Quote:
Originally Posted by ekbell
I expect that it's their nature as a high-K species that has encouraged the continuation of pair-bonding.
Pair-bonds in many species appear to be formed for co-parenting and to lessen the burden of courting/mate-finding. It increases the chances of being able to breed during a mating season and having at least two adults around to help raise high-K babies to adulthood. Gethenian biology works against what appear to be the normal alternative for high-K species (having a mostly or completely female group co-raising their children with most males being solitary).
Beings capable of thinking about and adjusting their behaviour as a group may be able to adjust their culture so that pair-bonding is less advantageous but as long as desiring a pair-bond doesn't actually decrease the chances of having grandchildren there will be no reason for the desire to disappear.
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It seemed to me that, since their basic child rearing unit is the hearth where "the clan looked after its own; nobody and everybody was responsible for [the children]"; and that all social interactions appear to be group based (even their sexually driven interactions required a certain minimum community size to be sure of having multiple people in kemmer at the same time); and that sexual coupling was largely a matter of chance (who was in kemmer at the same time); that there were good reasons for pair-bonding to have disappeared from this society.