24 Quotes by Robin Baker

In choosing a man to help raise her children, a woman is only secondarily impressed by looks, whereas in choosing a short-term partner for sex, looks are much more important.

In choosing a man or men with whom to share her life, a woman has two major issues to consider. On the one hand, she needs a man who can help her raise her children. On the other, she needs genes that in combination with her own will produce attractive, fertile and successful children.

studies show that when a woman leaves one partner for another, she invariably moves up the scale to a better compromise

Often, a woman is already pregnant when she settles down with a long-term partner, and occasionally this partner is not the father of her child. Sometimes he knows this and takes on the woman and her child anyway, for reasons we have discussed, but sometimes he doesn't know. The woman is least likely to be unfaithful in the weeks or months preceding the conception of her second child. Subsequent children, however, are more and more likely to be the product of infidelity.

Whether a man is twenty or seventy, therefore, his preferred age for a new partner is about twenty, or even younger.

A woman's difficulty is that she has a much wider choice of men to provide her with genes than she has of long-term partners. She could probably persuade many men of her choice to give her their genes — it takes only a few minutes of sex, after all. Her options for a long-term partner, though, are much more limited.

Lion prides contain two or three males and up to eight females and their young. Wandering over the savannah are bachelor groups of two or three males, each group looking for a pride from which they can oust the current males. If they succeed, the first thing they do is kill the cubs, the pride's legacy from the previous males.

The more men and women drink, the more they both seek intercourse — or, at least, the less they resist it.

Since the aim of masturbation is to give the male an edge over others in sperm warfare, he gains most if he masturbates but can dissuade those around him from doing so. That way, he gains competitive benefits that his rivals do not. The world-wide tendency to criticise, even victimise, other people for masturbating while continuing to masturbate oneself is thus as strategic as masturbation itself.