Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray
by Helen Fisher
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Book Summary Information
Author: Helen FisherEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1994-01-03
ISBN: 0449908976
Number of pages: 432
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Book Reviews of Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray
Book Review: 75% Science 25% Speculation **Caution**
Summary: 4 Stars
The book is full of interesting data. I fell in love with the book but sadly you have really read it. The author tries to express her ideas as scientific or historic facts. Here are a couple of examples of her writing.
I will maintain that monogamy, or pair bonding, is the hallmark of the human animal, there is no question that a minority of men and women follow other sexual scripts. Page 66
On the same page she states, Only 16% or 136 of 853 cultures that exist are monogamous. 84% of the cultures permit a man to take more than one wife at a time. In Africa 25% of all older men, have two or three wives at once.
On page 154 the author states her theory:
Like pair bonding in foxes, robins, and many other species that mate only through a breeding season, human pair bonds originally evolved to last only long enough to raise a single dependent child through infancy, the first four years, unless a second infant was conceived.
On the same page the author states the following;
How serial monogamy evolved can only be surmised. Our earliest ancestors probably lived in communities much like modern chimps. Everyone copulated with just about everybody else, except with mother and close siblings. Then gradual monogamy emerged. The lifestyle of olive baboons provides a fascinating model, however, for how pair bonding, the nuclear family, and divorce could have evolved in these primal hordes.
On Chapter 10 the author states
At times in history the Egyptians, Iranians, Romans, and other sanctioned brother-sister incest for special groups such as royalty. But with these curious exceptions, mother-son, father-daughter, and brother-sister mating have been forbidden; incest taboo is universal to humankind. It is fair to assume that the human incest taboo had emerged among Cro-Magnon or long before-for several reasons. (This is an unsubstantiated opinion without any scientific base.)
But the best is in Chapter 15;
After the reformation marriage became a civil contract, rather than a sacrament, for Protestants. So beginning in the 1600s women in non-Catholic countries could obtain a divorce from civil authorities. In fact, divorce rates clearly fluctuated throughout the centuries following Christ's call for monogamy.
:
In here the author did make a statement, which is based on false premises. In the Bible there is not a single attributed statement to Christ about monogamy. What Christ said was that a man should never divorce a woman. Why? Up to that point in history the sole source of food, shelter, and protection of women was the man. In the Jewish society, and Christ was speaking to the Jews, woman was a non-entity without any rights to property or rights whatsoever. Therefore, a divorce was the equivalent of an assassination. In a divorce a woman was thrown outside the protection of the family and household and left to the elements of nature and for other men, and wild beasts to ravish her.
So after reading the book and taking 29 pages worth of notes in MS Word I can say that the book is a defense of monogamy and feminism in which the author had gone to extremes to try to justify her ideas. But after a thorough reading I can say that her research is great but it is a piece that has to be taken with great and extreme caution. If you do not have any real religious and scientific background you can end up beliving everything stated in the book.
Nevertheless the book is good one, but not for ignorant! I really like the book, but not her struggles trying to justify monogamy and her femenist ideals. You cannot change or alter reality to accommodate your beliefs, and that is what she did!
Summary of Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray
"Captivates the reader, answers all those puzzling questions that caused your mother (or priest or guidance counselor or gym teacher) to blame God and/or hormones....Her prediction of a more open and egalitarian order provides a compelling--and hopeful--vision for the future."THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Love at first sight...the copulatory gaze...dinner dates...jealousy... intimacy... homesexuality...infidelity...Dr.Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History, explains it all in this four-million-year history of the human species. She demystifies much about romance and pairing that we tend to believe is willfull or just plain careless. She offers new explanations for why men and women fall in love, marry, and divorce, and discusses the future of sex in a way that will surprise you.
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