What particularly struck her was the contempt these women showed. They talked about men like pesky mosquitoes, often shrugging their shoulders and rolling their eyes. Few seem interested in any kind of long-term relationship.

When she mentioned that she herself has been married 14 years the response was generally amazement. One remarked, "Fourteen years with one man and you don't get tired of him yet?"

Clearly, we both agreed, our Western-derived assumptions about male and female relationships do not apply in this country. But then, neither do Oriental or African or Arabic mores. When it comes to 'man woman business', Jamaica is a law unto itself.

DISDAIN AMONG MEN

The same day, I started talking about Nadine's findings with Robert Lewis, the Jamaica cricket youth coach who teaches at Holmwood High School and is also a qualified counsellor.

He wasn't surprised. He also sensed a growing 'sperm donors and no more' disdain among women towards men. Maybe, he posited, it was based on the reality that there really are very few men around who can make any positive contribution to a woman's life.

The sad fact, he observed, is that the majority of young Jamaican men have poor work ethics and are badly educated. And this is how most Jamaica women have begun to think of all men.

He wonders if women are taking out their anger at this situation on the few decent men out there. Right now, he was counselling three men who had been wiped out emotionally and financially by women they had literally given everything to.

Surrounded by mostly lazy, illiterate, brutal wastrels, many Jamaican women have not only come to think of 'maleness' in these terms, but associate male kindness with weakness and mercilessly exploit it. Hence the universal refrain among Jamaican men that "Women don't like men who treat them too nice."

Or as the reggae classic Woman is Like a Shadow put it, 'Never let a woman know how much you care/cause they will do things to hurt you/and it's no joke about it/I say to do what you can for them/but not too much/cause they will hurt you.'

Yet, for all the moaning and groaning you hear on all sides, one thing is certain. No one in Jamaica wants to change the way things are. Rich, poor, black, white, man, woman, politician, voter ­ everyone seems quite content with our present status quo. No one seems interested in any laws that might stop us breeding for who we want when we want.

'DEREGULATED SEXUAL REGIMES'

Now, it's well known that 'deregulated sexual regimes' were common among new world plantations, and that slave masters actively discouraged family attachments among slaves. Yet, there may be more to Jamaican mating behaviour than just ancestral habits. For long, efforts by colonial overlords to encourage 'civilised' - i.e., British - marriage patterns had little effect. In 1950 an estimated 70 per cent of Jamaican children were born out of wedlock. In 1999 the figure was 87 per cent.

In fact, change has come in the other direction. In 1950, five per cent of British children were born out of wedlock. Now it's over 40 per cent. Most developed countries have seen a similar trend. Apparently, economically liberated women are simply choosing to have more children out of wedlock.

SERIAL MONOGAMY

Traditionalists might find this shocking. But not evolutionary psychologists who say the basic biological drive of every organism isto maximise its genetic legacy. After 15 years of research in 62 countries, anthropologist Helen Fisher concluded that women's favoured reproductive approach, when freed of economic constraints, is serial monogamy. Apparently, having children fathered by a series of men creates a multiplicity of talents and a better chance of gene survival.

She also postulates an innate four-year pattern in courtship - marriage, adultery and divorce. Apparently, the brain chemicals that make us fall in love run out by 36 months, and it usually takes another year to realise this and get out.

Marriages that last a lifetime are those in which 'past its four-year expiry date' love has been replaced by affection and friendship. And the older those getting married, the greater the marriage's chance of survival.

Her findings put a new light on the long noted tendency for Jamaican women to have children for a number of male partners, and the Jamaican habit of marrying late - both our men and women have the oldest average marriage age in the world. Many condemn these as aberrant legacies of slavery. But, if Ms. Fisher is correct, women here have only been acting as most females everywhere would if allowed to.

Her findings may not be the last word. But it's certainly uncanny how the freer and richer the world becomes, the more its reproductive patterns resemble those which prevail in this island.