Physiology Professor Jared Diamond, an evolutionary biologist, was well into a study of birds when he got the idea for his book, “Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality.”
“We’re used to thinking of birds as having unusual sex lives,” he said. “In fact, birds are normal. We’re the ones with the weird sex lives.”
So Diamond set out to explain why human sexuality developed as oddly as it did. He explains why humans insist on privacy for sex, why men don’t breast-feed their babies, why women undergo menopause and why the human penis is “so unnecessarily large.” The book’s title question turns out to be “the most difficult question in human sexuality,” Diamond said. He argues that the purpose of fun sex changed as humans evolved.
“It started as a means by which women could distribute their favors, so when they became pregnant, each male would think, ‘It might be mine,’ and not kill the child when it was born,” he said. “Then it ends up being the reason the husband had to stay home, because if he wandered off, it might be the day his wife was fertile and in bed with some other man.”
My readers are already familiar with India’s most famous paternity case. Now, other interesting stories are falling out of the proverbial cupboard.
Pune Mirror, a tabloid newspaper of my home town had this sensational news a few days back.
I quite liked the story about the ‘father’ who opted for a paternity test because his seven year old son stammered like his wife’s best friend in college!
If we overlook the comic side of such stories, there is another dimension to the problem of children being put up for adoption as this article highlights.
Problems of urbanisation combined with inadequate education on such matters, is bringing about problems for future generations of my country.
Comments are closed.