Same-sex couples earn than opposite-sex couples. While part of this gap is explained by unpaid childcare in heterosexual relationships, another key factor is the hidden cost of reproductive conflicts. Women leverage reproductive scarcity to transfer assets from less attractive males to genes winning sexual selection. This manipulated within opposite-sex couples leads to suboptimal transactions helping explain the earnings gap. Only 1 out of 4 males Y chromosome sexually selected to reproduce for the next generation on average last 75,000 years (as hinted at ). This reinforces the following speculations on the reproduction strategies conflicts: Women, as the primary incubators of offspring, pursue “Transferist” strategy to leverage their reproductive scarcity to A) Get pregnant from “Replicants” (or Alpha males) with genes generally helpful to increase their number of grandkids, while simultaneously B) mostly with sunk costs strategies (such as investment before sex) or child hostaging, and C) Leverage “Distributors” to scale the above offer via networks of the distributors - friend zoned males. Transferists, in their pursuit of extracting assets from Investors, reduce transactional transparency, relying on emotional persuasion, less logical communication, and sunk-cost tactics to manipulate pricing in relational transactions.
Transfer strategy could be the explaination of the sexual difference in logical vs emotional thinking. Transferists specialize in asset extraction rather than skill-based income generation valued by firms, creating a divergence between transferist strategy and professional career of the Feminist strategy.
Meanwhile, Replicator males impregnate Transferist females and cooperate in redirecting resources from Investors to replicators’ genes. This forces Investors to restrict female exposure to Replicators, often by enforcing homemaking roles or imposing penalties for adultery. These constraints reinforce the wage gap and limit women’s professional development, making feminist strategies—those focused on career growth and financial independence—less viable.
Notably, there are no robust studies estimating the share of children raised by non-biological fathers. Ethical constraints are cited as a reason, given the evolutionary benefits of genetic drift caused by infidelity.
The transfer role of straight marriage supported by research showing that when the wage gap within a marriage shrinks. Around are filed by women, likely occurring when the resource transfer within the relationship declines below the perceived value of alternative options (as women generally have more competing offers than men). This also suggests that women are more likely to engage in infidelity, as they receive more external mating opportunities than men despite a widely spread opposite belief. While the sexual selection benefits of the above strategies have diminished with the introduction of constraints such as religious norms, contraception, and DNA testing, this does not imply a proportional reduction in costs. Instinct-driven strategies that fall short of contributing to the value creation in sexual selection may still generate unnecessary and avoidable costs .
Key strategies to reduce the costs of the “sex wars” :
Replace Social Restrictions with DNA Testing or Altruistic Acceptance: Eliminate restrictions on female social and career opportunities by leveraging DNA testing to confirm paternity or altruistically ignore the source of DNA. Implement Enforceable Contracts for Child Investment: Create structured, legally enforceable contracts to define parental investments in children. These should account for the “kids wage gap” and time commitments, particularly in the early weeks of pregnancy. Note that policies facilitating abortion may weaken claims to fixed terms by enabling renegotiation under “forced signing” arguments. Contracts can have a variable investment which incorporate mechanisms such as funding rate principles from perpetual swaps, where small immediate penalties for deviations maintain strong adherence to the underlying contract. Reduce the Profitability of Sunk-Cost Attacks: Mitigate sunk-cost manipulations (eg. your program will be erased from a kid memory and diminish value of your investment into the kid) by immediate removal of variable investment in case of such attack. Use structured penalties like the funding rate principle to enforce commitment. Ensure Fair Compensation for Alternative Costs: Increase transparency in evaluating costs and benefits, including opportunity costs. While conflicts over transfer pricing and valuation are difficult to avoid, clearer definitions can help minimize manipulation. Make Synergies and Accumulated Advantages Transparent: Clearly demonstrate whether synergies and long-term advantages provide value exceeding compensation demands. Note that these values are often negative and this is hidden with manipulations often or obscured through manipulative behaviors, including reliance on emotional rather than logical communication. The strategies to enhance the social currency alpha (we are not yet able to change own DNA, but we are able to change the more important part of the survival information - social currency) :
Prioritize High-Growth Potential Segments: Focus child development efforts on areas with significant growth potential, such as IT olympiad competitions, Bay Area institutions like Berkeley and Stanford, and technology professions. Optimize Time Costs Through Structured Assessment: Implement a structured approach to evaluating the value of relationships, synergies, and accumulated advantages relative to alternative costs. Use metrics such as the impact on the Nasdaq index as a benchmark for alternative costs (see the Model for details). Address Diversification Pressures: Account for the increasing alternative costs associated with exploring new information through other sexual partners and the instinctive drive to diversify DNA for co-replication. Strategies should balance these pressures with long-term value creation (for longer-term relations).
Same-sex couples earn approximately 17% more than opposite-sex couples (11.5% could be attributed to the kids wage gap which is a mix of the conflicts costs and unpaid babycare)
A) Sexual selection: Males 4x Less Likely Than Females to Pass on DNA
Over 75,000 Years: Males 4x Less Likely Than Females to Pass on DNA, with Top 25% of Men Fathering Nearly All Surviving Offspring—Extreme Cases Show 1 Male to 15 Females Ratio.
B) Females securing investments from non-alpha males (to secure expansion of offsprings as per the below examples).
Top 33% by Asset Ownership Double and Displace Low-Ownership Group Within Three Generations (for Squirrels and Hyaenas). Humans’ assets should have higher share of social currency such as their networks and survival strategies - more vulnerable to the sex wars conflicts comparing to tangible assets.
PS. Example of transfer pricing manipulation:
Person A pays $100 on behalf of Person B at her request, even though it is not obligatory or part of a contract. In return, Person A expects to receive social currency (e.g., a “gratitude note”) to be reciprocated later. While the price of $100 bill is not easy to manipulate, Person B may claim the gesture caused negative consequences worth -$200, turning the balance of the gratitude note into -$100. In essence, the “gratitude note” is counterfeited into a liability by adding a minus to the price of the note. Counterfeiting money carries penalties of up to 20 years in prison, yet the analogous counterfeiting of social currency often goes unpunished, enabling widespread misuse to transfer assets from A in such transactions.
Ref.
Zeng, T.C., Aw, A.J. & Feldman, M.W. Cultural hitchhiking and competition between patrilineal kin groups explain the post-Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck. Nat Commun 9, 2077 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04375-6