2/12 Books: Sex at Dawn

A pre-book review note: This is a long review of a non-fiction book about marriage and sex.  It has absolutely nothing to do with photography and really very little to do with any of the things I normally blog about.  For an overview of the 12 Books project and to see the other books I'll be reviewing here (just one on average per month), check the subheader at the bottom of the post. Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality pretty much sold me on their argument, which leaves me in a bit of a lurch, for the moment.  Not too long from now, I'm sure I'll forget most of what I learned and go back to thinking about sex and marriage as I always have.  But for just a brief moment here, I'll pause while I sort these things out and bring you a book review that really rattled my assumptions. Authors Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá ask a few simple questions that I think most of us would probably brush off (I'm certainly attempting to, even having read the book):

Could it be that the atomic isolation of the husband-wife nucleus with an orbiting child or two is in fact a culturally imposed aberration for our species - as ill-suited to our evolved tendencies as corsets, chastity belts, and suits of armor?  Dare we ask whether mothers, fathers, and children are all being shoe-horned into a family structure that suits none of us?  Might the contemporary pandemics of fracturing families, parental exhaustion, and confused, resentful children be predictable consequences of what is, in truth, a distorted and distorting family structure inappropriate for our species?