Explain something to me about extramarital affairs and poor people having sex more often.

[Kryzantine]

This is really just an anthropological or sociological question, one that has been bugging me for a few days now.

Classify a bunch of people as either stable or chaotic - these have nothing to do with the personalities of these individuals, only their personal situation. The stable individuals are the ones who have either at least 2 of:

1. A long term love.
2. A family.
3. Friends.

The chaotic individuals possess up to 1 of these things - this is to say they have only one of these things, or have none of them.

Now, present both groups with the same short term situation: sex. In the case of having a long term love, this will be in direct conflict with that.

The way I see it, everyone would want to gravitate towards the center. A stable individual will be looking for something chaotic to add some spice to their life, and a chaotic individual will be preoccupied with making himself stable first, and not add more chaos to their lives. Thus, sex can be seen as a reward for stability.

Yet this trend is the exact opposite of what we encourage and see in reality - we encourage stable people not to have extramarital affairs, and poor people end up having more sex, often with multiple partners. This is polarizing. Could it be that we should encourage the opposite? We should encourage rich people to have more sex and poor people to focus on making their lives more stable? And if this is a natural behaviour that cannot be encouraged, what is the scientific reason for this?

 

[Dags90]

I think it's a ridiculous thing to say that rich people have more "stable" lives because they're rich. Or that poor people's lives are necessarily chaotic. Plenty of poor people earn steady (but low) income and have steady expenses. And that's just financial. There is much more to a person's life than money.

I've also never seen anything about poor people having more sex. More babies sure, but I'm reasonably certain that has more to do with access to contraception, and sex education in the U.S.

Overall this seems poorly thought out and overly simplistic.

 

[Hoplon]

I would guess they dance and drink and screw because there is nothing else to do in their minds.

 

[Lolicaust]

Wait, since when do poor people have no family or friends? You meant monetary poverty, not social poverty, right?

Setting out one set of criteria and asking us about another is a poor way to get your question answered. If what I think you're saying is correct, which is that the rich should breed more and the poor should breed less, well, what makes rich people more inherently excellent? The fact that one possesses money is not an indicator of moral or genetic superiority. Even smart people don't always spawn smart kids. Encourage education programs, not social breeding incentives.

 

[Krantos]

*snip

Not sure where your claim of "poor people have more sex" comes from. Are you basing it off the increased birth-rates amongst the lower SES? If so, you're committing a common mistake people make when presented with correlative information. Namely, you're taking the data and assuming the reason. Specifically, you're assuming the reason for the increased birth rates is tied to their chaotic nature while ignoring other possible contributing factors.

Personally, I think the increased birth-rate among the poor is closely tied to the lack of access to, or improper use of, contraceptives.

Regarding why people in stable relationships don't pursue affairs, it depends entirely on the individuals. Many do have affairs. Those of us that don't have various reasons for not. Speaking for myself (a married man who has only ever had sex with the woman he married), I have several reasons for not.

The first reason is that very stability. I like my marriage (generally) and wouldn't want to do anything that would risk destroying it.

Secondly, I do love my wife, and I wouldn't have an affair because I know how much that would hurt her.

The last reason is closely related to what I enjoy about sex. The thing I like most about it is the close emotional and physical intimacy my wife and I share. This would be completely absent in a one-night stand type of affair. The only type of affair I would ever be (and have been) tempted by is a regular affair with a person I felt an emotional bond with. However, reasons 1 and 2 still lead me to reject that temptation.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

And here children you can see the rare and endangered armchair sociologist, close relative to the much more common armchair psychologist. This particular specimen has a rare mutation which causes it to make assumptions based on stereotypes, as opposed to basing its arguments on actual statistical data of any sort.


On a more serious note, I really think you're over thinking these things. First off, as the extremely wealthy individuals in our society all too often prove, they are every bit as prone to having extramarital affairs. If what you're actually talking about is that members of the lower ends of the socio-economic ladder tend to have more children, then yes that is true. They tend to be less educated and more religious (a correlation I will not delve any further into), but this combination means that they are less likely to use contraceptives and more likely to be unwilling to have an abortion. One might also point out that those with wealth have the capability to buy any number of diversionary things to keep them entertained, but if you're hard up for cash fucking is free (at least at the time it is).

Still, make no mistake, those with wealth have just as much sex, it just happens that the sex they have tends to be safer and result in fewer unplanned pregnancies.