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This Divorce Epidemic

Tuesday, 15th January 2008

I think I've found the (well, a) reason for the rise in divorce in recent decades. It's all to do with the pill and the way that women smell.

No, no, stay with me here. I'll make the reasonable assumption that women tend to be on the pill when they're out there dating and road testing possible husbands to be. However, that is something of a problem, because one of the major ways in which we judge who is to be a good mate is through our sense of smell. Specifically, people find those with a complementary major histocompatibility complex (something we determine by smell) to be sexually attractrive: this has some major implications for the fitness of any childrens' immune systems. But complementary here means "different", the more so the better.

Unfortunately, this process is reversed in pregnant women, they preferring the smell of those who are close, genetically, to them. So far, so what? But the pill works by mimicking pregnancy and it has that same effect on the sense of smell:

Indeed, the only people for whom MHC matching might not be expected to work are women on the Pill. Chemical contraception, which mimics pregnancy, messes up the system because of an intriguing twist. When women are pregnant, they prefer the smell of MHCs that are similar to their own. This means they are happier in the company of their relatives, which may, as the previous article also suggests, bring evolutionary benefits of its own.

So what is happening is that our pill popping husband hunter is fooled by the pill into choosing one who smells right while she's taking said pill, but the moment she stops doing so (to, say, try to get pregnant) she then gets a whiff of what they really smell like and realises that it's all been a terrible mistake.

Thus the pill is causing the rising divorce rate of recent decades.

What? Whaaat? You want to explain it all in rising equality under the law, rising economic opportunities for women, changes in the larger society? Have it your own way then.