Anthropology of What Early Americans Wanted in a Wife

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm delve into the concept of pronatalism through the lens of U.S. cultural anthropology. They discuss various historical perspectives on fertility and family planning, particularly examining how different American cultural groups viewed marriage, sexuality, and the ideal qualities of a wife. The discussion touches on the often proposed but overly simplistic solutions from certain modern perspectives, such as banning condoms and pornography, and contrasts these with the historical realities and cultural practices of early America. The episode covers a wide range of topics, from the Puritans' value of industriousness and intellectual conversation, to the Backwoods people's emphasis on martial prowess in women, and the Southern aristocrats' focus on beauty and social grace. The hosts also explore the implications of these historical practices for contemporary fertility issues, stressing that arousal and sexuality have long been decoupled from reproductive motivations. They argue that understanding these historical and cultural contexts is crucial for forming effective modern policies and personal decisions related to family planning and fertility.

[00:00:00]

Speaker: Hello, Simone! Today is going to be an exciting episode because we are going to, studying pronatalism through the lens of U. S. cultural anthropology.

Speaker 2: Ooh, academic!

Speaker: Yes, with the idea being. Right now, if you look at, like, the default plans for fixing pro natalism that I often hear on parts of the right, it's like, well, let's ban condoms, and let's ban porn, and let's ban, you know, whatever, you know, right?

And it's like, Okay, so this would increase fertility rates if, historically speaking, the primary reason people had kids was that they couldn't figure out how not to control their sexual urges. Yeah. And cross culturally, this is true, it appears, historically, of some cultures. However, for the vast majority of cultures, particularly that were important in the founding of America, this does not appear to have been true.

[00:01:00] And so what we are going to explore in this episode is what these cultures had to say about their own wife when they were trying to say, like, my wife is better than your wife about young men advice on who to date about what they found hot or attractive or they cheered on and songs and everything like that.

Only one of America's founding cultures. ever referenced the way a woman looked for the other cultures, basically never. And there's actually been some historical stuff looked at this, how attractive a woman was was not referenced was one culture. We'll get into the the Quaker culture in the Pennsylvania region.

So attractiveness is a sign of a bad wife. You wanted a wife who was playing. She was high class all these people are just gonna be stereotypes of what you expect, which is what I love so just like uh Preview here of the backwards people who you mentioned who are like super violent and make up the majority now of like trump's [00:02:00] face and i've always they really like tomboys.

So what did they have to say historically on notes of the state of virginia in? 1785 thomas jefferson observed that in the frontier regions, women were valued for being quote unquote robust and the ability to quote unquote bear fatigue. And Daniel Boone's own writings about his wife, Rebecca emphasized that quote, she could shoot as well as any man in quote, Oh, sweet.

I like that. Simon Kenton, a famous frontiersman wrote admiringly of Daniel Boone's wife, Rebecca quote. She could handle a rifle with the best of them and noted, quote, she could keep the farm and defend it too. That is an ideal woman. Yes, I agree. This, this, this thing you see was in the current frontiers of America, where you have the mud wrestling competition for women.

As we've, we've gone over in other episodes women fighting and showing martial ability is [00:03:00] goes back into American history, but we'll go into what the Puritans wanted and everything like that. But before I go into all of that, one thing I want to. Like really focus on is right now when people have kids the vast majority of kids that are had in the world Particularly in america are not had because of arousal patterns at all It is because a couple got together and decided they wanted kids

Speaker 2: And okay caveat because the the big drop in birth rates that we're seeing in places like latin america Result from basically impulsive teen sex, no longer resulting in babies because of increased birth control.

So I would say for like

Speaker: Everything here is that in every demographic of age range, fertility rates have increased or stayed stable except for under 24. You are right Meaning that

Speaker 2: like, I think the only time when people are having impulsive sex that produces babies, it's because They're insane, hormonally imbalanced teens, or maybe not imbalanced, but you know, like, hormonally revved up.

Speaker: [00:04:00] Their people with very low self control and very low IQ, and they're struggling to not get

Speaker 2: pregnant.

Speaker: Yeah, not myelinated,

Speaker 2: poor impulse control. Yeah, just like, should not be having babies. And honestly, it's not a bad thing. That they're not having babies like that's good

Speaker: And we'll get to this as we go into a lot of these quotes is the cultures that leaned into motivating fertility Through a lack of impulse control.

I. e through banning contraception through banning Pornography everything like that specifically, catholic and mormon culture are the cultures that are actually struggling uniquely was quickly falling fertility rates, whereas the cultures historically and and we'll see this if you look at the old puritan stuff, if you look at the old you know extreme protestant stuff they did not seem to care about sex or sexuality at all And I note that you actually have pretty big evolutionary differences between populations that we've noted The recent study showed, for example, belief in predestination is highly genetically [00:05:00] linked.

And people misunderstand how much of their culture is genetically linked or leans on genetics. An avid culture for generations since the founding of America has not used arousal to motivate childbirth. Of course, they are not going to be impacted by falling fertility rates as much as other cultures and really fascinating in a future episode.

We'll get to Catholics actually have a higher fertility rate when they are in other cultures that haven't genetically adopted to their techniques for increasing rate. i. e. if you're looking in Korea or China or Japan, Catholics will always outbreed Protestants. But if you look at cultures where these two religions are had within populations that have had these religious belief systems for generations, they underbreed Protestants.

That's

Speaker 2: very interesting.

Speaker: And even among the Catholics who have a lot of kids today and the Catholic communities that have a lot of kids today, what you'll see is they don't do it due to a lack of self control. They do it because of a desire to have a lot of kids.

So they have adapted and sort of made [00:06:00] it through this hurdle.

It's just up until the seventies the Catholic tradition really relied on this to keep the fertility rates high. As we can see from, well, the stereotypes of, The community and you'll see as we go through all these communities, they will fit the stereotypes you have of them.

Chris, it's important you learn about your Irish heritage.

Speaker: