There is the rather curious fact of human sexuality that pregnant women are a lot hornier than non-pregnant ones. This statement does not refer to average horniness over the course of an ovulation cycle, which would obviously be lower, but to peak horniness due to ovulation. Even an ovulating woman is not as horny as a pregnant women. Taken at face value, this seems rather strange. After all, if horniness serves the purpose of getting women to want to have sex so that they get pregnant, why would pregnant women still get horny? On a superficial level, this seems redundant.
Yet, there is a very obvious evolutionary aspect. Of course, this is complete speculation on my end, and I do not think that we can expect Western anthropologists to study primates in order to get some clarity on this topic either. My hypothesis is as follows: in ancestral times, humans lived in small tribes and did not have monogamous relationships. Just as apes, early humans probably mated rather frequently and somewhat indiscriminately. Women who were not pregnant could serve the tribe in many ways, for instance by helping out with child care for other women, cooking, or gathering fruits and nuts. On the other hand, pregnancy takes quite a toll on women, which entails that they are unable to support their tribe.
As evolution works randomly, it seems obvious that women who were hornier, as opposed to those who were grumpy during pregnancy, were a lot better liked. After all, they would happily get dicked down by any male in the tribe, which improved the happiness of everyone involved, this particular woman as well as all the males nutting in her. Probably pregnant women were the most popular ones in such tribes. Also, such hyper-promiscuity in an age way before the advent of genetic analysis that makes it possible to determine fatherhood, it surely was a lot better for the woman and her child if every guy in the tribe thought that the newborn could be his offspring.
Pregnant women, at least young ones, also have a glow around them. Their breast get bigger way before it would be necessary. Thus, their sexual attractiveness gets increased, at least until the baby bump clearly shows. Again, women whose bodies did not respond in this way would have been at a disadvantage in the ancestral environment, so it is little surprise that we see this trait survive into modernity. Nowadays, pregnant women probably don’t go around trawling for dick. Instead, they insist on getting dicked down by their partner. Thus, evolution works basically as it did in the past: the man is happier because his woman is a lot more eager to have sex, possibly even more eager than she was during the courtship phase of the relationship.
How do you explain that there are so many women with rape fantasies?
Were women with rape fantasies more likely to survive?
These are good question. Here is my response:
https://blog.aaronsleazy.com/index.php/2024/03/18/an-evolutionary-explanation-for-the-existence-of-female-rape-fantasies/
How do you explain cuckolding from an evolutionary point of view?
This should not be controversial at all. Men and women following a fast life-history are more likely to procreate and because such men are not always economically successful as well as less likely to stick around, the women look for a beta provider to help them raise their Chad spawn. There would only be a mystery if there were guys who actively want to be cucked, but this is surely a vanishingly small number so that we can subsume it under the topic of general mental illness.
Interesting theory. But why are men attracted to pregnant women in the first place? There is no evolutionary purpose for men to bone a pregnant woman in my opinion.
This can probably be explained with the glow of (younger) pregnant women and their bigger boobs. Thus, probably plenty of men find pregnant women attractive without being aware that these women are pregnant, as it takes a while for the baby bump to show.
I am not quite persuaded by that line of argument. Promiscuity (shopping around for better genes) may be more rewarding to the woman up to the point of conception, but after getting pregnant there is no added benefit, to the contrary she risks alienating a stable provider.
Without having the time to dive back into the evo psych literature right now, I will propose an alternative hypothesis: if she is pregnant, she would have an evolutionary interest in doing everything possible to tie her partner even closer to her, in order to assure he will stick around to help at least during the crucial first couple of years of the childs life.
Frequent sex would be a way to do that,
Non-reproductive copulating is known to be a bonding mechanism in other species too, like bonobos, who are closely related to us.
Also, it also could psychologically reinforce the thought that the child is his. As far as we know no animals are intelligent enough to have figured out the connection between the act of copulation and the spawning of offspring, but our ancestors might have done so at a point early enough to have exerted some evolutionary pressure in that regard.