Sex at Dawn in Australia

The myth of monogamy?
Try the myth of primary care!

Apologies to anyone who thought this post would be about pre-coffee coitus. It actually touches on the brilliant bestselling book Sex at Dawn which puts to rest once and for all the myth of monogamy, and how this premise fits in with the Australian cultural context...and its denigration of mothers who work.

So let us define our Australian cultural context. We have an increasingly matriarchal society, where women and men enjoy sex freely from puberty. Serial monogamy is still the standard, contrary to what Sex at Dawn explains is against our nature, but we have quite a few features of a matriarchal society.

Many individuals of both genders are free to pursue multiple partners without fear of legal consequences or social censure. When a couple, hetero or homo sexual, decide to live together they often move to the female's home. And women in Australia are generally strong, bossy and all too quick to put in their $6 worth. Most husbands in Australia will agree their wife has the final say.

Sexual jealousy and male aggression similar to chimp societies are, however, so much a key feature of Australian culture that is would be folly to suggest Australians are becoming matriarchal. An examination of these aspects as well as our sordid recent past of female convicts, institutionalised rape and floating brothels, and our current reality of unfavourable rights for working women, expensive childcare and the persistent gender pay gap will render any claim to matriarchy null and void. Australia is far too diverse to impose one social context, so what I am really referring to is modern Sydney.

Here we see women flaunting their sexuality with abandon, free to pursue as many sexual trysts as desired. Just watch The Shire, visit a beach or peep into a nightclub and you'll see women of every age and persuasion available for free. And happy about it.

I would go as far to suggest that the myth of monogamy can be held up to another biting parallel: the myth of the primary caregiver. Women are forced to read study after study showing that children under three thrive under the care of only one primary caregiver. Try telling that to the billion of infants who thrived in the village!

The idea of being a primary caregiver, while flattering, is simply outdated. So How Not to F--k Them Up and all those other books can go back to their studies and start looking at incorporating some of the multiple realities of post modernism, one being that a father or mother may easily hand the baby over to a close relative or paid mercenary (this is my only option, thank you to my government subsidised day carer) and baby will NOT SUFFER.

Not only is this true, but this is how almost every generation have been raised: not by one person, typically an isolated female living in the burbs, but by a collective.We have plenty of modern, successful examples of happy infants in kindergarten and childcare in Scandinavia, in addition to millennia of farming and pre-agricultural gatherer communities raising children together, to prove that infants don't suffer if mummy works.

So let's just admit child rearing is about multiplicities and stop making rude comments (to me) at the shops or writing mean spirited newspaper articles that unless I stay home with my infant she will end up disabled. She's doing great and if she were to contract permanent emotional damage, it will be due to my emotional blackmail of her as a teenager, not her happy early days with her carer in the garden because mummy was working.