Margo Wilson died in 2009, but Daly continues to explore the evolutionary fuel of human violence (and recently paid homage to Wilson in a presentation of his latest work on motivations behind homicide at a May 2012 conference at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, where he’s now emeritus professor). He took a break from the Ontario Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution Colloquium—which featured studies on behavior of zebra finches to bees to Atlantic salmon, as well as mink, Pacific coast dune plants, and humans—to talk to me about his work. The rangy, bespectacled Canadian with a shock of white hair and a wry sense of humor seems to constantly view the world around him through a jungle prism. He talks of the violence “risk factors” of a friend’s relationship with a threatening young male, and refers to humans as “Homo saps.” He corrects me when I ask about how animals (as opposed to human beings) would react in a certain situation. “You mean other animals,” he amends. He recognizes his own conflicts as a modern human with animal drives, an intellectual who struggles with an evolutionary-selected sense of “male entitlement.”
Viewing men largely as apes in suits (or, in the case of academia, apes in blazers or rolled-up shirt sleeves) is an attitude that can infuriate people, most notably a faction of the American public battling to replace the teaching of evolution in schools with the theory of a God-directed “Intelligent Design.” While working on this book and explaining my examination of “types” of fathers who kill their children to anyone who would listen, the most “understandable” to many was a situation in which a father kills a stepchild. But that wasn’t the response Daly and Wilson first received when they published their findings. The scientists were sharply attacked by many researchers, horrified by the view that humans marched to dictates of their brutal inner ape (while, bizarrely, others criticized them for research conclusions that were blindingly obvious). Daly lamented that the findings triggered more than their share of skepticism despite “abundant confirmatory research” that followed. Some of the response seemed colored by the same anti-Darwinist perspective of fundamentalist Christians that man is unique, and could not have evolved from apes. “There is that view that man is somehow special, with a touch of the divine,” Daly explained to me at the conference. “The response to our work initially was vicious.” E. O. Wilson’s sociobiology and the subsequent field of evolutionary psychology were also attacked in academia for giving far too much weight to a presumed elemental human nature, versus the potential of familial and cultural nurture, and for being deterministic and ultimately conservative—that humans are destined with little choice to behave a particular way because of evolutionary dictates. “The human brain allows for a wide range of behavior,” argued Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould in the early days of the debate.9 “Violence, sexism, and general nastiness are biological since they represent one subset of a possible range of behaviors. But peacefulness, equality, and kindness are just as biological—and we may see their influence increase if we can create social structures that permit them to flourish.”
Daly recognizes that humans have tremendous freedom of choice, and emphasizes that other outstanding aspects of the human personality like kindness and cooperation are just as influenced by evolution as violence is, but he believes evolutionary forces had been largely ignored as a fundamental platform for human behavior when he began his research. Much of the controversy has died down since its height in the 1970s. The influence of our animal history on our behavior is now far more widely accepted, Daly believes. “There’s a recognition that some ‘human nature’ exists,” supported dramatically over the years largely by neuroscientists, who have discovered physical and hormonal effects that come with the body reaching back through evolution, he told me at the conference.
When Daly and Wilson launched their first stepchild study, battered-child syndrome was already being studied, along with some examination of conflict in families with stepchildren. Early research on stepparent families found higher levels of conflict within such families, higher rates of children leaving home at earlier ages, and higher rates of divorce among couples parenting stepchildren rather than biological children. “The picture made sense to us as evolutionists,” explained Daly.10
In their first study, Daly and Wilson turned for statistics to a registry of battered-child figures kept by the American Humane Association (AHA), which tallied legally mandated child-abuse reports along with basic demographic information about victim and perpetrator, relationships between the two, details of the abuse, and any follow-up investigation. For comparison of age-specific rates of abuse for stepchildren versus biological children, available data was pitiably sparse. The US census didn’t (and still doesn’t) tally genetic, adoptive, and stepparenthood, so they used instead estimates based on limited surveys, which they judged to overestimate the number of stepparent families, and such estimates, they surmised, would therefore give them conservative, rather than exaggerated, findings on possible abuse rates of stepchildren. Early results were stunning. By Daly and Wilson’s calculations, based on the data, an American child under the age of three living with one biological parent and one stepparent was about seven times more likely to become a “validated child-abuse case” in the AHA records than a child living with two genetic parents.11 For the recorded fatal child-abuse cases they analyzed, per capita rates were 100 times higher for victims who lived with a genetic parent and stepparent, compared with those who lived with two genetic parents.12 The differences could conceivably be attributed to the stress and possible marital conflict complicated by situations such as poverty, but Daly and Wilson found that rates of stepparenthood and the consequent abuse risk factor to children were similar in all income levels.
A future study bolstered their first findings. Statistics in their home metropolitan area of Hamilton-Wentworth in Canada revealed that preschool children living with a stepparent were 40 times more likely to be reported as a victim to the Ontario child-abuse registry in 1983.13 Even more chilling, Daly and Wilson discovered that a co-residing stepparent in Canada was nearly 70 times more likely to kill a child under two years old than a co-residing biological parent.14 Again, poverty—and factors such as family size and maternal age—did not appear to significantly impact the figures. “Step-parenthood held its place as the most important predictor, and its influence was scarcely diminished when the statistical impacts of all the other risk factors were controlled,” wrote Daly and Wilson.15 Other researchers would discover similar situations in studies around the world.
That’s not to say stepparents can’t or don’t love their stepchildren (or adopted children) profoundly—or that stepchildren’s lives aren’t “enriched immeasurably” by the love and care of a stepparent, the scientists noted. Nurturing a stepchild can even fulfill an evolutionary drive. But in Daly and Wilson’s no-nonsense interpretation informed by evolution, a stepparent may “trade” care for a stepchild in expectation of expanding a family with his or her own biological children, they pointed out. In their pragmatic explanation: “Step-parental investment is evidently the price paid for future breeding opportunities with the genetic parent.”16
It’s a view of the human animal that has drawn criticism from those who regard Homo sapiens as far “more evolved” and capable of the finer points of love, compassion, charity, and selflessness. Daly stresses that those attributes, too, have been developed through evolution. But the researchers have prodded us to recognize all the evolutionary forces that may be impacting us, regardless of how unconscious we may be while following these primal motivations. Recognizing all these drives, no matter how uncomfortable they may be to acknowledge in some cases, is a key step in understanding violence in human society, wrote Daly and Wilson. “We would suggest that more realistic world-views invite more humane attitudes and practices than fantastic ones, because they entail better models of human nature, and hence greater sensitivity to human needs and desires,” they noted.17
Wilson and Daly offered no concrete solutions to the dilemma of violen
ce in stepparent families. Daly believes a positive step is to simply recognize that it’s perfectly natural to struggle with mixed feelings about a stepchild. “The expectation that a father coming into a family will immediately embrace another man’s child as his own is unrealistic, and can bring an added strain that only makes the relationship more difficult,” he told me.
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Daly and Wilson built a reputation with their “Cinderella Effect” theory and research. The theory became the go-to idea for reporters seeking some rationale on domestic-violence tragedies in which stepchildren were singled out for abuse or even death in reconstituted families. Daly was quoted in newspaper articles about the Clare Shelswell murder, which he remarked was “particularly brutal” (his studies also indicated that abuse tends to be more severe for stepchildren compared with abuse of a genetic child). He did not, however, speculate on James’s behavior. James’s situation involved several important complex factors which could have contributed to his crime, including his struggle with bipolar disorder, problems with rage and impulse control, a troubled childhood, and fury with his wife—as well as his status as Clare’s stepdad.
Daly and Wilson’s Cinderella Effect theory and studies were only one part of a lifetime of investigation by the professors as they linked the kind of behavior and influence interpreted by Hrdy into analyses of other kinds of violence among humans and in families. If violence against a stepchild was influenced by our evolutionary past, it was logical to assume that other domestic violence—and violence throughout society—had a strong Darwinian link as well. Criminology theory is “overwhelmingly and appropriately” framed in sociological terms, conceded Wilson and Daly, but it also necessarily “entails assumptions” about such aspects of a criminal’s psychological makeup as human nature and desires, molded, they emphasize, by evolutionary drives.18 Evolutionary fitness is not a conscious goal of humans, but it “explains why certain goals have come to control behavior,” the researchers wrote in their book Homicide.19 Childhood abuse, alcohol-induced psychosis, hormonal imbalances, access to guns, rage over social inequities may all contribute to crime and murder, acknowledged Wilson and Daly, but the importance of Darwin’s theory of natural selection to social sciences and its ability to provide a platform from which to analyze basic human nature remained “shamefully underappreciated,” they argued in the book.20 Hypotheses about what spurs human violence “can be derived from an evolutionary psychological perspective on human emotions, motives and information-processing mechanisms,” they wrote in their 1995 study “Familicide: The Killing of Spouse and Children.”21 A Darwinian perspective is vital to answering the question of why people kill one another, but an analysis of homicides can also help unlock our understanding of all human conflict, the authors noted. Killings, as an extreme example of conflict, provide a “valuable window on the psychology of interpersonal conflict,” they added. A Darwinian perspective means that violence and murder are usually not merely crimes of opportunity by a rageful or addled killer, but are sparked by situations and relationships; and any useful analysis of violence must incorporate an examination of those factors in light of evolutionary forces.
Daly and Wilson also examined uxoricides, the murder of women by their mate, through the looking glass of Darwinism. Again, inspired by insights gained from an evolutionary psychological perspective, they postulated that, like our primate ancestors, men are driven to “possess” the “reproductive capacities” of their chosen mates, and will jealously guard a wife against rivals. When rivals move in, or a mate wanders, that’s when the ape in us steps in. As Sarah Hrdy emphasized, human conception hidden inside a woman’s body can lead to questions about paternity, particularly for a nervous man with an alluring, flirtatious wife. Men killing wives at first glance appears to be a ludicrous example of a reproductive evolutionary drive. It’s hard to impregnate a dead woman. Killing “often oversteps the bounds of utility,” Daly and Wilson wryly acknowledge in their 1996 study “Male Sexual Proprietariness and Violence against Wives.”22 Yet the researchers also argued that even violence that ends in death is triggered by evolutionary drives and relates to men’s sexual relationship to a mate.
When family members are murdered by a household member, wives are the most frequent targets. Family members can be targeted, many believe, because the victims are closest at hand when adult, mainly male, tempers explode. But that’s not a scenario Daly and Wilson bought into. “Although it is often supposed that wives are assaulted mainly because they are accessible . . . targets when men are frustrated or angry, mere opportunity cannot account for the differential risk of violent victimization within households,” Daly and Wilson wrote.23 Rather, human “evolutionary history” better explains violence against wives, they concluded. Because men are driven to mate and reproduce, their “possessiveness” of females and their access to the “reproductive capacities” of a mate are critical to men, the academics argued. The determination to control a mate can drive to violence a man whose jealousy has been aroused, even to the point of murder. There’s a “cross-culturally ubiquitous connection between men’s sexual possessiveness and men’s violence,” they noted in their study. Resentment of suspected infidelity and women’s attempts to leave a marriage “is everywhere implicated as the dominant precipitating factor” in a large majority of uxoricides, they note. “Wifely infidelity is viewed as an exceptional provocation, likely to elicit a violent rage, both in societies where such a reaction is considered a reprehensible loss of control and in those where it is considered a praiseworthy redemption of honor.” Such infidelity is often seen to “mitigate the responsibility of even homicidal cuckolds.”
Wilson and Daly developed their “reproductive control” theory of violence against wives based on questionnaires filled out by women who had been assaulted by their husbands. The higher the incidents of violence, the higher the percentage of responses to questions concerning a husband’s jealousy and attempts at controlling his wife’s actions and relationships with outsiders. Almost all attacked wives answered yes to statements such as: “He is jealous and doesn’t want you to talk to other men,” “He tries to limit your contact with family or friends,” “He prevents you from knowing about or having access to the family income, even if you ask.” Such “autonomy-limiting” threats of violence to females serve to keep wives from sleeping around and ultimately leaving their partners, and also help a male from expending resources on offspring that may not be his, brought into the world by a secretly unfaithful wife, Daly and Wilson noted in the study. Wives are killed at higher rates when they are young and at childbearing ages, which adds support to Wilson and Daly’s theory. Females ages 15 to 24 have the highest rates among all age groups of murder by boyfriends or husbands. While the ultimate murder of a mate is a “maladaptation” that serves no evolutionary goal (other than to remove a potential mate for a rival male), “brinkmanship” in a relationship can get out of hand. The threat of violence or its non-lethal use can serve to corral a wandering lover. But it’s difficult to control violence or call it back once it’s unleashed. A threat has to be convincing or it loses its power, argued Wilson and Daly. “A threat is an effective social tool, and usually an inexpensive one, but it loses its effectiveness if the threatening party is seen to be bluffing. Vengeful follow-through may appear counterproductive . . . but effective threats cannot ‘leak’ signs of bluff,” they observed.24
Women who leave their husbands tend to face the greatest risks of violence, which is further support for Daly and Wilson’s view. Separated wives are killed by their mates at higher rates than those who live with their husbands. This is also the time, other researchers have discovered, that children face the greatest risk of violence from their own fathers. In such cases, fathers may kill their own children as a way to punish their deserting wives in the most painful manner imaginable. Ultimately, the “link between male sexual proprietariness and violent inclinations has presumably been selected for because violence and threat wo
rk to deter sexual rivals and limit female autonomy,” the researchers concluded.25 This evolutionary male inclination to control women is frustrated not only by women seeking increasing autonomy, but also by changing times and mores that encourage female independence.
Wilson and Daly further expanded their family-violence research to “familicides” or “family annihilations” in which fathers kill their spouse and one or more children, often also before committing suicide. They studied 109 familicides in Canada, England, and Wales (with a total of 249 victims) that occurred from 1974 to 1990.26 The murders in those cases were almost exclusively committed by men, and half of the men committed suicide—a far higher rate than males who kill only their wives or children (though fewer men who killed their stepchildren in a family annihilation also killed themselves compared to fathers who killed biological children in family annihilations). Guns were used in almost half the Canadian cases and close to a third of the killings in England and Wales. Again, Wilson and Daly make a case that evolutionary drives are behind the murders even though, clearly, there’s ultimately no fitness benefit for a father who kills himself after wiping out what’s left of his gene pool. It’s obviously a “maladaptation,” but it’s fueled by evolution, just as in uxoricides, they argued. Some of the same jealousies that drive men to murder their wives can extend to the children in a familicide, wrote the researchers. If men suspect their wives have been unfaithful, they may also strongly suspect the children are not theirs. In this type of rage-driven familicide, the killer “professes a grievance against his wife, usually with respect to alleged infidelities and/or her intending or acting to terminate the marriage,” wrote Daly and Wilson.27 As for the wife, the man’s thinking goes—the scientists believe—“If I can’t have her, nobody can.” These “accusatory” familicides are often preceded by threats and actual violence against a wife, noted Daly and Wilson, who cited the case of a suicidal Canadian father who killed his wife and two young daughters after repeated violence to his wife and a threat to kill her and the children “if you ever leave me.”
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