it’s going to stay, is pretty final.)
In her young and fecund years a woman must call upon science and technology, or great self-control, in order not to get pregnant. As we grow older, as nurture gains more power over nature, it becomes easier to avoid it. A: We are less fertile. B: We use our common sense. The marvel is that there are so few teenage pregnancies, not so many.
To fall in love is to succumb to instinct. Common sense may tell us it’s a daft thing to do. Still we do it. We can’t help it, most of us, once or twice in a lifetime. Oestrogen levels soar, serotonin plummets. Nature means us to procreate.
(Odd, the fall in serotonin symptomatic of falling in love. Serotonin, found in chocolate, makes us placid and receptive. A serotonin drop make us anxious, eager, sexy and on our toes. Without serotonin, perhaps, we are more effective in courtship.)
Following the instructions of the blueprint for courtship, the male of the human species open doors for us, bring us gifts and forages for us. If he fails to provide, we get furious, even when we ourselves are the bigger money earners. We batter on the doors of the CSA. It’s beyond all reason. It is also, alas, part of the male impulse to leave the family as soon as the unit can survive without him and go off and create another. (Now that so many women can get by perfectly well without men, the surprise is that men stay around at all.)
The tribe exercises restraint upon the excesses of the individual, however, and so we end up with marriage, divorce laws, sexual-harassment suits and child support. The object of our erotic attention also has to conform to current practices, no matter what instinct says. ‘Under 16? Too bad!’ ‘Your pupil? Bad luck!’ Nature says, ‘Kill the robber, the interloper.’ Nurture says, ‘No, call the police.’ The sanction, the disapproval of the tribe, is very powerful. Exile is the worst fate of all. Without the protection of the tribe, you die.
Creatures of the Tribe
We do not define ourselves by our animal nature. We are more than creatures of a certain species. We are moral beings. We are ingenious and inquisitive, have intelligence, self-control and spirituality. We understand health and hormones. We develop technology to make our lives easier. We live far longer, thanks to medical science, than nature, left to its own devices, would have us do. We build complicated societies. Many of us choose not have babies, despite our bodies’ instinctive craving for them. We socialize men not to desert us; we also, these days, socialize ourselves not to need them.
‘I don’t dress to attract men,’ women will say. ‘I dress to please myself.’ But the pleasure women have in the candlelit bath before the party, the arranging and rearranging of the hair, the elbowing of other women at the half-price sale, is instinctive. It’s an overflow from courting behaviour. It’s also competitive, whether we admit it or not. ‘I am going to get the best man. Watch out, keep off!’
To make friends is instinctive. We stick to our age groups. We cluster with the like-minded. That way lies the survival of the tribe. A woman needs friends to help her deliver the baby, to stand watch when the man’s away. But she must also be careful: other women can steal your alpha male and leave you with a beta.
See in shopping, source of such pleasure, also the intimidation of rivals. ‘My Prada handbag so outdoes yours – crawl away!’ And she will, snarling.
And if her man’s genes seem a better bet than your man’s, nab him. Nature has no morality.
Any good feminist would dismiss all this as ‘biologism’ – the suggestion that women are helpless in the face of their physiology. Of course we are not, but there’s no use denying it’s at the root of a great deal of our behaviour, and indeed of our miseries. When instincts conflict with each other, when instinct conflicts with socialization, when nature and nurture pull us different ways, that’s when the trouble starts.
‘I want another éclair.’
Agony.
Well, take the easy way out. Say to yourself, ‘One’s fine, two’s not.’ No one’s asking for perfection. And anxiety is inevitable.
A parable.
Once Bitten, Twice Shy
Picture the scene. It’s Friday night. David and Letty are round at Henry and Mara’s place, as is often the case, sharing a meal. They’re all young professionals in their late twenties, good-looking and lively as such people are. They’ve unfrozen the fish cakes, thawed the block of spinach and cream, and Henry has actually cleaned and boiled organic potatoes. After that it’s cheese, biscuits and grapes. Nothing nicer. And Mara has recently bought a proper dinner set so the plates all match.
They all met at college. Now they live near each other. They’re not married, they’re partnered. But they expect and have so far received fidelity. They have all even made quasi-nuptial contracts with their partner, so should there be a split the property can be justly and fairly assigned. All agree the secret of successful relationships is total honesty.
After graduation Henry and Mara took jobs with the same city firm so as to be together. Mara is turning out to be quite a highflyer. She earns more than Henry does. That’s okay. She’s bought herself a little Porsche, buzzes around. That’s fine.
‘Now I can junk up the Fiesta with auto mags, gum wrappers and Coke tins without Mara interfering,’ says Henry.
Letty and David work for the same NHS hospital. She’s a radiographer; he is a medical statistician. Letty is likely to stay in her job, or one like it, until retirement, gradually working her way up the promotional ladder, such is her temperament. David is more flamboyant. He’s been offered a job at New Scientist. He’ll probably take it.
Letty would like to get pregnant, but they’re having difficulty and Letty thinks perhaps David doesn’t really want a baby, which is why it isn’t happening.
Letty does have a small secret from David. She consults a psychic, Leah, on Friday afternoons when she leaves work an hour earlier than on other days. She doesn’t tell David because she thinks he’d laugh.
‘I see you surrounded by babies,’ says Leah one day, after a leisurely gaze into her crystal ball.
‘Fat chance,’ says Letty.
‘Is your husband a tall fair man?’ asks Leah.
‘He isn’t my husband, he’s my partner,’ says Letty crossly, ‘and actually he’s rather short and dark.’
