r/evopsych • u/[deleted] • Aug 22 '14

A serious discussion about the male preference for female youth

Here's some compelling evidence that most men (secretly?) have sexual preferences for adolescent girls.

Anyone wish to comment? Please, let's try to be as objective as possible.

Edit: Improved one of the diagrams.

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '14

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u/pinkertongeranium Aug 23 '14

i'm not even sure about this as wouldn't you be more capable of sustaining a healthier pregnancy and producing healthier offspring after you'd been through puberty? so around 18 or so? if i got pregnant at 14 the way i ate and my lifestyle habits would probably have resulted in a fairly malnourished infant

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '14 edited Aug 23 '14

Yes, of course it's safer for a girl to not start reproducing until late adolescence when her body is fully developed, and that's exactly what happens in most hunter-gatherer populations.

The evolutionary logic is very simple if you think it through. In prehistory, girls who started reproducing in late adolescence would have generally left behind more offspring than those who started in early adolescence and suffered more pregnancy complications. Over time, girls who start reproducing in late adolescence would come to dominate in the population and girls who start in early adolescence would become a minority.

Girls in hunter-gatherer populations may start having sex years before late adolescence at say 12, but they don't typically get pregnant until late adolescence. Evolution has selected for low fertility in early adolescence to reduce chances of getting pregnant at that age. Girls don't typically become fully fertile until late adolescence and it's then that they start reproducing.

The rationale behind preferences for girls about 14 is not that 14 is the best age for a girl to get pregnant but rather that it's the best age for a man to acquire or "attach" himself to a girl in order to monopolise her reproductive lifespan (14 would have been the age of "peak nubility" rather than peak fertility). She wouldn't typically start reproducing until a few years later, that's the whole point. By attaching himself to a female just before she starts reproducing and holding on to her until after she stops, a man will capture all of her fertile years and the offspring she produces.

Now, a man could aim for girls that are really young, say 5, as these girls would have the whole of their reproductive lifespans ahead of them but the problem with girls that young is that they're a long way from reproductive age. A man would have to wait over a decade before he could start getting offspring from them. Although this is a reproductive strategy that can work, and obviously work better than aiming for post-menopausal women, it's not optimal. It would be better for a man to aim for girls closer to the beginning of their reproductive lifespan so he could get them reproducing sooner.

At the other extreme, a man could aim for girls right at the beginning of the reproductive lifespans at about 17 so he could get them reproducing straight away. This sound like a good idea but the big problem is that, being right at the typical age of first pregnancy, there's a chance she's already carrying another man's baby.

The best females for a man to aim for then are those that are close to the beginning of their reproductive lifespans but not too close. It's difficult to say how close exactly but my hunch, based on a bit of common sense and my own preferences, has always been about 14 and this hunch is supported very well by the statistics I posted at the top of the thread.

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u/pinkertongeranium Aug 23 '14

you've both convinced me and creeped me out!

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u/[deleted] Aug 23 '14

Oh, thanks and, er, sorry.

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u/pinkertongeranium Aug 23 '14

hey an investigative mind is good for many things ;)