William Comanor (University of California, Santa Barbara) Llad Phillips (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Abstract
Over in the meadow by the old Scotch pine Lives an old mother duck and her little ducklings nine. "Paddle!" said the mother. "We paddle!" said the nine. So they paddled all day by the old Scotch pine.1 [In nature there is] continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.2 A society of Sperm Fathers is a society of 14-year-old girls with babies and 14-year-old boys with guns.3 Together, these three quotations suggest a critical hypothesis as to the effect of family structure on the behavior of boys and girls. The first quotation is a contemporary verse for children and frequently is applied to a large number of animal species. To the extent that it captures an essential truth about the animal kingdom, it is that family structures are largely composed of a mother and her children, while the biological father is nowhere to be seen. While there are surely exceptions to this rule, that characterization is a common one.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)