What is Your Reproductive Value?

Reproductive Value

Doing research on "Sons" my new book in the making I keep coming across Reproductive Value first described by the famous Mr Fisher in the nineteen thirties. Here is the definition from Holy Cross College:
 

Reproductive Value (RV): the average influence of an individual of some

age on the future size of the population.

Definition:

the absolute reproductive value is the number of offspring an

individual is expected to have in its remaining lifetime

or

the relative reproductive value is the expected remaining

reproduction normalised against the expected lifetime

reproduction of an individual who was just born.

 

It is important because it impacts on the relationship between the sexes and their desirability to one another in biological reproductive terms. So whether you know it or not your choosing of a mate is dependant to some degree on his or her Reproductive Value.

 

 

A recent post by Michael Lowry sums up Reproductive value nicely.



Figure 2. Total reproductive value over a lifetime

 

 

In Figure 2, the pink shaded area represents a woman’s total reproductive value from puberty until menopause, and the blue shaded area represents a man’s total reproductive value from puberty until infertility. What if the areas under the curves are approximately the same? What would the significance of this finding be?

One way to look at it would be a new appraisal of the institution of marriage. In a comment on Dr.Reeder’s blog entry, I wrote:

"Marriage is essentially a compromise and a set of trade-offs. When a young couple gets married, the man earns

 

the woman’s youth in exchange for remaining faithful to her and her children after her fertile years." 

 

 The above graph provides a graphical representation of this bargain. In essence, we can view marriage as a contractual exchange of each person’s remaining total RV. One could also use graphs like this to gain insight into relationships and conflicts. For example, if the above view is an accurate representation of reality, one would expect that relationships would work best when both partners have approximately the same RV, and that having the same total remaining RV would also be significant. One could also conjecture that incidences of infidelity would be instigated by the partner whose RV (or RV potential) is higher. For women, this should occur more frequently early in life; for men, it should be more common later in life.

Fascinating stuff.  It would be fun to find a rigorous way to actually measure RV and test these theories experimentally.
If you think about it men’s reproductive value is only apparent to them when they have sex, they do not have periods, ovulate, conceive, give birth, lactate, and all the other reminders of sexual reproductive worth inherent in the female. The only thing that he really is involved in physically is the sexual act. For something that has little reproductive value, it is highly enjoyable. Men do have commitment in evolutionary terms, they have a commitment to have sex and impregnate as many reproductive women as they can!

You might not agree as I do not with some of its sentiment with the blog below but it gives you an idea on Reproductive Value and its meaning. It also demonstrates the challenges that occur in this area with both sexes.

Without the Make-Up – Peak Reproductive Value  

The two photos below are of the same ‘beautiful’ 26 year old American singer Katy Perry.  In one of these photos, she is without her make-up.  Can you spot which one it is?

Late news, btw, you may have come across this story 2 months ago, but it was one of those posts I forgot to make.  I remembered it again yesterday when I was visiting my local swimming baths and was reminded once more of how plain and ordinary women in their mid twenties tend to be without their make up and hair-styling.  Really, the brood mares over at MumsNet may deny it, but all women past 21 exist as sexual fakes, forever trying to trick men into believing that they are still peak reproductive value teenage girls.  This is what the multi-billion dollar cosmetics industry amounts to.  It is also the psycho-sexual motivation that drives forward feminism in a secular free sexual market society.
I myself, however, a man in his late thirties, was very much objectified and commodified by the eyes of the opposite sex yesterday, when an entire group of public schoolgirls aged 14 or 15, watching from the gallery, wolf-whistled and leered at my creatine enhanced body as I emerged from the water at the end of my 40 lengths. It felt like the girls of St Trinians were raping me with their eyes, hockey sticks raised should I dare to resist.  I’m sure I heard one pretty American girl amongst them shout something that I cannot even re-print here, for fear that I might offend my reader’s sensibilities.  Suffice to say, I have never felt so humiliated and degraded in my entire life, I told myself, as I took a cold shower to cleanse myself of the emotional dirt and shame inflicted upon my being.  ‘There really is no need to be jealous’, I felt like telling a pair of mid-twentied frumps, leaning against the side of the pool, alternating their dagger stares between myself and the posh jailbaits. ‘This is probably going to scar me for life’.
Meanwhile, a reader has submitted a terrifically valuable resource to add to my Peak Female Sexual Attractiveness essay.  A graph created by (or based upon the theory of) the esteemed David Buss that has been taken from the book ‘Animal Behaviour : Mechanism, Development, Ecology, and Evolution’:

The chart shows the estimated reproductive value of females throughout their lifetime.  As you can see, the peak ages are between 14 and 17 or 18.  Now of course, you’ve read that a woman’s ‘peak fertility’ is somewhere in her early twenties.  That has little relevance at all to what evolutionary theory would predict men to find most attractive.  To think that it does is to confuse peak fertility (the age of a female at which it is in her maximum interests to be having sex with a man) with peak reproductive value (the age of a female at which it is in the man’s maximum interests to be having sex with her).  The two are different things.  You can also see from the graph that after reaching utmost reproductive value at around the age of 16 or 17, the graph line quickly starts to plummet.  Feminism is largely the historical attempt, through legislative co-ercion and shaming language, to artificially shift the curve of that graph eastwards.  Feminists can no more achieve that goal through these brutal means than Pol Pot could remove inequality by wiping out half of his population.

 

Reproductive Value- is a fascinating field and puts new meaning and understanding into relationships.

Anyway on a lighter side I print a little newsletter for the place I work at and recently put this in as a bit of a laugh, the response was large so I copy below for your gratification.

WHY IT'S GREAT TO BE A MAN:

Your last name stays put.

The garage is all yours.

Wedding plans take care of themselves.

Chocolate is just another snack.

You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park.

Car mechanics tell you the truth.

You don't give a rat's ass if someone notices your new haircut.

The world is your urinal. You never have to drive to another gas station because this one's just too "yucky."

Same work ... more pay.

Wrinkles add character.

Wedding Dress $5000; Tux rental $100.

People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.

The occasional well-rendered belch is practically expected.

New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet.

Your pals can be trusted never to trap you with: "So, notice anything different?"

One mood, ALL the damn time.

Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.

A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.

You can open all your own jars.

Dry cleaners and hair stylists don't rob you blind.

You can leave the motel bed unmade.

You can kill your own food.

You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.

If someone forgets to invite you to something, he or she can still be your friend.

Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack.

If you are 34 and single, nobody notices.

Everything on your face stays its original colour.

Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.

You don't have to clean your apartment if the maid is coming.

You can quietly watch a game with a buddy for hours without thinking: "He must be mad at me."

You don't mooch off other's desserts.

You can drop by to see a friend without having to bring a little gift.

You're not expected to know the names of more than five colours.

You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.

You almost never have strap problems in public.

You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.

The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.

You don't have to shave below your neck.

Your belly usually hides your big hips.

One wallet and one pair of shoes, one colour, all seasons.

You can do Christmas shopping for 25 relatives, on December 24th, in 45 minutes.

John Condliffe
5.12.13