"In particular, while natural selection favors both males and females that leave many offspring, the best strategy for doing so may be different for fathers and mothers. That generates a built-in conflict between the parents, a conclusion that all too many humans don’t need scientists to reveal to them. We make jokes about the battle of the sexes, but the battle is neither a joke nor an aberrant accident of how individual fathers or mothers behave on particular occasions. It is indeed perfectly true that behavior that is in a male’s genetic interests may not necessarily be in the interests of his female co-parent, and vice versa. That cruel fact is one of the fundamental causes of human misery."
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Pulitzer Prize winnersAcademics from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesScience authors from the United StatesBiologists from the United States
Original Language: English
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Chapter 2, “The Battle of the Sexes” (pp. 18-19)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond
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Jared Diamond
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