Product Details

Library Journal

In this book, Townsend makes years of scholarly research accessible to the general public. The research, including 2000 questionnaires, 200 interviews, and an extensive bibliography, indicates that men and women across many cultures have evolved a psychobiological response to sexual relationships. Men want young, beautiful women and casual sexual relationships; women look for committed relationships with men of wealth and status. Even among "liberated" individuals, these statements hold true. Townsend, a professor of anthropology who has published many scholarly articles, explores why this hasn't changed despite the changing sex roles and economies of modern American society. A well-written, well-researched, and fascinating read; recommended.Elizabeth Caulfield Felt, Holland Lib., Washington State Univ., Pullman

Kirkus Reviews

Forget the sexual and feminist revolutions, says Townsend; men and women want what they have always wanted over the decadesþand centuries and millennia, for that matter. In a nutshell, posits Townsend (Anthropology/Syracuse Univ.), men who engage in þdating and matingþ are looking primarily for physical attractiveness in women; women seek men who have þstatus and earnings powerþ and who will emotionally and materially þinvestþ in them. Such proclivities, he argues, are largely hard-wired into us by evolutionary psychology. Thus, for example, studies show that men are far more easily aroused by visual stimuli, while womenþs fantasies deal more with men who will provide security and caring (thus, pornography is overwhelmingly purchased by males, romance novels by females). Such proclivities are little affected by some womenþs newfound economic status; even economically self-sufficient or otherwise high- achieving women, such as medical students, often resist dating lower-status men, even if theyþre perceived as handsome. Nor does marital status or gender orientation play much of a role (Townsend cites studies that reveal that the differences between what gays and lesbians seek in lovers are even more pronounced than between male and female heterosexuals). But his book suffers from methodological (not to mention stylistic) problems. Townsendþs sample of interviewees is somewhat skewed (a quarter of these 200 were medical students, while another quarter were Mexican-Americans); some of his statistics are meaningless (þBlumstein and Schwartz found that women in their twenties with three children have a 72 percent chanceof remarrying, while women in their thirties with no children have a 60 percent chanceþ); and he also is too focused on the þmacroþ picture; there is almost nothing here about how individual psychology or cultural conditioning affects the search for, and selection of a partner. An interesting but flawed sociobiological analysis what men and women want from each other.

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Table of Contents