Sex is pre-requisite to the living of future generations, which is why we developed sexual urges that speak as loudly as our other (personal) survival needs. Our DNA is constructed specifically with the goal that humans will reproduce, but couldn't perfect the system to assure we'd all be attracted to the required parties.

Fortunately, modern global population levels allow us to get away with all indulgences , so it doesn't really matter anymore.

But I can understand the social construct of dating and marriage for a smaller, younger species aiming to rise.

The less people there are, the more precious become some of 'traditional' gender roles. Following this logic, we can also see why once upon a time we'd have been so over-protective of women.

Observed in the extreme: imagine an island with one hundred people.

With ten women and ninety men, their future could be fucked. Assuming everyone's fertile, ninety men can't impregnate ten women and repopulate any faster than they could with ten men. Not to mention the competition as only 1/9 of these mens' DNA will get the chance to pass on per generation. Meanwhile, ten men and ninety women could exponentiate the island's population in no time.

In general, worst case scenario, we can afford to lose more men than women.

As for family roles, I'm once more unsurprised by the origins. Humans use hierarchy to create order and facilitate the consistency of everyday communications between the in-members of any group .

Unfortunately, many men for thousands of years used brute force and increasingly privileged [social] positioning to skew the 'accepted' norms in their favour.

The good news being, again, today we live in a whole new world.

The majority of people now want a better, more equal society, based in love and mutual respect.

I believe we're secure enough as a species to throw some caution to the wind and focus on what our indescribably complex and unique brains individually want.

So long as civilization continues strongly in our current direction, we should be good for a while.

If anything ever really drops the population, it'll be the sex robots.

And even then, in case of an emergency, they can set up some incubators. I'm not sure how I feel about this image of the future, but I can't say it would shock me.

I'm losing track of what I'm talking about.

Point being, some social constructs are definitely based on the optimal survuvability of the human race, particularly gender roles when the species needs to prioritize growing.

We could discuss the true value of continuing humanity at all cost next, but for now my focus is slipping away entirely.

Thank you for the interesting article. 🙏✨

Cheers!!