We watched a pair of grizzlies mating on a PBS Nature film. As the narrator said, they looked like they were romping and wrestling. In the afterglow, they nuzzled each other. But after the few days together, he goes off and usually doesn't come near her again, while she carries the cubs, gives birth to them, nurtures them for a couple of years.
I have noticed other signs that mating is different for humans than for many animals. It seems typical of humans to try to extract the pleasure they get from sex without using it for its purpose or for paying the price, which is reproduction. I think people are so deeply into living their own way, not nature's way, that they can't stop and be as natural as the birds, bees and beasts. So, I can't see us giving up clothing, agriculture, cars, writing, and Downton Abbey. We might be wise, though, to try to keep in mind that we are playing our own versions of life, not nature's unchanged way.
We make a whole lot more of a deal of mating that wrestling each other for a while in a meadow. We dress for sex, think about sex, fight over sex, and argue about its higher meaning. It turns out that sex leads to parenthood and motherhood seems a much bigger deal than fatherhood. Some fathers really get into child care and rearing but many don't. I wonder how many mothers are mothers without realizing it while fathers can easily be fathers without knowing they are. Like the grizzly moms, human mothers care for their young but for a much longer time than grizzlies or other animals. 21 years is just a start and mothers may contribute to the lives of their children for more than twice or three times that number of years. A human mother may also contribute to the lives of her grandchildren or greatgrandchildren in ways that other mothers know nothing about.
Both fiction and nonfiction are full of stories about the newborn whose preciousness so captures the new mother's attention that she more or less forgets about the male who contributed to the conception. Human females don't have a period of estrus or "heat" annually so humans normally aren't like some other male mammals. They don't kill babies to put the mother into a period of heat. Human males normally like sex, though, and bemoan what is often a decrease in interest in sex among women. Women enjoy pleasing men and having their admiration and attention, up to a point. Men are so wired that a woman's voice, skin, hair, shape and personality can easily arouse their interest and more. So, men are walking around getting turned on all the time while the mother may get less and less interested in the men and their desires.
This situation can be called the problem of women's libido. True to today's way of doing things, we can not only identify a problem, but it turns out to be women's problem, not men's. Further, chemists are striving daily to find the right pill to return women to their youthful state of high lust. So far, little luck but work continues. Someday, we may face that fact that sex is great but it is actually for making babies and we have enough babies while some of us are too old, too forgetful, too slow for further parenthood. Someday maybe, but not yet.
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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
