Every form of refuge has its price…
— from ‘Lyin’ Eyes’ by the Eagles
There is no dispute the development of oral contraceptives have significant benefits to men — by reducing their exposure to child support, and increasing the number of women willing to engage in casual sex! Emerging science is revealing the benefits to women have more of a downside than previously understood.
In addition to reducing the rate of pregnancy, alterations in female olfactory function resulting from use of oral contraceptives is changing their selection of mates. And not for the better.
Sarah Hill, PhD, has reviewed several studies of the effects on pheromones in women’s selection of mates. Those studies conclude that women on oral birth control are selecting men with lower testosterone levels.
This is another benefit to men. It increases their opportunities to mate. Or, as Mrs. Beatty put it more bluntly after hearing Dr Hill’s conclusion, “That explains all these women marrying wussy men!”
Digging deeper into the studies on the biochemistry of female mate selection based on olfactory response to testosterone levels you learn another interesting tidbit. After women quit taking oral contraceptives lower testosterone males (they’ve previously chosen) become less attractive.
Could that possibly lead to increased divorce rates when women who married men they found attractive when they were “on the pill” then quit taking the pill to get pregnant?
Do those men then become less attractive as spouses?
Expanded use of oral contraceptives may also contribute to less healthy children. For example, it has only been within the past 30 years or so that ‘peanut allergy’ has been ‘discovered’.
As Dr. Jonathan Haidt, PhD (discussing the so-called ‘peanut allergy’ epidemic) points out, “The immune system is a miracle of evolutionary engineering. It can’t possibly anticipate all the pathogens and parasites a child will encounter — so it is designed (by natural selection) to learn rapidly from early experience.”
‘Peanut allergy’ has only been around since the 1990s. We boomer kids grew up eating PB&J – and had never heard of such a thing as a peanut allergy.
Now airlines will not even hand out peanuts as in-flight snacks because, apparently, the mere presence of an open bag of nuts will send those with peanut sensitivity in convulsions.
As Dr Hill noted, it’s long been known that female olfactory receptors to male pheromones are a factor in mate-selection. There is an evolutionary basis for this.
“Hidden in a man’s smell are clues about his major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes, which play an important role in immune system surveillance. Studies suggest that females prefer the scent of males whose MHC genes differ from their own, a preference that has probably evolved because it helps offspring survive: couples with different MHC genes are less likely to be related to each other than couples with similar genes are, and their children are born with more varied MHC profiles and thus more robust immune systems.”
Changes in female pheromone receptors resulting from use of oral contraceptives interfere with detection of MHC genes — which can weaken the immune systems of their offspring. “It’s not nice to fool mother nature!”
How many ‘peanut allergy’ kids are the offspring of mothers who were taking oral contraceptives when they selected the father as a mate? That sounds like an academic study which will never be conducted, because the findings could threaten entrenched feminist narratives — so the research won’t be funded.
The same study could pertain to ‘gluten allergy’… which (given the history of human nutrition) makes even less sense than a peanut allergy.
I’m not denying that celiac disease is real. I know someone with it who must avoid gluten. It’s just that the increasing frequency of sensitivity to gluten is contrary to human evolution.
Historically, grains, including wheat, have been a primary human food source since the beginning of human food cultivation.
Roman legionaries primarily ate grains.
Keeping the citizens of Rome supplied with grain, which had to be imported from Egypt (who also relied on it as a primary food source) was one of the most important jobs of Roman emperors.
In more recent history, Ukraine (“the breadbasket of Europe”) has been fought over for generations. Its grain was a food source the Nazis sought to exploit.
By all the rules of evolution, humans should be well-adapted to consume the components of wheat, including gluten, and of legumes (peanuts). Yet somehow in the last couple decades – which correlates with women’s expanded use of oral contraceptives — gluten and peanuts have become harmful to some of us?
Why are more humans in the United States increasingly sensitive to foods that have fed our ancestors for millennia? Could it be because the olfactory sense of females to detect HMC genes has been disrupted by the expanded use of oral contraceptives?
Who knows?
What we do know is (according to Dr. Hill) there is a direct link between use of oral contraceptives and changes in female olfactory receptors to male pheromones. When functioning normally (without the effect of oral contraceptives) females detect pheromones to select mates who will provide complimentary HCM genes — thus giving their offspring a more robust immunity system to increase their chances of survival.
So women face a “Hobson’s choice”. Use oral contraceptives — which interfere with their evolved mechanism to select a mate who gives their offspring the best chance of survival, and may cause them to find their husbands unattractive if they quit taking the pill, or…
…forego the use of an oral contraceptive and risk pregnancy.
I know which choice men prefer. For women, the “refuge” of pregnancy-risk-free sex through use of oral contraceptives apparently “has its price…”
[Editor’s Note: Readers interested in peanut allergy theories might also enjoy this article by Michelle Berriedale-Johnson.]
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.