Back in the colonial days our British masters considered Jamaicans’ reluctance to marry a main source of our problems. It seemed obvious to them that if Jamaica became more like Britain, where nearly all children were born to married parents, it would be a more disciplined and productive place. One governor’s wife reportedly went so far as to arrange a mass marriage ceremony where about 40 people tied the knot at one time.

But this official nuptial encouragement had little effect. Today the average marriage age for Jamaicans is one of the highest in the world, as is our unmarried birth rate. In 1999 87% of Jamaican children were born out of wedlock and some 51% had no registered father. No historical data is available from either Statistics Jamaica or the Registrar General, but experienced doctors reckon these rates are higher now than at independence.

The irony is that while our colonial overseers failed to get Jamaica to become more like Britain, in the aspect of unmarried births Britain has become more like Jamaica. In 1950 5% of children in Britain were born out of wedlock. In 1999 the figure was close to 40%. And a similar trend has been noted in most developed countries. High out of wedlock birthrates were once attributed to poverty and lack of education. Yet the western world today is far more educated and much richer than it was 50 years ago. So the “ignorant and poor” argument simply does not hold water.

The simplest and maybe best explanation for the sharp increase in unmarried motherhood is that women are actively choosing to have more children out of wedlock. Those who consider marriage the foundation of civilization might find this shocking. But many sociobiologists do not.

Sociobiogists argue that the basic biological drive of every organism is to maximize its genetic legacy and use evolutionary ideas to help explain animal and human behavior. A gene, they say, is nature’s way of making another gene.

Now men generate millions of sperm and can in theory father thousands of children. Women produce only a limited number of eggs and carry the child, so their maximum offspring potential is less than 100. So though their ultimate goal is the same, males and females naturally adopt different sexual strategies.

A man wishing to have as many offspring as possible should simply bed as many fertile women as he can. After all the more sperm deposited, the more potential children. But while natural man goes for quantity, natural woman goes for quality and tries to ensure that each fertilized egg develops into a healthy adult. It used to be thought that women’s best strategy was to get a good provider and protector to marry her for life. This of course did not rule out the possibility of her getting outside sperm deposits from males of “superior” genes if the chance came along. After all, it is a wife’s genes that really matter to her, not her husband’s. As they say – mama’s baby, papa’s maybe.

But after more than 15 years of research in 62 countries, the leading anthropologist Professor Helen Fisher has found that women’s genes tell them that children fathered by a series of men stand a better chance of survival, as this creates a multiplicity of talents. Her findings suggest that relationships are genetically programmed to self-destruct after four years and that the majority of women are ready to leave their men shortly after the marriage service.

“There is an innate four-year pattern in courtship, marriage, adultery and divorce. The brain chemicals that make us fall in love run out after 36 months, and it usually takes another year for us to realise this, look around and get out. This should not be surprising. Virtually no other mammal hangs around for anything like four years.

This explains why most divorces are initiated by women. The man may be playing around, but it is the woman who needs to move on to her next partner in a lifelong chain of serial monogamy. Cultural conditioning has artificially extended marriage. Increasing economic independence of women will ensure that genes will out”.

Unlike previous researchers, she does not claim that people fall out of love after four years. Affection and warmth may allow relationships to thrive longer. “There are many happy-ever-after stories. Despite the divorce headlines, most people marry for life and stay married for life. Even those who divorce usually marry again, and happily.”

Her findings are by no means the last word on the subject. But they do match the reality that fifty years of unprecedented economic growth in the west has produced both greater female independence and a higher of out of wedlock birth rate. And certainly it puts a new light on the long noted tendency for Jamaican women to have children for a number of male partners. Self-righteous moralists have often condemned this as aberrant behaviour which is a legacy of slavery and must be stamped out. But if Ms. Fischer is right, Jamaican women have been acting as most women would if they were allowed to. It is not Jamaica which was biologically unnatural, but the west.

Yet it must also be pointed out that high unmarried birth levels have been consistently linked with high crime rates. Violent crime in Britain has increased even faster than illegitimacy over the past five decades. Jamaica not only has one of the world’s highest out of wedlock birth levels, it has one of its highest murder rates. And it is well known that men do not like looking after other men’s offspring. Stepfathers and boyfriends, not biological fathers, commit the vast majority of child abuse. In societies where female monogamy is low, infant mortality rates are high, as is physical abuse of women. Men are biologically inclined towards detecting infidelity, which risks their genetic inheritance, and this jealousy often becomes physical. A “natural” society is not necessarily a more peaceful one.

And even if sociobiology accurately describes the similarities between people and apes, it ignores the differences. Animals in the wild are slaves of their genes. Human beings in society are not. Extreme sociobiologists leave no room for the self, its choices and its fulfillment. We are all at times prey to basic urges which we do not completely understand and cannot always fully control. But genes alone do not determine the sex roles or anything else in the human sphere. Every person has will power and the ability to reason, and in the end we are all responsible for our own actions. Men are not gods, but neither are we beasts. (changkob@hotmail.com)