It is a common belief that the desire to have one or more sexual partners is related to gender. We decided to check whether this opinion has a scientific basis.

Allegations and disputes about unambiguous polygamy among men and less propensity of women to cheat are found in websites about psychology, in Media, on forums, in posts and comments on social networks. More than once a similar opinion was expressed sexologists And columnists Russian federal media. Bloggers And motivational trainers believers talk about historically established male polygamy looking for the priests have an answer to the question of why God created men as sinners, and the creators of jokes they're joking: “If men are polygamous by nature, and women are monogamous, then with whom are men polygamous?”

All mating systems accepted divide into four main types:

monogamy - a male and a female form a stable couple for a long time or for life, they are not expected to have other partners;
polygyny - one male mates with several females;
polyandry - one female mates with several males;
promiscuity - both males and females have many partners, stable relationships are not formed.

Polygyny and polyandry are also sometimes referred to by the generic term "polygamy".

One type of animal usually has only one mode of sexual behavior. Yes, monogamy adheres to up to 90% of birds and only 3–5% mammals: otters, wolves, foxes, beavers. Polygyny characteristic for lions, tigers, giant pandas, koalas, hyenas. Polyandry prefer primarily fish, snakes and lizards, among mammals it is practiced by naked mole rats, and among birds - emus. Promiscuity widespread among axolotls, platypuses, quokkas, raccoons, red pandas, Tasmanian devils and many primates - bonobos, chimpanzees, rhesus macaques, orangutans.

Initially, humans, like most other primates, also adhered to promiscuity, but as a result of evolutionary development they switched to a system of forming stable couples. However, in the modern world, anthropologists say, only 17% cultural communities practice exclusive monogamy, others have a mixed model that allows polygamy, and even in such cultures most people are in monogamous relationships due to personal choice, financial constraints or other reasons.

Usually the system of sexual interaction of a modern person (both men and women) called serial monogamy - people in relationships don't have alternative sexual partners, but after separation they usually strive to form a couple again for one period or another. This approach is often presented as an innovation that distinguishes us from people who lived 100, 200 or more years ago. However, anthropologists arguing with this concept: serial monogamy was inherent in people long before modern times, it’s just that nowadays relationships in such a system more often end in divorce, and before the reason for looking for a new partner was often the death of a woman during childbirth or the death of a man in war. Having examined systems of intimacy within the family (the comparative value of a brother/sister compared to children, the relationship of grandchildren with grandparents, the father's contribution to caring for offspring), scientists came to the unequivocal conclusion: “Monogamy is the dominant type of relationship in any cultural group.”

Clinical psychologist, candidate of psychological sciences Galina Laisheva corrects anthropologists’ view: “The choice of reproductive or mating strategy for a particular person does not depend on biological factors. Whether a person is monogamous or polygamous is based on social and cultural attitudes and ideas about what type of relationship is preferable.” That is, as such, there is no dependence of a specific strategy of sexual interaction on gender; everything is largely determined by attitudes in society - both for men and women.

Moreover, it is important divide strategy of sexual behavior and formal social connections between people. For example, people legally marry and live together in an open relationship. Formally, they are monogamous, but from a biological point of view, this couple is promiscuous. If a man in a registered marriage takes a mistress, then the strategy of his sexual behavior becomes polygyny, although legally (and for society) he will be monogamous. However, unlike the first union, where both partners in marriage know what real strategy they adhere to, in the second case at least the wife, and often both women, can consider monogamy their strategy of sexual behavior.

Finally, simple logic contradicts the hypothesis of different strategies of sexual behavior in different sexes. Let's imagine a certain population in which men are strictly polygamous and want to have two or more wives at once, and women strive to have exclusively monogamous relationships. In order for a man’s needs to be realized, a certain number of women who desire polygamous interaction are needed. Of course, such a model does not provide for forced marriages and involuntary unions, but since we are talking specifically about the desires of a person of one gender or another (that is, his nature, as stated in the popular narrative), the elements of violence should not be taken into account.

Evolutionary biologist and bestselling author of How We Do It Robert Martin wondered the same question: who are these additional partners of a polygamous man in a society of monogamous women? He analyzed many surveys showing that, on average, men seem to have more sexual partners in their lifetime than women. Martin offers a possible explanation for this disproportion: “Although participants in such surveys are guaranteed anonymity, men tend to exaggerate the number of their partners out of boasting, and women tend to underestimate out of modesty.”

This hypothesis is supported by the results of several studies. So, survey among students in the UK, conducted in 2001, showedthat, when counting their sexual partners, men, unlike women, more often take into account those with whom they only had oral or manual sex. At the same time, as many as 6% of respondents, as it turned out, consider touching the breasts and nipples with lips or fingers to be sexual contact. Such a vague understanding of sexual contact can distort the results of studies that do not specify by what criteria a person should be considered a sexual partner.

Similar in 2014 survey revealed another aspect: 20% of girls, answering the question about the number of partners, deliberately underestimate the real value, while among men 12% exaggerate. Another survey, also conducted in the UK in 2019, showedthat, when asked about the number of their sexual partners, men are more inclined (24% versus 15% for women) not to remember and count, but simply to estimate. Scientists learned about this thanks to an additional question on the questionnaire about the calculation method. Volunteers chose one of four options: “I knew before,” “I remembered each partner and indicated the number,” “I estimated or roughly estimated the number,” “I remembered some and added an approximate number for the rest.” Note that the authors of the studies, judging by the formulations used such as “opposite-sex sexual partners,” studied only heterosexual sexual contacts.

In addressing the preconceptions about polygamy among men and monogamy among women, Martin also draws note that “if a particular society as a whole is monogamous, then there are only two possibilities: either women and men cheat equally often, or the sexual needs of many men who are unfaithful to their partners are satisfied by a few women, each of whom has a lot of partners.” This assumption is also indirectly confirmed by scientific data. In the 2019 study mentioned above, scientists interviewed 15,000 men and women about their sexual activity and found that the number of sexual partners differs twofold depending on gender - 14 for men and seven for women. This situation seems extremely implausible, because in this case it is not clear where men find additional partners. After the researchers excluded respondents with extremely high numbers of partners (110 and 50 or more for men and women, respectively), the picture began to level out. After adjusting the results to account for the fact that men are more likely to estimate rather than remember the number of partners, the average gap between men and women was only 2.63. However, the scientists were able to explain this difference: firstly, men count sex workers as new partners, regardless of the service provided; secondly, the sex workers themselves were either not represented in the sample or did not consider their clients as partners; and finally, thirdly, men often had sexual intercourse while on vacation, and their partners remained “overboard” from the study, which was limited to British subjects. Adjustments for these three parameters are expected to fully explain the 2.63 partner gap between men and women. However, this team of scientists has not yet made the corresponding measurements.

Although it is widely believed that in recent decades, due to general emancipation and detabooing of the topic of sex, the average number of partners people have is increasing, scientific data indicate otherwise, at least in the United States. From the beginning of the 20th century until the 1960s, both men and women gradually became more sexually involved. However, the millennial generation (born 1982–1999) turned out to be more restrained, and the number of their sexual partners began to decline. For example, an American born in the last quarter of the 20th century had, on average, fewer sexual partners than his parents by the time he turned 30, and about the same number as his grandparents. boomer generation. Unlike other studies, this review also included homosexual sex.

Thus, there is no biological or anthropological evidence that people of different sexes adhere to contradictory systems of sexual interaction. The main human strategy is serial monogamy, when cheating in a stable relationship is not normally allowed, but after a breakup, a new relationship with another partner is acceptable. The idea of polygamous men is largely related to stereotypes and sociocultural factors. They also influence how men and women talk about the number of sexual partners they have, and, as a result, form the impression that, in general, men have significantly more partners than women.

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