...In a study involving Dutch, American and Kurdish students, psychologists in the Netherlands found that...young people invariably considered [their] potential mate's attractiveness the most important quality, whereas parents uniformly paid more attention to the suitors' social background or group affiliation -- race, religious background and social class...

...Parents and offspring clash, the researchers argued, because their genetic self-interests, while overlapping, are not identical.

The reason young people care so much about intellectual and physical attractiveness, the scientists suggested, is that these characteristics are markers of genetic fitness. By contrast, they said, parents care about group affiliations because parents are primarily interested in whether an incoming member of the family is likely to make a good parent -- and a good all-around team player...

[H]istorian Stephanie Coontz argues that the researchers did not draw a clear enough distinction between love and marriage. Evolution might play a big role in shaping the reproductive drive, she says, but it would be a mistake to think that the institution of marriage has primarily been about either love or reproduction.

Until very recently, Coontz contends, children and parents were rarely in conflict about whom to marry -- they both agreed that marriage was not about love, but about social and economic ties...

Nearly everyone in the West -- and growing numbers of young people elsewhere in the world -- believes in the ideal of marrying for love, an idea that would have been ludicrous and dangerous a century ago, said Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage." Coontz traces the change in attitudes about marriage to the fact that growing economic self-reliance has made it less likely that people need to marry for money...

VOTE

<< Home