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Cads and Dads
Here is Robin Hanson, "guest-blogging" for us, on why many women prefer to be courted by cads...your thoughts are welcome in the comments...
Tyler, Alex, Alex's wife Monique, Bryan (Caplan), Ilia (Rainer) and I had a fun conversation on Thursday.
A standard story says that women like cads for short term relationships, to get good sex (i.e., genes), and dads for long term relationships, to get security and comfort (i.e., resources to raise kids). Of course some men are good in both roles, but most men are thought to be better at one role than the other.
Woman always want both sex and security, but they seem to prefer "bad boy" cads more when they are young, and dads more when they are older. Why? We were looking less for proximate psychological causes and more for functional explanations. We came up with these four theories:
1. Young women must practice having relationships, in part to discover the distribution of guys out there and their own ability to attract guys. This requires short term relationships. But it is not clear why these should be more with cads rather than dad candidates. And this would predict young women avoid sex when practicing, to avoid having kids. This theory applies to better to young teens than to young women.
2. Instead of having all her kids with a dad, many women may have enough negotiating power to get a dad to support her even if she has one kid with a cad. Dads object less to supporting a cad kid created before they met, as a cad kid created during their relationship suggests that it won't be the last. A cad kid early in life can be written off to the "foolishness of youth," and she can credibly claim that she didn't intend for this to be a cad kid; she had hoped the cad would be a dad.
3. Girls more than women expect parents to help with their mistakes. A young woman expects a cad kid to be cared for not by a dad but by her parents and extended family. Since parents die eventually, older women are less likely to have such support available. This theory predicts that women without living parents would be less attracted to cads, all else equal.
4. Young people have stronger incentives to signal than older people, since they are still forming long term attachments, and want to attract the best partners. Young women compete to attract cads in order to signal their attractiveness and social power, and having sex with cads helps to attract cads. Women compete more for cads than for dads because cad quality is easier to see in young men - it can take many years to reveal who are the best resource providers. This theory predicts young women have less interest in private unobserved relationships with cads.
The truth is probably a mixture of these theories. But some are probably more important that others.
TC: Here are related posts on the topic.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 17, 2006 at 07:57 AM in Science | Permalink
Comments
The world as seen by Jane Austin might support theories 1 and 4 but not 2 and 3, given the prohibitive penalties on pregnancy out of wedlock. You might also examine relationships from the point of view of the male--why are cads more successful than dads in Austin's world? One reason--they're less constrained by moral codes.
Posted by: Bill at Jun 17, 2006 10:55:07 AM
I'm inclined to think #3 has the most credibility because my sister-in-law has 4 kids by 3 different cads, and it appears almost entirely due to the informal subsidies from her extended family.
Hypothesis 3 is saying is that cads are normal goods, right? Women prefer cads to dads, but ordinarily cannot afford them since cads tend to deposit their sperm before leaving to go somewhere else. They can only afford them if their budget constraint is expanded by the presence of extended family who will subsidize childrearing. So, shouldn't we see cad attraction decrease with family deaths, but also increase with family income? Call this the Paris Hilton effect.
What's the proper identification strategy to test this? Use random accidental deaths of a parent, exogenous to mate selection presumably, to see if it lowers the probabiity of an unwed pregnancy in youth? Not sure about the second one, since income may be correlated with unobservables. Exogenous sources of income shocks - I suppose you could look at AFDC payments being discontinued in the 1990s.
All of these just focus on child birth, though, and not cad selection. Ideally, you would be able to identify a cad and use those identifying strategies, not simply fertility. A woman might have enough bargaining power with her cad to get him to wear a condom, particularly since condom usage protects against STDs, for which a cad is a more likely candidate. So you would need data on cad selection, right, which would require data on attributes of the people. The Add Health data might have something on this, since the Add Health lets people rank their relationships in various ways. You might be able to use popularity or something as a proxy.
Regardless, interesting discussion you guys had!
Posted by: Jason Voorhees at Jun 17, 2006 11:04:36 AM
Younger women are obsessed/addicted to drama. Cads scratch that itch (commonly described as "they are exciting"). As women mature, they become less likely to fall for cad addiction. Sometime around 23-27 American women grow out of the cad addiction and start looking for stability and maturity (I noticed that women from other nations grow out of this cad addiction at a much lower age). When she's able to say "when will this guy ever grow up," then she's starting to mature into a dad-seeking woman. I note that some women never "grow up" just as some men never "grow up" either.
Part of the driving force for the drama/cad obsession are romance novels and soap operas. These end up transmitting a culture of drama: an amplification of the gossip-teen years.
Posted by: Peter at Jun 17, 2006 11:34:30 AM
Peter, you are looking more at the proximate causes - the question is *why* young women are more addicted to drama.
Jason, a woman would want a cad to wear a condom only if she did not want to get pregnant. But the theory here is that fundamentally the whole reason she is attracted to the cad is that she wants his kid. Of course she might not be conscious of that wish.
Posted by: Robin Hanson at Jun 17, 2006 12:11:55 PM
I'd think that the "biological clock" factor is one of the most important. Women want to find a dad at some point, and preferably a high quality one. If a woman waits too long to focus on finding a dad, then that increases the chances that she'll never find one or that she'll have to settle for a lower quality dad. When she's younger, the costs of waiting to look for a dad (or spending less effort looking for a dad) are lower, since that still leaves her with plenty of time to find a dad.
The shift to dad-search when mating years are getting short is magnified by the fact that finding a dad is more important than finding a cad, since dads are pretty good substitutes for what cads do well (just slightly lower gene quality, on average), but cads are bad substitutes for what dads do well (much worse providers of security and companionship).
These factors explain the shift to dads, but they don't have much to say about why women ever spend time on cads. For that, you have to go to one of the other explanations.
Posted by: Blar at Jun 17, 2006 12:38:31 PM
"Woman always want both sex and security"
After spending years in the psych testing industry I am fascinated by that statement.
And I agree with it wholeheartedly. Of course, I am also actively trying to reform science to the point that we realize that the Roman Catholics actually had it right, the sun does revolve around the earth. And God really did just put the dinosaur bones in the ground as a test of faith.
In my experience starting any sentence with "Woman always..." is the best way to falsify a statement right from the get go.
While there is evidence for what I THINK he's trying to talk about, there certainly isn't for "Women always...".
Using these kinds of statements leads to such stunning types of commentary as "Men always rape". Sloppy. And offensive.
Posted by: Johnny at Jun 17, 2006 12:39:01 PM
Focusing on proximate causes for a moment, it seems to me that almost-attainable-but-not-quite mates are often very attractive, for both young men and young women. People wind up in "bad" relationships that they are convinced they could turn into good ones, if only the other person would change a little bit. Cads will have an easier time becoming such objects of desire than dads, almost by definition. This is related to Peter's "drama" hypothesis above, except that I would place less weight on the importance of romance novels and soap operas. Rather, it has to do with people assigning importance to various emotions that they experience; namely, I think that the potential for rejection is particularly compelling for many people. As people age, however, they do become wiser, and as they achieve greater peace with themselves they find themselves less attracted to cads.
I appreciate the evolutionary arguments, and I think they are important. However, when people imply things like, "Oh young women like drama just because they want to better genes for their kids," alarm bells go off in my head. Human psychology cannot simply be reduced to the propogation of superior genetic material. Or should I think that everyone's opinion in this debate can be explained in terms of one reproductive strategy or another?
Posted by: Barbar at Jun 17, 2006 1:00:22 PM
Jonny, yes, I should have said "Women of all ages want both sex and security."
Barbar, yes, we are not guaranteed to find functional evolutionary reasons for all interesting features of human behavior. But surely we should look for them, especially regarding sex behavior, which should have very strong selection pressures.
Posted by: Robin Hanson at Jun 17, 2006 2:26:02 PM
A cad is generally more carefree and easy around women than a dad (speaking as a "dad" type). The cad's cavalier attitude suggests to women that he has the ability and virility to spread his seed around to many women. That ability is seen as a sign of good genes, because he should have more opportunities to pass his genes on.
By contrast, the dad's nervousness signals that he doesn't have a lot of opportunities to spread his seed around, that each occasion is a dfficult or unusual moment. This signals to a woman that his genes have fewer chances, making his genes less attractive.
There are, of course, other notions that figure into female attraction - security, power, money, good looks, etc. - but the dad/cad dichotomy does signal underlying ability/opportunity to spread genetic wealth.
- Josh
Posted by: Wild Pegasus at Jun 17, 2006 2:27:48 PM
By the way, we have an official dad's day (tomorrow) but no official cad's day. Is the reason the same as the usual reason given for why there is no kid's day? Or is it more like the reason we have an official labor day but no capital day?
Posted by: Robin Hanson at Jun 17, 2006 3:07:16 PM
Girls like cads because cads are more forward than dads. This requires less effort on her part, at least until the cad loses interest and moves on.
In other words, cads have a low start-up cost but are expensive to maintain. Dads are the reverse. This also explains why guys like fast women.
Posted by: Tex at Jun 17, 2006 4:01:37 PM
Lower class women have the best of both worlds these days. The cad/cads of their choice and then the "perfect" dad. The "perfect" dad is the welfare state of course. Charles Murray made this points decades ago. Patrick Moynihan made it back in the 1960s. The situation has only gotten worse since.
Not everyone accepts this thesis. However, let me ask how many women would be willing to have a child with a cad if the consequences included bearing a child without medical attention, WIC, food stamps, public housing, EITC, Medicaid, etc.?
Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Jun 17, 2006 4:11:52 PM
Apocryphal knowledge (I can't tag the resource) says that children of older parents tend to marry older men. It would seem that girls are attracted to men that offer them what they think they want. And what they think they want is determined by what they've had. Also, by definition, a cad is charming, good looking and focused on the social side of relationships. The social side is important in the beginning of any relationship along with the other physical traits called attractiveness. A lot of dad's are not, they're focused on material accumulation and that doesn't come across as important because to pass the tipping point takes more than a few years.
Fun stuff.
Posted by: PT at Jun 17, 2006 4:46:09 PM
Perhaps cadness and dadness are traits that are more or less genetic, or that many people perceive to be genetic. Thus, a cad is (perceived to be) more likely to have cad offspring, and a dad more likely to have dad offspring.
Thus, consider a woman that has a son (50-50 chance) with a cad. If that son is also raised by a dad, that woman has the best of all worlds... the dad nurture makes the son more likely to live to reproduction, and the cad nature makes the son more likely to pass on his genes.
I wonder how many dads are raising children they erroneously believe are theirs. I suspect its not a trivial number.
Posted by: cactus at Jun 17, 2006 5:21:36 PM
I've often heard the figure that at least 10% of children are being raised by non-biological fathers who don't realize that fact.
Young women are attracted to aggressive men because that increases the likelihood their male children will be strong and aggressive and highly successful breeders.
I think the later year relationships are harder to reason about from an evolutionary stance since we weren't designed to live this long -- it's an accident. And birth control has thrown a wrench into our instinctive strategies.
Women are attracted to social status. We are built to live in small societies where everyone pretty much knows everybody else. Being aggressive is a way of faking high social status. In a small society a low status male acting aggressive would be taken down by the high status males.
Confidence and aggressiveness are good signals of status, especially in small social groups. Of course, men try to fake social status, and women then get better and detecting the fakes. Classic evolutionary arms race.
Posted by: mike at Jun 17, 2006 5:54:03 PM
Mike suggests "later year relationships are harder to reason about from an evolutionary stance since we weren't designed to live this long." The transition in female preferences seems to happen in their late 20s, and 30 year old women were well within the range of ages with evolutionary significance.
Posted by: Robin Hanson at Jun 17, 2006 6:09:18 PM
Maybe the desire for a sense of mastery plays into this. A lot of women choose difficult men in the hope of reforming them--in that case, young women choose cads for the same reason that young men chose motorcycles. In both cases, as they get a little older, they get a better sense of which challenges are worth the risk.
Alternatively, cads specialize in being attractive to women and get more practice at it than dads.
Posted by: Nancy Lebovitz at Jun 17, 2006 9:18:10 PM
3 and 4 at least seem plausible; 1 and 2 are very unappealing to me.
I fear that this cad/dad thing is a questionable construction, although there is value in trying to figure out why younger women are more risk-tolerant re sex than older ones. I think most men are cads at heart and it's only a question of whether they can get away with it, i.e. if they're high-status enough to have additional women willing to mate with them.
I think women generally prefer cads at all ages, but they become more analytical about it as they get older and rationally choose dads instead, overriding their sexual urges. Humans evolved to succeed under very different conditions than those encountered in modern life. Historically, we lived in small groups where resources were to some degree pooled; because a father's contributions are so important in current society, I think we often overestimate the effect of a father's nurturing contributions on a child's survival and future reproductive success.
Posted by: Pearl Yonick at Jun 17, 2006 9:24:44 PM
You have discussed subgroups of men according to type (cad/dad) and subgroups of women according to age (girl/woman). I wonder if women should also be differentiated according to type and men according to age. Does the experience of a young cad condition his behaviour as an old cad, possibly making him a better partner?
Posted by: Elizabeth at Jun 17, 2006 10:07:00 PM
My wife sums this up perfectly:
"Most young women want them tall, stupid, drunk and tall, and also tall. Then they can't handle the wreckage."
She has a good record of handicapping marriages based on what she calls the "social worker gene," the desire of women to fix disastrous men.
For the record, I am short, brilliant, sober and I really wish I was tall :-)).
Posted by: save_the_rustbelt at Jun 17, 2006 11:25:44 PM
Apparently every romance novel is about a cad who turns into a dad.
If you think about it, there isn't too much to be gained by looking at the ultimate evolutionary explanations -- it's not like there's a whole level of explanation that's inaccessible to basic introspection. Cads are attractive because you need to be attractive to be a cad. When a woman is young, the idea that she can change a cad into a dad is more compelling than when she is old, and this is not best understood as an evolutionary phenomenon.
It's interesting that nerdy men are fascinated by the idea of secret subliminal signals that affect women's brains due to natural selection, but I'm not sure how much explanatory power this fascination has.
Posted by: Barbar at Jun 18, 2006 1:09:20 AM
Sometime around 23-27 American women grow out of the cad addiction and start looking for stability and maturity (I noticed that women from other nations grow out of this cad addiction at a much lower age).
Why are American women more attracted to cads the other women around the world? I've noticed in my experience with immigrant women, they're less interested in cads than the American women in the same age groups.
Here's a question that's just occured to me. If women are looking for cads in their younger years, and the cads are busy with them, then what are the dads doing while this is going on?
Posted by: David Alexander at Jun 18, 2006 1:13:40 AM
Maybe cads are analogous to peacocks with tails that are attractive by ancient standards, but middling by modern ones and the women eager to have sex with them are looking for characteristics that would be conducive to the survival of species in the ancient environment. Sure, cads are aggressive in some ways (Chatting up girls with cheesy lines and such), and tend to be tall, but they don't often seem to attain status that's useful in the modern world by becoming lawyers, executives, politicians, or doctors. Maybe young women have to learn to overcome evolutionary instincts?
Posted by: Daniel at Jun 18, 2006 1:16:03 AM
Robin, younger women are attracted to drama because our society tells them that they want and desire drama. Just like our society tells them that they must be pretty.
Having been an intellectual whore, (see http://www.laddertheory.com/ for more details of just *what* an IW is), I saw first-hand the mental conflict between the desire for drama and the desire for mature relationships. Being the "safe" and "nice" guy who got soggy shoulders from being cried on, I saw all this crap. It took years to try to figure out why they'd say stupid things like "why aren't there more guys like you?" in the same breath as "why can't I get things to work out with [that abusive guy]?"
Posted by: Peter at Jun 18, 2006 1:17:43 AM
Nancy, Pearl, Barbar, Daniel, and others are all drawn to the idea that women learn with time. If so the natural question is why evolution starts women out with the wrong expectations. Some suggest women have to learn that the modern world favors cads less than the ancient world.
I saw a recent study showing that women prefer cad men more today than a few decades ago, plausibly because with increasing wealth women need be concerned less about dad resources. If so, cads would seem to be more, not less, attractive in the modern world, relative to the ancient world.
Peter, our media tells people the things they want to hear - if that includes drama, it is because people want to be told about drama.
David, if others could confirm your observation, that would be a great question: Why do American women like cads more?
Posted by: Robin Hanson at Jun 18, 2006 8:39:37 AM
