this is an indication of insecurity, the anathema of the confidence so sexy to women. As for the flirting thing, the case you stated was more than mere flirtation in that your date ignored you for this stranger. Eye contact, smiling and such harmless behaviors while they may bother you, are fairly benign and both sexes engage in them. Engaging other women while in your presence as he did is something further in my opinion. Benign flirtation, that borders on simply being nice, is something that is often subconscious and blown out of proportion by the other gender, or which is triggered by a biological imperative on a subconscious level as female behavioral changes when ovulating: http://alphadominance.com/?p=9 With regard to opening doors etc. I draw the line where it goes beyond a simple courtesy I might extend to any stranger. When I enter a store and reach the door first, I will hold it for whomever is behind me, young or old, male or female, because I feel it is simply polite, a civil nicety. If I were only to do something like this for young women, it would cross the line to chivalry and be arcane and unnecessary in my mind.
I once had a Trinidadian neighbor by the name of Anthony. One day when Anthony was but seven years old his mother caught him using the word ‘fuck’.
She punished him by pulling out the steak knife and giving him a nick in the cheek.
With this kind of reprimand one has to wonder how little Anthony turned out.
Wonder if that kid respects women more or less for that.
Women do it because it is part of their inherited nature, and we know women cannot behave against their nature. Better question is, why is nature like that?
And the reason is surprising: because it is actually good for the budding son. Nobody can raise a son to be an alpha by telling them facts. It’s like freedom, you can only give it once, after that the other person needs to use his energy to maintain his own freedom. Getting freedom through struggle helps them to maintain the freedom.
You need struggle to grow into an alpha. Women teach their sons to be nice guys because it gives them the struggle they need to grow into an alpha. And if they don’t grow into an alpha, no amount of information would have helped them.
Woman uses the same mechanism first in her mate selection process and later in raising her son. She thinks she wants to dominate, but woman is only fullfilled when she feels safe. She feels safe when her partner can dominate her. That’s why she needs to constantly verify that her mate is sufficiently dominant.
When society helps to distribute women equally, betas end up happier if they believe the noble lies about nice guys, because they still have a decent change of getting a partner.
It only becames a problem when society starts to believe the lies that women tell themselves, because when women choose freely, they choose alphas. And they start to hate men, because they can never lock an alpha permanently to themselves.
I think you have some good points here Jack. Unfortunately many boys today don’t have the tempering influence of a strong father as a role model and to show them by example the inconsistencies of their mother’s approach. Since society encourages them in their misconceptions it’s easy to remain in denial.
Good point about strong men as role models.
I think becoming a man means “killing your mother”, metaphorically speaking. You have to learn that your mother has a blind spot, like all women, on what motivates women.
From where could you learn this unless you have a role model?
One has to remember these rules of chivalry are perfectly reasonable in a society where men dominate women, because with power over somebody comes responsibility for their well-being. The purpose of these rules is to teach the responsibility. That is mother’s second job. It is father’s job to teach how to achieve power. The rules only stop making sense in the context where women dominate men, like we now have in western societies.
I agree about the blind spot Jack. I myself went through that process of rejecting my mother’s teachings as I learned their inefficacy in the real world. Metaphorically “killing the mother” is rarely heard, whereas the Oedipal “killing of the father” is pretty much common knowledge. Greek myth does provide an example of this in the story of Orestes however, whom you may have heard of in the Euripides play “Electra.” Interestingly in the Myth he goes mad with remorse.
Absolutely, many of the problems plaguing marriage today arise from this mismatch of archaic legal precedents based on female dependence and the modern world of equal rights, women’s ability to work and paternity tests. Thus such absurdities as the inability to contest paternity for children born to your wife for whom you are not the biological father, and alimony. Today women have all the options and power of the law backing them while men bear the bulk of the responsibilities. How can one teach responsibility when one isn’t held responsible for one’s actions by the society at large?
women want their sons to be the man that they “think” they want (a lapdog) but in reality the rest of us self-aware men know that they resent for being less than Alpha. The depths to which many women lie to themselves is indeed, disturbing.
I agree Benedict, it seems to be a clear case of willful blindness, or blatant denial. I know many women are less rational in some things but something so egregious would cause me discomfiting cognitive dissonance. How do these gals rectify their actions (alpha attraction) with their mental constructs (supposedly liking beta boys) so universally? Its so logically inconsistent, yet universal among women. It’s also interesting that most comments here have been from men. I was hoping to get at least some rationalizations by women, or better yet some compelling reason for this that I might not have considered (likely a specious argument but it would be interesting to hear). I remain open to any persuasive case they may present, though I think the fella’s here understand this through hard earned experience. I am interested in whether any women realize this and do it willfully or if it’s a case of myopic denial.
Hello, I’m not sure if my next example is what you are looking for: I’m don’t know my father too well. He’s very private about his life, and keeps his emotions and opinions in check. For the last 20 years he has been remarried to my Stepmom, and worships her from head to toe. He does the laundry, cleans the house, does all the shopping, takes care of the dog, responds to her every command, and always checks with her on whatever he does.
He’s been retired these last 15 years, and she brings home the bacon. A lot of it. He seems “pussy whipped”. But i see him as an Alpha, except i’m not sure why. He may not be, now that i’m reading your website.
Anyway, If I was bringing home the cash, I would want my man who’s not, to take care of the homefront that’s for sure.
Is this thought narrow-minded? I believe not. Especially in these times, where some women are finally in executive positions of the workforce, and some men have allowed themselves to become lackadaisical.
It’s fair to split the labor, if you stay home, then keeping the place up should be your contribution. Retirement would be different than just leeching off of a woman your whole life as well. I wouldn’t say if you take commands that you are Alpha, at least not in that relationship. Your father may behave as an Alpha toward you, but defer to his wife. Most of us are accustomed to taking direction at work, few men have no-one to whom they must listen, but typically if you behave this way in a relationship, your woman won’t respect you. Without more insight into the situation you describe it’s hard to draw further conclusions though.
I thought I would contribute since you want another female opinion. Many good points have been made. I think that overall men might not survive in a relationship with a woman as an adult had they not had at least some influence from a woman during childhood. I think intuitively mothers try to teach their sons to treat women a certain way in an attempt to mitigate the natural male instincts. Women most likely assume that men will naturally act alpha, thus they hope to tone it down a little by trying to teach them to be courteous, respectful, etc. While women know that they are initially attracted to “alpha” qualities in men, they also know that the only thing that will maintain a relationship long enough for reproduction to take place is if the man treats the woman with respect. Women do want a manly man, but at the end of the day, they don’t want a caveman!
A perfect example of this is women who date the “bad boys” during their younger years, then eventually end up settling down with the not-so-alpha but stable guy later in life. True, she was attracted to the alpha qualities in men, but eventually realized that so were many other women. It becomes too much of a hassle to try to keep an alpha male for yourself because he usually has many options in women. These alpha males most likely sleep with many women, which could potentially increase their chances of passing on their genes, but with the accessibility of birth control and pregnancy termination methods today most women are able to carefully choose with whom they reproduce. Although alpha males might get lots of play early on in life, in the end they don’t necessarily come out ahead. Perhaps mothers are aware of this fact, which is why they try to teach their sons the qualities that will serve them well in the long-run.
This is an interesting question.
Mothers do generally encourage things like social skills and athleticism that can lead to good dating outcomes. It is true that they don’t generally give good dating advice.
For a long time in the west, I think “dad” strategies have tended to predominate over “cad” strategies. Think about those New England counties that averaged over 9 kids per mother in the 1600s. Mothers advice to “Act religiously and impress potential in-laws” would tend to produce a lot of grandkids in those environments
It probably still does. Contraception has cut into “cads” fertility at the very time that “cads” access to sex has increased. Religious men have more babies.
This isn’t particularly relevant if men and women’s genetic based sexual strategies were formed when humans were hunter gatherers and have not changed much since. But if there was a big change in genetic sexual strategies in the 10,000 years since the development of agriculture, current mothers advice would not be so surprising.
Nola,
Perhaps this is the thought process, but by training their son’s for a marriage mindset, they preclude them gaining the skills through experience to hold their own in a marriage setting. They end up being easily controlled and as such lose the respect of their wives, or so it appears to me. Will women stay with them while raising children for their beta provider qualities? Probably, but what we so often see is a slow freezing over of relations followed by the women flying the coop at menopause. Women seems disproportionately inclined to throw devoted hubby under the bus for another alpha just as soon as their kids are off to college. Knowing this in advance, what man would want to wait his whole youth for “the one” who herself has gained a couple of hundred miles on the odometer, devote himself to her and give wholly of himself and his income, only to have it all yanked away because he isn’t “exciting” enough once the kids are gone? It seems a poor deal indeed, and one that only the most myopic and desperate chump would sign on for. Knowing this, one might wish to prepare their son to see the world as it is instead of some idealized romance, at least he would knowingly make a choice then. It’s almost as if the culture has a vested interest in keeping people in denial about this, and I think it does. A largely monogamous society means that many people have to settle for less desirable partners. Were everyone to see the issue clearly, this model would fall apart, and we are seeing the beginning of this trend now in western society. In a time when marriage was effectively a “til death” deal, and women were mostly chaste until marriage, this strategy might make sense, but those days are long gone in the developed world.
Anony,
I would suggest that women had far greater incentive to ensure a faithful father for their offspring in a hunter-gatherer society, since there was no safety net. A single mother in those times faced an uphill battle indeed. Today, an impregnated woman need not turn to the father for support, but can rely on the state. The state in turn may track them down and enforce payments, but the father need not be devoted, just employed.
I think cads today often self-limit their procreation due to financial concerns. If anything it would appear that though many contraceptive options exist for women, they are less inclined than ever to use them as detailed in my post “Single Mother Baby Boom“. The financial argument also explains the general decline in the number of children in developed nations. Simply put, in an agrarian society, each additional child became an asset, they could work to increase the output of the farm, or to watch the younger ones. Once we moved to an industrialized model, and banned child labor, each child became a massive liability, now somewhere in the neighborhood of $200-300 grand to raise to eighteen, and even then if not educated they may not be able to achieve true independence. We could have that many children, but could never support them in any sort of quality life in the city without government aid (as the Octomom has done).
Thus, in the developed world, we must self regulate our reproduction as Alpha males or face dire limitations on income and lifestyle. Nonetheless, possessing alpha qualities and being attractive to women does increase the quality of women one can obtain, and if quantity isn’t your reproductive strategy, quality becomes increasingly important. A man who is successful with women in his youth may still settle down, most people ultimately do, but when he does, he’ll have his pick of female candidates at peak fertility, rather than the leftovers of the dating game who pushing thirty are desperate enough settle even for him as is the case for a man with no game. Alphas are also more likely to retain the interest of their wives, particularly if they choose to be faithful. Research has shown however that alpha men are more likely to cheat, and select partners equally more likely to cheat. That’s to be expected though, as the temptation for a Victoria’s secret model will be greater than that for Rosie O’Donnell commensurate with her opportunities, and the costs of infidelity are less, as finding other willing partners is a simple matter for the highly desirable.
I question the degree to which our strategies would have evolved in what is evolutionarily a very short time frame. While culture is part of the equation, and changes much more rapidly, I don’t think that instinctual evolved reproductive strategies have changed that much. As cultural strictures lose their strength (like religious admonitions against infidelity and divorce) we revert to the mean I suspect. Also don’t discount the degree to which women play the two sides against each other. Misattributed paternity is significant, and married women are shown to be more attracted to the cads when fertile. Even with today’s complicated world, there are two sexual strategies I can think of offhand that would increase a cad’s reproductive success dramatically without the risk of having to be financially responsible for the offspring. The old school strategy is to seek extra-pair copulations with married women, so that the beta provider ends up bearing the burden of your profligacy, and the new school strategy is to donate sperm (anonymously of course). In either case a decade of pursuing these strategies could provide dozens of offspring with zero financial outlay. Meanwhile, you could be protecting yourself against impregnating the single women you are dating until such a time as you wish to settle down, if that should come to pass.
Nola wrote: “A perfect example of this is women who date the “bad boys” during their younger years, then eventually end up settling down with the not-so-alpha but stable guy later in life. True, she was attracted to the alpha qualities in men, but eventually realized that so were many other women. It becomes too much of a hassle to try to keep an alpha male for yourself because he usually has many options in women.”
This realization is the official narrative for this changed behavior in women, but it is so common across women with very variable intelligence that I suspect this narrative.
Women have menopause around the age 50. My hypothesis is that women another biological change around the age 30, which makes them “settle down”. At least there is a good evolutionary explanation.
That seem plausible Jack. Is there some research you are referring to when you reference the evolutionary narrative? Please elaborate I’m curious. I have to wonder whether historically this age would have had much relevance as the average lifespan was so much shorter.
Another factor that may be at work here is the age of the mothers.
Remember that it’s younger women who are the most dedicated to alpha-chasing, and older women who are more likely to have that sudden epiphany, realizing that only a beta will actually stick around and treat them well.
Although I have no data, I would suspect that this is reflected in the way the sons are raised: i.e., all other things equal, the older the mother, the more likely the son to have been raised “nice”.
Could be, though I had that maternal input and she was a fairly young mother as I am the eldest. Not that a single instance proves anything.
This whole piece seems silly to me. Why don’t more real alpha men stay around and raise their sons however they want.
A whole generation of men who run from their responsibilities, and now there is an article up about how these women aren’t teaching their sons how to be men.
Women nurture and coddle and all that good stuff and that’s what we were designed to do. Men should teach boys how to be men. And if all the men run off to go act like children, don’t blame the mom’s for doing the best they can.
To “Me,”
This whole piece seems silly to me. Why don’t more real alpha men stay around and raise their sons however they want.
A whole generation of men who run from their responsibilities, and now there is an article up about how these women aren’t teaching their sons how to be men.
Women nurture and coddle and all that good stuff and that’s what we were designed to do. Men should teach boys how to be men. And if all the men run off to go act like children, don’t blame the mom’s for doing the best they can.
With regard to reproductive strategies, there are two basic modes of male reproduction. One is the alpha male or big-baller strategy, which is to cast your seed far and wide, regardless of whether you have a serious partner. Alpha males are both more likely to cheat, and more likely to choose partners who will similarly cheat. Since both are the individuals in the top 10% or so of their gender, they have options. The cost of cheating is outweighed by the benefits of not placing all of their genetic material in one reproductive basket. This is on a gradient, not black and white, this equation changes with the effort they would have to expend to replace a willing reproductive partner. Imagine a ten point scale which is how we tend to classify the appeal of our love interests. The propensity to cheat is also influenced by the chances of discovery, and biological factors like pheromones and hormone levels. The other strategy most common to both genders, is the mate guarding strategy, that of the beta provider, in men. These men have less broad appeal, or factors that influence their ability to compete such as fewer sperm, less testosterone, low career achievement etc. For them, the best strategy is to stick by a single female, and try to ensure paternity of her children by preventing her insemination by other males. This strategic duality exists in virtually all species, even those seemingly monogamous, and humans are no exception. Read “The Myth of Monogamy” for an education in this
More women than ever are choosing to have children outside of wedlock, and many, though likely not a majority, become impregnated through deception or sabotage of birth control. Many more have a partner but are dallying as well, and are unlikely to come clean that the child they carry is not sired by their partner.
A small, though significant number of women are choosing to have children without a father through sperm donation.
Women too, initiate the wide majority of the divorces, often because of the fallacy that marriage with children should increase happiness to be valuable, yet inequitable family law, far from viewing men and women as equals, is entrenched in the same blanket view that men are incompetent. These men, often capable loving responsible fathers, get minimal time with their offspring.
There is also the oft held (among women) presumption that when a child is conceived through deceit, or failure of contraception during a casual sexual relationship that men should enthusiastically sign on to marry the gal and play daddy at her unilateral discretion. A man who takes precautions (i.e. a condom) or is deceived through a female falsely claiming she is on birth control, is a so called “deadbeat” only if he fails to make his child support payments. There is no provision that he must be involved, and a woman who becomes pregnant in an attempt to trap him may not like the outcome, but his responsibility is to provide financial aid. He cannot compel you to give the child up, or abort it, he’s on the hook to pay if you keep it, but not to play daddy unless this is his wish. Do not presume that a man who rejects the premise of the “shotgun wedding” is by definition a deadbeat. These children are betrayed by the one who unilaterally decided to create them.
Further, even boys who have a father don’t always learn the truth from their fathers, in part because creating attraction is outside the scope of control of your average man, and more so dads, who are disproportionately likely to be beta providers who have not developed game. They therefore often pass on misinformation, or model the wrong behaviors which their sons then learn. While women may wish to keep the keys to what triggers attraction in them (mostly universal) from men in their dating pool would gain a reproductive edge by infusing their own sons with this information. There is so little competition from most men that simply understanding how women work gives an enormous edge and this is magnified in youth where most of your peers have no clue or game. Yes, mothers are more nurturing, and rightly so, I’m not saying they should behave as men, simply to tell sons the truth in what works to generate interest in women. Hint: it’s not stalking, blowing cash, being especially solicitous, or putting her on a pedestal or treating her like a princess.
The question I’m posing is: by what logic do women determine to be intellectually dishonest with themselves, and their sons, about what they really are attracted to. The authentic deep dark carnal attraction that begets reproductive relationships over “friendships.”
Check the citations and information in the linked articles and get back to me.
Ok, I read your reply and the attached links, and looked around the website in general since that’s where all of your links were going anyway.
I don’t think your overall theory is wrong. A little bias maybe, but since there is a whole bunch of men without fathers I do think that your website serves a purpose. I do see a flaw in the theory in regards to child rearing. If alpha males don’t stay around to raise their offspring, they will be raised by beta male or a single mother. A single mother and/or a beta male cannot raise a child to be an Alpha male, so you are weeding yourself out of the gene pool.
You seem to be asking two different questions, so I will try to answer them both.
2) By what logic do women determine to be intellectually dishonest with themselves, and their sons, about what they really are attracted to. The authentic deep dark carnal attraction that begets reproductive relationships over “friendships.”
Women aren’t being dishonest with themselves. The difference between a girl and woman is that a girl thinks she can change a man and a woman knows she can’t. This has nothing to do with age, there are 50 y/o girls and 20 y/o women.
They guy with game is attractive, hard to get, kind of a jerk. All things that are attractive to women. But a girl wants him so she can tame him. All of this is very exciting, the thrill of the hunt and all that. And sure there are some girls out there that will try and tame a man by any means necessary, even pregnancy in a fool effort to change him. This is sad, and dumb and almost never works. But this is also a prime example of why a girl needs her daddy to explain to her what’s wrong with it.
I also believe that a lot of this has to do with social class, and education level. It has become trendy for a man to have several “babies mommas” and to not raise any of those children. These men are considered to “have game” by a vast majority of people. The same taming argument goes here too. Some girls, even after knowing a man has a baby by another woman that he is not taking care of, thinks she can somehow have a different situation with him when she has a baby with him.
When a woman looks for a man she looks for more than primal sexual urges. She looks for a sexually attractive man, that is established, that is possibly a little older. A woman looks for a man that is able and willing to help her raise her young. Women are genetically predisposed to do this, because it used to be that if you didn’t have a man around to help you raise your young they would die.
So I don’t think there is anything dishonest about it, I think it is a maturity problem. No one sets out to have a baby with a man that doesn’t want and isn’t willing to have and take care of one.
Men have options to make sure that they don’t have children they don’t want. They can choose to not believe a woman is in control of the birth control, and as a man who doesn’t want children he should. He can wear a condom, and if he thinks the woman would use the condom to impregnate herself (that’s really gross btw) he could put the condom in a Ziploc bag and take it with him. He could have a vasectomy, and reverse it when he is ready to have children(i.e. transform himself into a beta male), or he could have a cauterized vasectomy and not have to worry about having children ever. You argue that these are alpha males, the top 10% of the gene pool, they should be taking proactive steps to make sure there seed is not wasted on these lesser women.
1) Why do you raise your son to be a “nice guy” ?
The above is why a woman would try to raise her son to be a nice guy. The nice guy is who a woman is going to marry and procreate with and if I want my genes to be carried to the next generation I would teach my son to be the nice guy.
But the bigger answer to this is a man should stay around to raise his offspring how he deems fit. Even conceding the point that women are dubious and impregnate themselves, why should the child suffer for it? A child needs both parents to be raised properly, ideally in a loving relationship. But even if the woman has created a situation where that can’t happen, the child shouldn’t be denied a father.
The entire last generation was raised by feminist women whose whole slogan was “we don’t need men” and look at how the children of that generation has turned out. We have woman who use sex to bond with men, men who run away at the site of responsibility. Both sexes have the idea that as soon as a relationship isn’t 100% fulfilling we should end it and move on to the next one. Not understanding that the wedding vows actually have meaning. I think previous generations actually took those promises seriously and now we don’t. But I digress.
We are a generation of children, and the reason we’ve never been made to grow up is because women teach us to be loving and sensitive to our feelings, and men teach us that sometimes we have to do things because we have to, and we can’t sit and cry over every scraped knee. Men teach that our word is our bond, and men teach us how to be grownups. Men are supposed to be protectors, and providers, and the example for the rest of the family. The father is what holds the whole family together, and it’s sad that so many men don’t see the vital role that they play. Just because a bunch of women convinced men that they are not needed doesn’t make that theory correct.
Men teach little girls that having a baby with the first guy they meet is a bad idea. And men teach little boys how to explain to a girl that he doesn’t want a baby, and how to protect himself from it.
A generation raised without men and this is where that got us. So how in good conscience could you encourage another generation of that?
Again, I think your website serves a purpose. There are too many websites that tell men they should be sniveling wimps, and it’s good to see one that doesn’t. But, a man should raise his child, a real man wouldn’t let his offspring suffer the indignity of growing up to be a lesser person because he/she was raised without a father.
To “Me”
True, my links pointed to other parts of my site, because there I have already aggregated the outside research supporting these positions. Links within articles cite the science so you would have had to click through for some of them, others were quoted directly.
So far as the alpha male/ beta provider theory goes, these are just pua terms to describe the same game most ostensibly monogamous animals engage in. If you strip away those terms and look at the behavior that pervades virtually all higher life, it is difficult to define it as merely a theory, its a fact of life. One shouldn’t view it as a partner vs. no partner dichotomy, since most humans have partnered, at least while raising primary children. It’s more like a monogamy vs. polygamy or fidelity vs. infidelity dichotomy in which on the surface most people seem to be partnered off, however behind closed doors a subset of men and women are seeking DNA for their offspring outside of their primary relationship. While mid-range alpha men are more likely to sire children outside of their partnership, they are also more likely to be cuckolded as their spouses themselves are more likely to cheat. I suppose one might apply the adage “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” The exception here is the highly successful alpha males. Women married to an uber-alpha don’t typically cheat even when he does, because his are the best genes available to her. Men aren’t concerned about “wasting their seed on a lesser woman.” They’ll typically take on all comers that are average or better, they just don’t want to impregnate them today since under the paternity laws this is a self-defeating strategy. Historically they would have gladly impregnated her however.
I agree that it is a fool’s errand to try to change someone, man or woman. I think this arises from the fact that the neutrophins our bodies are bathed in during the limerance, or lust period of a relationship cause a sort of addiction to one’s lover and a reduction in our ability to see objectively. If one continues in this in the cold light of morning after the infatuation period has passed I think it is both immature and intellectually dishonest to oneself. These folks are in denial.
The propensity to have a baby to keep a man is probably in some part class based, arising from the welfare state, but I think this is more true of the men who take no precautions and have children with every woman they encounter. These men are essentially avowing that they are stone-cold losers who will never accomplish much in life and so have little to lose by siring children. Men with some skin in the financial game are much more cautious about this, because our system is set up to take what the child needs from him with or without his consent or presence. Because of the paternity laws and the lack of a stigma for childbearing outside of wedlock middle-class women today have much less disincentive to play this game as they can gamble with the child as the stake and still get access to the man’s production even if he won’t stick around.
Today we have a system that has changed the rules of the game. Men can’t take advantage of those, gimme inseminations without penalty and women have less financial reason to avoid them. By the same token a wife’s infidelity can now be proven through paternity testing as well. Since procreation is only part of the reason for sex, this doesn’t change the actions people take in fulfilling themselves, just the need for caution and protecting themselves. Alpha game in America is more about sexual fulfillment than siring children today, and most do sire children in the confines of a partnership at some point. The benefits of attraction are not without value however even in isolation or procreation. Increased experience with women and being more attractive to them accrues benefits to the man who partners up at some point in that while women don’t like totally callous cads, they like weak effeminate nice guys who can be led around by the nose even less. These men will likely marry, but will endure the contempt of their wives and probably will raise at least some children sired by more alpha men since their wives will seek fulfillment outside of marriage. Raising your son to be a nice guy so he will be married may appear on the surface to garner better genetic representation but this only holds if women find him the best genetic bet for her limited reproductive opportunities, and the evidence belies this. They find him to be a reliable provider and father, but seek genetic input elsewhere as a rule.
Men have precisely one option for birth control if they wish to retain the ability to have at some point, the condom. While some vasectomies are reversible some of the time I don’t understand it to be as simple as you make it out to me, might work, might not. Since men and women are deferring marriage and childbearing these days we now have at least about ten years of sexual activity prior to this on the average and during this time with the odds for success in condoms, even when properly used every time, there is a fair chance of an unwanted pregnancy. Should this happen, perhaps the individuals are compatible and wish to pair up, and they can if so, but in more of these cases an alternative must be decided upon. If two individuals are fundamentally incompatible marriage for the sake of the unwanted child is not going to benefit anyone involved. Abortion or adoption are the most sensible alternatives here and if the woman is not trying to trap the man she will consider these.
I agree that children need a father, and both sexes should take every effort to prevent conception outside of a stable relationship. Relationships are primarily a means for providing fulfillment for the children, and you are unlikely to be happy at all times and should know that going in. Divorce is excessive today because people don’t see this or are self-centered. I think women have always used sex to bond with men, it’s just that partnership used to happen prior to most sexual activity for women in the past so it served to strengthen the existing bond. Reconciling our biology with the strictures of a culture that runs counter to it is a challenge for us all. I agree with your views on feminism, it has given rise to much of the societal discord we see today. Many men don’t know how to be men or fathers because they never had their own to learn from. Don’t take the view that alpha males are fundamentally incompatible with partnership or fatherhood, they just have the means to fill the role in a fashion that will strengthen the relationship and help it endure. They have the character and integrity and strength to be the provider and protector and their women will admire them for it and be attracted to them, prerequisites for a stable union. They will just have a few notches in their belt when they get there, and may or may not be totally faithful. Most countries have a healthier view of marriage and accept this as the perquisite of a powerful man. At Mitterand’s funeral his wife and legitimate child, and his mistress and illegitimate child mourned side by side without catfighting and recrimination. Their society sees that sexual access is part of the prerogative of the dominant male. Not all will engage in this but it may be a worthwhile tradeoff for provision, protection and a lifelong commitment. I guess that’s a choice each woman has to make for herself.
Also, if you agree that feminism is the cause of most of our society’s ills, you’re gonna love my next post.
New research reveals the differences of brain structure between “normals” and “pathological liars”. Pathological liars have proportionally more white matter, or connections, than gray matter. Incidentally, women have more white matter than men. More interestingly, the proportion of white matter tends to decrease as women age.
Oh boy Jack, you’re opening a whole new can of worms there!
Interesting correlation though and food for thought. My first thought was “do pathological liars have more white matter on average than the average woman, regardless of gender or just more than their respective genders as a rule? A cursory glance at these sources would seem to indicate that women have 10% more on average than men, and while the liars study didn’t break the findings out by gender, it did find great than a 22% increase in white matter overall, and the liars group contained just one female, so we think we might extrapolate that the results reflect liar men. Comparing them with the controls, we might gather that liar men have 10% more than average women then, if I’m reading the results correctly. If we looked solely at liar women they would probably have a 10% disparity from average women at a minimum, though likely more. It is plausible that there is a spectrum and that 10% more than women is sufficient to deceive the general population at large as is necessary for a pathological liar or confidence man. That same 10% difference may place the average woman far enough along the spectrum to have greater facility in malingering than the average man, and consequently a greater capacity for self deception as well. After all, the most convincing liar is one who believes their own lies. I think many men have encountered gender differences that from the male perspective appear to be blatantly self-deceptive or delusional. This post addresses one such incongruity. Nice finding Jack, I’m intrigued.
I have not looked into this matter more deeply, just made this observation, but you raise good questions.
We both know that correlation does not imply causation. And even correlation between more white matter and more lying is not necessarily true. But let’s assume for a second that the correlation and causation exists.
Why would people with more white matter lie more? I think he simplest answer is that they lie more because they can. More white matter could actually mean for example better self-deceit, or better estimates on chances of getting caught or better calculations of consequences of lying.
If I had to venture a guess, I would think that most probable is the correlation between white matter and self-deceit. This is because pathological liars can’t help lying, even when they will almost certainly get caught. They are not better liars, they just lie more.
Likely self-deception leads to the greatest number of lies as this would cause you must avoid questioning the lie and recognizing it because doing so would be inconsistent and generate cognitive dissonance. If the same factor that increases the capacity for self deception increases one’s fast-talking/thinking abilities, those who are also antisocial and openly willing to be deceptive for personal gain would likely have the edge in intentional malingering and be willing to take the step beyond that required to maintain internal psychological consistency. The study seems to imply this as antisocial was found to be discreet from lying. Many folks who know they have an edge in something will exploit it, and an increased capacity for justification would amplify this trait, by reducing internal conflict, I’d guess. As you say; they do so because they can.
This discussion reminds me of guip by George Constanza: If you believe it, it isn’t lying.
It could also be that there are at least two kinds of self-deception: pre-conscious and sub-conscious.
Anyway, now we have the answer to your original question “Why do women lie?”, which is: “Because they can.”
Interestingly, men and women lie about differently:
“Women were more likely to lie to make the person they were talking to feel good, while men lied most often to make themselves look better,” Feldman said.
By the way, the study claims that there are no big differences on how much men and women lie. Interesting.
The methodology of just asking people whether they lied is quite suspicious. In any case, it only reveals deception that is either fully conscious or pre-conscious.
Based on my experience, I would not take on face value that women only lie because of noble reasons. More probable is that either only men can become aware of their selfish motives for lying, or are more willing to admit to them.
I still tend to think most lying is because the perpetrator believes it, at least this is my theory regarding the question in the post. Deceit for manipulative purposes I still think is largely engaged in by a subset of the more malicious, rather than all women per se. Others may do it on occasion to cover their ass, as men also do, but try to avoid it most of the time.
I too have seen the findings you cite, and I hardly believe that it’s that cut and dried. A woman seems equally likely to blame tardiness on traffic say, which is to make themselves look better, and we men lie about how fat our women look in that dress enough to comprise a large majority of our lies which is clearly to make the other party feel better. There has to be a flaw in that study.
…or a biased author perhaps.
I agree with your idea that perpetrators probably mostly believe their lies. But there may be several kinds of “belief”, depending on how easily the perpetrator realizes and admits that he is lying.
In the research, around 60% of people lied during the 10 minute discussion, and they told 3 lies on average. They were surprised about their own lies, but they would still admit to them. This research method obviously does not uncover those lies that the perpetrator does not recognize as lies even when confronted about them.
If we talk about sexual behavior, women seem to have more difficult time admitting some things that they do, as well as understanding their own behavior. Perhaps this same idea extends to other areas of lying. This would explain the differences on self-reports on how men and women lie.
Yeah, try getting a cheating woman to admit it. You can have incontrovertible evidence and it will still be denied in most cases from what I’ve seen. I think men are more likely to cave when they know their caught with their proverbial pants down.
I’ve had a woman tell me she has never cheated in a relationship, although I know that she has cheated somebody with me while in a relationship, and she also knew that I knew that.
I think men and women do about the same amount of pre-conscious lying, but women do more subconscious lying than men. White stuff in brain does not explain this, though.
Yeah, maybe its the dark (side) matter.
The answer to the question “why do certain animals act as betas?” is probably because on evolutionary time scales acting like a beta has lead to the animals who act like betas passing on their genes in an effective manner. Trying to act like an alpha when you can’t back it up can lead to problems. Better to wait until you are older than to end up dead or kicked out of the group. Similarly, human mothers that advise their boys to act like a beta may not be undermining the mom’s genetic legacy. If the beta strategy is better for the boy, the mom could be enhancing her genetic legacy.
Of course anonymous,
If this were feudal Europe the son of a serf would have to know his place and it would be an adaptive trait perhaps. Likewise men, like many other animals, have a “prime” which depending on class, is either physical prime in lower class, or financial prime in middle to upper class. Testosterone levels were shown to peak at these times based on one’s class in the book “Social Structure and Testosterone.” In many times and places however the most beta would never have an opportunity to reproduce. Only the civilized world with institutionalized monogamy and child support enforcement (to keep the beta’s producing and consuming rather than revolting?) has taken it closer to a level playing field. Nonetheless, there is the quality issue. Alpha males, particularly social Alphas with financial clout and power get women with greater reproductive fitness, conferring an advantage on their offspring even if they are monogamous. Trying to front that you are badder than you are is a poor strategy as you say however, because of the many subconscious tells such as symmetry, pheromones, body language and the like which belie your reproductive fitness despite your best efforts to disguise them. In a society such as ours with opportunity for great upward mobility, teaching your son to be beta is maladaptive.
Interesting question and I think I have an answer, the women of course will not like it.
It is that women want to raise their sons as feminized failures unlikely to reproduce, because they overestimate their ability to have further children and thus the romantic fantasy of the bad-boy. To raise their sons knowing what women respond to (as opposed to what they say) would entail acknowledging no future children and the dream of the Bad Boy devoted to HER and her alone.
Women by and large are unable to relinquish their dreams, enabled by contraception, economic and social independence, and the fantasy that fertility can be indefinitely prolonged, alongside sexual attractiveness.
The fundamental error women make all the time is over-estimating their attractiveness and it’s longevity. Teri Hatcher was the most downloaded woman on the Internet fifteen years ago, now she’s a bad plastic surgery joke.
The result, entirely predictable: beta male sons who grow up to be “nice guys” get angry and frustrated at being near-virgins from age 16-36, end up with a brief marriage to women who have had about 40-50 bad boy sex partners and are obviously “settling” for a man they have no passion or desire for, in the interests of having a “wedding” aka “Big Party for Me.” Quick divorce, likely preceded by female adultery, soon follows. Those who don’t marry at all just progress quicker to angry, bitter loners who resent women entirely.
A VERY lucky few mature physically more early than their male peers, have high social status, and enjoy female attention and understand what drives it (high levels of testosterone, aggression, risk taking, social dominance, other women wanting them). Unsurprisingly they have sex with as many women as possible, and only settle down if they do at all very late in life to a woman trading her youth for the man’s status. Think Warren Beatty.
VERY few sons will turn out to be Warren Beatty. Most will be an angry loner loser, taught exactly the wrong thing by their mothers, or as in the White British Underclass and Ghetto Black areas, quickly turning to thuggery to out-Alpha the Alphas. The easiest way to deal with a Warren Beatty is to beat him to a pulp or shoot him. Probably most of the violence in the White British and Ghetto Black underclass is male competition for women.
Women know this of course, but prefer short-term goals of maintaining their bad boy illusions the same way women smoke to remain thin. Women are just hard-wired for short-term decision making, you find almost NO women among professsions/occupations that require massive short term risk for long-term payoff.
This makes evolutionary sense: caretakers of children must avoid all short-term risk. However, now it’s reversed. The minimal short-term risk (shattering internal bad-boy delusions) creates particularly with only one child, catastrophic reproductive failure. Almost none of these beta boys will reproduce, most will be raising other men’s kids.
Salient points Whiskey,
Regarding thuggery, the book “Social Structure and Testosterone” details the different testosterone peaks of lower vs. upper class which coincide with their peak reproductive years. For the lower it’s purely physical dominance and arrives early, for the upper it’s monetary dominance and is deferred until their status buys them success.
Regarding the risk reward dichotomy, men are expendable since one man can inseminate many women and as such nature gambles with their genomes. They are wired to shoot for the big payoff, whereas women are wired to play it safe, aka long term vs. short term incentivization.
A bit late to the game but I just felt like I had to add to this…
I’m pretty sure most mothers don’t really think about this stuff, at least not during the early, formative years of their son’s life when they have the greatest amount of influence on them.
To begin with, even though women may recognize and be attracted to Alphas on an instinctual level, I’m not sure most people understand the dynamic or know how to articulate it. The majority of people are pretty ignorant about this stuff. How are they going to teach their son something they don’t fully understand?
On top of that, during the early, influential years when mothers are teaching their sons to be good guys, they don’t see their sons as sexual beings. For the first 14-18 years, her son is a “precious little angel,” not a man. Perhaps some years later, when her son still hasn’t had a single girlfriend, she might start worrying about what she did wrong, but by then it’ll probably be too late.
Let’s also not forget that raising a kid isn’t easy. Between getting the kid to eat something decent, making sure he does well in school, and any of a thousand other concerns running through a parent’s mind, they just might completely overlook this area of their son’s development. Especially if they’re ignorant to the specifics of the Alpha/beta dynamic to begin with.
I think it all boils down to a combination of Ignorance, Forgetfulness, and Shortsightedness.
Nicely done Fred, you succinctly described 90% of people in three words. I’ll add a fourth: denial. Many people deep down recognize the truth but can’t come to terms with it about themselves. Most of these women I’d say truly believe they like “nice guys” or define it far differently than we men do.