Synopsis

A series of choice points have made themselves available to the world's community of nations or mega-tribes for the 21st century. Will these communities make an attempt (1) to maximize incentives and minimize disincentives (rather than the reverse) for growing boys to enter into the role of social father and for already grown men to stay in that role? And (2) to encourage women to re-evaluate the net benefits/costs to abrading the social father from his child?

Raising an incompetent and dependent child into a competent, independent adult is not a sinecure.

Its own violent (young) men are one of the problems with which any organized soci­ety must deal [see Harris (1974, 1977) for discussion and examples]. The addition of an on-going social father seems to tamp down violence within a society. The erasing of such “fathers” is associated with increased rates of violent crime. To the extent that a society's fathers are systematically removed from the fathering role, the more that society ought to expect its level of violent crime to increase. Because there are no viable societies with any length of history that have had men, as a class, avoid the role of social father, no one has any idea on the competitive quotient that fatherless societies may have versus those societies which assume/mandate fatherhood. Neither data nor theory exists to constitute a store-house of knowledge on the viability of fatherless societies.

Notes

1. The avunculate, of course, more disperses authority and nurturing within a family. However, children within the avunculate also are expected to be born to a married woman.

2. The two rates—for illegitimacy (6.7) and for murder (38.7)—were also available for the Philippines. However, the Philippines’ murder rate of 38.7 was over 8.5 standard de­viations (sd = 4.09) over the sample mean of 3.62. Accordingly, the Philippines was enough of an outlier to be excluded from the sample. If rankings were used to generate the correla­tion coefficient (r_s) and if the Philippines is included in the sample, then the relationship be­tween illegitimacy and murder rates is significant (r_s =.889, p <.01; 2-tailed, n = 45). If the Philippines is not included in the sample, the correlation, based on ranks, is still significant (r_s =.896, p <.01; 2-tailed, n = 44).

3. The rate of natural increase is found by subtracting (crude) death rates from (crude) birth rates.

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Appendix I

Rates of illegitimacy and rates of violent crime across states (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1992).

State Rate of illegitimacy¹ Rate of violent crime²

1.

2. Offenses known to the police per 100,000 population (1990)

Appendix II

Rates of illegitimacy and murder across the United States (n = 50) (U.S. Bu­reau of the Census 1992) and across nations (n = 44) (Smith-Morris 1990, United Nations 1992).

Texas 19.6 14.1

Utah 12.7 3.0

Vermont 19.8 2.3

Country Illegitimacy¹ Murder²

Canada 16.9 2.2

Chile 31.8 5.6

Costa Rica 37.2 4.0

Cyprus 0.4 1.7

Denmark 43.0 1.25

Fiji 17.3 2.0

Finland 16.4 1.1

France 19.6 4.05

Greece 1.8 0.85

Israel 1.0 1.7

Italy 4.4 1.5

Jamaica 84.3 18.0

Mauritius 26.0 2.4

Mexico 27.5 7.4

Netherlands 8.3 1.2

New Zealand 24.9 2.9

Norway 25.8 0.9

Panama 71.9 4.6

Peru 42.6 1.2

1. Births to unmarried women, percent of total births

2.

Appendix III

Values for the three social indices: Percentage of all births born to single parent mothers, percentage of tertiary students who are females, and the ratio of female to male earnings (Smith-Morris, 1990; United Nations, 1985-1992).