The Problem With Extreme Stallion Dearths · 3:53pm Nov 1st, 2014
Introduction
One question when world-building Equestria is the male-to-female sex ratio. The TV show, because it is marketing toys aimed at little girls, tends to show relatively few male characters compared to female ones, a tendency which was particularly pronounced in the early seasons. This led many fanfic writers to conclude that there was an extremely low male-to-female sex ratio; perhaps as low as 1:6 or 1:7. Other writers assume something closer to the sex ratio in Humanity, which is 1:1.07 at birth and approximates 1:1 at reproductive age owing to a slightly higher death rate among young males.
In fact, most sexual species -- and almost all mammals, have a sex ratio close to 1:1 at reproductive age. This is so common that it leads to a strong suspicion among biologists that there is an evolutionary mechanism keeping the sex ratio at close to unity. And there in fact is such a mechanism.
To understand the mechanism, let us consider how Equestria would have to work if there was an extreme stallion dearth.
I. Implications of an Extreme Stallion Dearth
First of all, let us consider the fact that, in any mammalian species, females are the reproductive bottleneck.
What do I mean by this? I mean that a male may impregnate numerous females per reproductive period, but a female may only either be pregnant or not-pregnant in such a period -- no matter how sexually active she chooses to be, she can't get more pregnant (1). This is why the male "defection" strategy in the reproductive game is to abandon one of the mates made pregnant with his offspring, while the female analogue is to pretend to be pregnant with the offspring of one male while having actually impregnated herself with another. This is also why extreme promiscuity works better as a reproductive strategy for males than for females.
In consequence, the reproductive rate of a population is more dependent upon the number of females than males. One could imagine a population with an extreme shortage of males which maintained a normal reproductive rate due either to male promiscuity or to polygyny (the difference between the two is that in promiscuity, the male simply mates with any available females catch-as-catch-can, while in polygyny he mates only or primarily with his wives).
Now, this does not work well for Human cultures, because most of our cultures are serially monogamous for most of the population most of the time, and serious male dearths (common after wars) are too temporary to change the culture. To take the most famous cases in recent Western history, the Wars of the French Revolution (which included the Napoleonic Wars) and the World Wars (One and Two) each resulted in male dearths among the generation who fought the wars. This however did not result in polygyny (though it may have increased male promiscuity), because the dearth only lasted a short time compared to the amount of time it takes to change a culture from monogamy to polygyny. Instead, France merely suffered a reduction in reproductive rate after both periods of conflict.
What this means is that most Frenchwomen of the eras during and right after this war preferred not to reproduce than to accept polygyny (which would have been illegal, however de facto arrangements such as men having mistresses were possible and even part of French culture at those times) or promiscuity (despite what the English thought of French culture). The culture did not have time to adapt.
If something caused a continuous male dearth -- one which persisted generation after generation -- the culture would over time adapt to the situation. What would this mean to the Ponies belonging to such a culture? Assume an extreme stallion dearth, say a 1:6 male-to-female ratio.
Monogamous marriage would be possible to only high-status mares (and only with a lower-status husband); most mares would have to accept either that they would be one of several wives to a stallion, or that they would never have any husband; and would have to either accept promiscuity or fail to reproduce. What this would mean in practice is that upper-class mares would usually marry (though probably polygynously), middle-class mares would also probably marry (almost always polygynously), and lower-class mares would most often have to accept promiscuity, as they would have great difficulty finding even polygynous husbands.
The ability to find a husband would, therefore, be an important marker of social status among mares -- not merely, as in monogamous societies, which husband one found, but if one could find a husband at all, and with how many other wives one had to share him. Upper-class mares would mostly insist on marriage; lower-class mares would consider it absurdly unrealistic to do so; middle-class mares would (depending on their personal attributes) either be insisting on marriage and if successful gaining status by doing so (if unsuccessful, becoming old maids), or accepting promiscuity and possibly sinking into the lower classes in consequence of the burden of raising their children without male assistance.
There is some canon support for this situation! In-show, most of the marriages shown have been to Ponies who would definitely be upper-to-middle class: most obviously Cadance and Shining (royalty-to-gentry); Twilight Velvet and Night Light (either lower nobility or upper gentry); Filthy Rich by implication (no wife shown but he's raising Diamond Tiara so he may be divorced, separated or widowed) who is upper middle class; and Carrot and Cup Cake (middle class, own a successful business). The one exception here would be Magnum and Pearl (Rarity's parents) who seem to be lower middle class (but notice that both their daughters are social climbers?).
In contrast, most of what look to be single mothers are lower middle to lower class, or have obvious social defects which would make it difficult for them to find husbands. (Of course, from the outside, polgyny might also look like promiscuity, in that fathers would have little time for the many children of their multiple wives). The most obvious examples of this are Derpy, who while in fanon (including mine) tends to be well-born has obvious cognitive disabilities which would tend to make it hard for her to find a husband; and Berryshine, generally assumed to be a drunkard.
There's an obvious social trap here. The young mare who responds to the difficulty of finding a special somepony by accepting promiscuity is of course likely to get pregnant, and once she actually bears an illegitimate child has become far less attractive as a mating prospect for stallions -- who can afford to be choosy since there are several mares for every one of them. This means a potentially strong Madonna-Whore complex on the part of the stallions, since it will be reproductively rewarded -- stallions who insist on marrying virtuous mares will rarely waste their resources supporting the children of other stallions; while a "fallen" mare will have the choice between further promiscuity or no more reproductive prospects.
This would even support canon in a roundabout way. The Mane Six mostly behave in a fashion which is meant to imply sexual virtue (this is most obvious in Rarity, but is true for all of the rest of them in their own ways, save for Pinkie Pie, who thinks in her own strange terms). If one lives in a society in which one has to compete strongly for mates, the two obvious strategies are either exaggerated virtue ("I'm worth marrying") or exaggerated promiscuity ("I'm easy"), with very little middle ground. But then, the Mane Six were an elite to begin with (or they wouldn't have been chosen by the Elements) and are certainly high-status now, so of course they would pick the former of the two reproductive strategies.
For mares, an extreme stallion dearth would select for accepting either sharing a husband or being promiscuous. Another likely outcome would be bisexuality -- not lesbianism (since lesbians would almost never reproduce given a stallion dearth).
Why bisexuality? Because, most of the time -- whether as one of several wives in a marriage, or a good-time girl looking for a stallion for the night -- mares would be romantically lonely and sexually frustrated. This would have bad consequences on their behavior in numerous ways which would be countersurvival; mares who could achieve romantic and sexual fulfillment from other mares, but still be interested in finding stallions, might enjoy overall superior fitness to purely-heterosexual mares.
The most efficient behavior would be for heterosexual and homosexual bonds to be considered separate, so that mares could have marefriends without this either making stallions feel jealous, or this impeding the mares still wanting to find hubands or lovers. But then, the homosexual relationships would be no threat to the stallions reproductively, as there's absolutely no reason to assume that mares can normally sire foals on other mares (no known mammalian species can do this, though some lizards can).
And there's some support for this in canon! Aside from the fact that there is one strongly-teased bisexual pair in the Mane Six (Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy, who display what looks very much like strong romantic affect toward one another and at least some such affect toward other males), strong female friendships seem to be quite normal in Equestria. What's more, we have not seen such strong male friendships shown yet in canon.
What would it be like being a stallion in a situation? Well, you'd pretty much be swimming in gravy, which is why male fans of the show love the notion of an Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria.
Unless one was a very inferior stallion, one would be practically assured of reproductive success. Everywhere one went, if one displayed any interest in any unmarried mare not of absurdly higher social status, one would be very likely to receive at least some interest in return.
(No, this doesn't mean that one could just have any mare, any time, even if one were nasty about it -- even mares who are only looking for lovers rather than hoping for husbands presumably want to be treated nicely, personally to maintain their own self-respect and reproductively because being a nasty stallion means that one's offspring are also more likely to be nasty, and nastiness is countersurvival, especially in a society which works by Harmony. But it does mean that even nasty stallions would have a decent chance of finding some mare who was sufficiently desparate).
If one wished to marry, one might reasonably expect to find multiple mares interested in such a prospect, and possibly willing to accept all being married to oneself (note well: the wives have to get along with one another, or the marriage will be less idyllic than one imagines). If one wished merely for sex, one might reasonably expect to find multiple mares interested in such a prospect as well. Any requirements, legal or customary, for child support would probably be very weak and easy to evade, because the other mares would happily want to attract the stallion away from the mares he didn't consider worthy of marrying. Likewise -- matriarchy or no -- the extreme stallion dearth would make it practically certain that a cheating stallion would be forgiven by his regular mares, who would instead focus their ire on the "designing" mares who attempted to alienate his affections.
Why, it's a male reproductive fantasy come true! All the sex one wants, with any female of whom one is even remotely worthy, under the best possible terms for the males involved.
It's even a male economic fantasy come true. It should be fairly obvious from the social dynamics outlined that a lazy stallion could let his wives support him, trading his valuable sexual favor for a high standard of living without having to do a lick of work. As long as he's not being a literal pimp, he could live like one and still be fairly sure that his wives' children were also his own. And even if some weren't? So what? He wouldn't be supporting them.
Alas (from the point of view of any drooling or simply indolent male bronies) it's also extremely unlikely.
Here's why.
II. Sex Determination
There are a number of ways in which parents can control the sex of their offspring.
This statement might surprise you, because we can't do it voluntarily and personally. However, in an evolutionary sense this is true, because there are involuntary mechanisms (some still very poorly understood) that govern whether males produces more X or Y sperm, and whether females are more likely to have their eggs fertilized by X or Y sperm. And these mechanisms are acted upon by biological evolution -- possibly even by epigenetic means in some cases.
These facts make an extreme sex ratio imbalance unlikely. How does this work?
Suppose that, in an Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria, there is a couple of prospective parents. They are going to conceive a child. Of which sex should this child be?
Well, the answer is pretty screamingly obvious. Male, because any stallion is pretty much assured of reproductive success, and ultimate reproductive success for any individual is measured in the number of grandchildren (one does not succeed reproductively until one's children themselves reproduce). Also, any stallion is also pretty much assured of economic success, since his sexual favors are absurdly valuable. He will rise in status, and take his parents along for the ride.
A female child can't count on reproducing, and if she picks the wrong path to reproduction will likely be an economic failure. Indeed, if your child is a filly, you must worry that she will be promiscuous, become a single mother, and that her parents will then have to devote their resources to helping her raise the child! She may sink in status, and drag her parents down under with her in her fall.
All this comes not from maleness or femaleness in itself, please note, but from the social and economic implications of the extreme stallion dearth.
So what exists here is a strong selective advantage in terms of male offspring. Which, given a way for natural selection to bite, means that reproductive frequencies should start shifting over the generations toward maleness. If there is any way for the Ponies to magically or technologically control the sex of their offspring, then this will happen even faster, through cultural rather than biological selection.
This is what ends the extreme stallion dearth. The very advantages of being male in such a situation make maleness desirable and hence selected for.
I've mentioned some canon reasons for the stallion dearth. Now let me point out some canon reasons why there can't be a stallion dearth.
First of all, there is no reference in-show to polygyny as even a possibility. One may object that there's no way that such a reference could get through Standards and Practices in modern America. This is true, but this does not imply that Equestria is polygynous. The show has implied all sorts of things that would be difficult to explicitly describe under American rules regarding children's television, such as Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy's bisexuality; Rarity's and Spike's mutual sexual attraction; and even wholesale death (Nightmare Moon's plan, the tyrannies of Discord and Sombra, the attack of the Sirens). We have never seen a stallion with several mares behaving as if they were all his wives. Not even by implication.
Secondly, Rarity's jealousy of Applejack over Trenderhoof. If polygyny was an option, why did she CARE so much? Rarity is certainly behaving as if sharing Trenderhoof would be unthinkable. This makes sense only if she comes from a monogamous culture. (It's also an argument against a Free-Love Equestria, for similar reasons).
Thirdly, Spike's strongly-exclusive romantic attraction toward Rarity. If he was raised in a culture which expected that males would seek multiple females, why isn't he also pursuing other females who have expressed varying degrees of interest in him, such as Fluttershy and Sweetie Belle? (2) We see that while Spike is friendly toward all the Mane Six and their families, the only one he's romantically-pursued since he met her is Rarity. Yes, Spike is an idealist and a bit naive, but his naive ideals are clarly those of a monogamous culture.
Fourthly, matriarchy. If stallions were uncommon they would exert tremendous social influence, since their wives or lovers (and potential wives or lovers) would scurry to please them. Yet, in the Equestria we see, mares dominate -- to the point that a common form of address is "mares and gentlecolts," which means that linguistically males are treated as less mature.
III. What's Really Going On, Then?
The simplest explanation for there being fewer stallions shown than mares is that there may be a slight stallion dearth (possibly being caused by stallions being culturally disfavored coupled with some magics or technologies which enable some voluntary selection by parents of the sexes of their offspring), and stallions tend not to spend as much time in town as do mares. (My explanation for the latter part is that the traditionally-male occupations in Equestria tend to involve field work while the traditionally-female ones tend to involve town work; remember, Equestria is still mostly an agricultural civilization). This is exacerbated by the fact that the show exists to sell toys: most of the toys are of female characters, and hence most of the characters given dialogue are female.
Stallions tending to do field work would mean that they would be doing the more dangerous jobs, which means that they would tend to predecease mares. Any tendency toward bearing fillies instead of colts owing to cultural prejudice in a matriarchy would be exaggerated by this: sex ratios at birth might be fairly close to 1:1 but be skewed by shorter lifespans into stallion dearths in the population. This would imply that the stallions would tend to reproduce when young, and that there would be a lot of lonely old mares.
According to my Twilight Sparkle in An Epsitolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses:
Equestria had a population of 83.2 million Ponies at last census, of whom 54.7 million were mares, and some millions of these mares unattached.
That means 28.5 million stallions to 54.7 million mares, which is close to a 1:2 male-to-female ratio -- given that Twilight Sparkle actually meant "females" here by "mares" (though in any case Equestrian lifespans are long enough that most of the females are in point of fact "mares." With this mostly resulting from shorter male lifespans, one can see that being widowed must be extremely common among Equestrians -- in the areas with the highest male death-rates (the fishing-towns and lumber-camps of Morgan) this has led to the Equestrian version of polygyny, the Morgan-Marriage.
That's of course my Equestria, and I crafted it that way to explain the hints both of a stallion dearth and of monogamy in the series. Others may come to other conclusions, but I don't think that a stallion dearth could be that extreme, given that Equestria doesn't appear to be mostly polygynous, and that the population seems to be expanding.
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(1) - The exception to this is that most mammals have two uteri and can thus sometimes carry two children by different fathers at the same time. Humans are one of the species which has only a single uterus Another such species are horses. It is likely that the Ponies normally bear only a single foal at a time) and the Cakes are exceptional in having had twins (so many things were exceptional about that birth that I find it downright suspicious).
(2) - Fluttershy has been fascinated by Spike since the very first episode, and has a tendency to seek comfort from him. (This probably has a lot to do with the fact that he's a non-threatening and even friendly member of an exotic species she normally fears). The evidence for Sweetie Belle's interest is less, though she does have that dance with him at the royal wedding. She's his age, though, and physically resembles her elder sister. All of the Cutie Mark Crusaders seem to at least like him.
This essay was pretty brilliant.
Thanks! :-)
Also, one thing about natural evolution selecting against this kind of thing; it's not entirely correct: in very small populations, a species can effectively evolve into extinction, with a gene making it so that all offspring are female propagating due to the fact that females are, well, the reproductive bottleneck.
I know of one subspecies of rats that died out this way :-/
I didn't notice this at all. Could you please elaborate? :-/ :-)
Also! There is a slight gender imbalance in favor of women in our own world, which nearly everyone discounts (granted, it's something like 0.9 but it exists). At birth, however, it's 1.07 in favor of males, suggesting that what drives it is...work deaths and shorter lifespan, like you predicted*
Also, another thing: you mention unconscious gender selection, but what about conscious gender selection? (yes, this topic is incredibly depressing).
As you describe in the "extreme stallion dearth" world, parents have a very strong incentive to have males over females...a situation which is mirrored somewhat in modern China.
And as we know, in China there is the abhorrent practice of killing newborn girls (also selective abortions, but whether Equestria has the technology for it is uncertain).
While such extremes might not be taken by ponies (although I'm doubtful; despair at yet another mouth to feed can hit hard) it would mean that a lot of young fillies would be given up for adoption, to the point that orphanage populations would be almost entirely female.
An interesting idea for worldbuilding, if nothing else.
*data from here and here
Also, the more I read this, the more I realized just how Lovecraftianly horrible such a world would be for most of the population.
Just...wow.
I think I'm going to look at cute cats right now.
Once again, I love your over analyzation of a child's cartoon! (I do the same thing.) You're great! :-D
Another profession that seems to be entirely dominated by stallions is guard work. I don't think they have show a single mare in the Royal Guard, so you can imagine that a large percentage of the male population would be working in Canterlot or any outposts Equestria may have.
One thing worth noting:
In a dearth, if you combine female promiscuity with bisexuality and the common closeness of female friendships in Equestria, you could end up with a situation where the stigma and economic penalty of single motherhood is lessened or erased. If marriage to stallions is difficult, setting up households of mares capable of supporting each other and raising foals would be easy.
I actually have a fic in progress about that idea: Realizing there is a stallion dearth caused by subtle fluctuation in the background magic of Equestria, and that because ponies are monogamous this has lead to a population decline, Twilight starts a campaign encouraging female promiscuity (even to the point of arranging for studs) and at the same time encouraging mares to form households with other mares (whether romantically or platonically) to support these foals.
2567869 I seem to recall Peacocks suffer from more severe fluctuating levels due to their tails (Bigger tail is more appealing, but less able to escape predators and more food) and risk extinction as well.
I've heard mention of egg-laying creatures utilizing temperature to skew the sexes of their eggs, but what other methods are there if any?
Rarity is an illogical Romantic (she literally tried to marry a prince), just like Spike, so it doesn't make much sense to use her attitude to intuit general cultural mores.
What is likely is that being a single mother is a lot less hassle than in the real world. Start with pregnancy -- there wasn't even a single episode with Mrs. Cake being visibly pregnant, and since teleportation and phasing through solid objects are both well known (if not easy) unicorn spells, actually giving birth should be trivial and painless.
And then afterwards, if you're too young to be a good parent, you have a new 'little sister'. Sisterhood Social had an awful lot of apparent mother/child pairs for something that was supposed to be teams of sisters... I have to wonder if it's implicitly for 'sisters'.
Andoriol
has written his own take on this- one which takes into account our gender balance by changing how pony chromosome work.
Briefly, he posits that they have three: Mares are either XXX or XXY, and males are XYY. Given that mares donate 2 chromosomes and males one, he works out that males are born about 22% (2/9ths) of the time. This becomes a ratio for four to five mares for each stallion, not as bad as your ratio, but still pretty skewed. Note that those XXX mares (whose foals can never be anything but fillies) occur about as often as males- 2/9th of the time. Most Mares- that 55% leftover- are XXY, and perfectly capable of having colts.
The saving grace for those XXX mares is that their daughters can pick up a Y chromosome from their sires, and so escape this only-female-children trap which I'm sure would have some serious demographic consequences if left unchecked.
2567959
Snakes have virgin births! Which produce only females, however.
There are fish who change sex with age. Ant Queens can decide whether to fertilize an egg or not directly, and unfertilized eggs hatch as males (wtf?)
This species of birds EXISTS.
I dimly recall a random fact that human sperm with a Y chromosome moves more quickly but dies earlier, meaning sex might be related to penis length. However, I wouldn't bet on it, and it could easily go the other way.
Also, in humans, there is infanticide and selective abortions. So yeah.
I don't actually know of any other ways a species can change their offspring's sex.
2567869
Thank you.
... and then die out after the last males died out and there were no more babies. I'm guessing this was a very small population, though, and with no source of fresh blood from outside.
Pretty much, yes. Young men in human populations have a tendency to do dangerous things as a form of status-seeking, which kills them at a much higher rate than human females. Some human cultures take advantage of this by using them as extremely-dispensable warriors: this may also be linked to polygyny (the surviving older males marry multiple women, some of whom are of the cohorts who are losing most of the males).
Most Equestrians aren't ruthless enough to do this by abortion, but there might be magical means (I have no problem imagining a magical sperm-filter that selects for X or Y sperms). If they did, in my Equestria they would probably favor daughters over sons; in an extreme stallion-dearth Equestria they would probably favor sons over daughters.
Especially lower-status mares, who mostly would have to resign themselves to being at best lower-status wives in polygynistic marriages, and at worst have sex with stallions who didn't love them as their only hope of reproduction. It's nowhere nearly as bad for higher-status mares such as the Mane Six, who might even realistically wind up in monogamous marriages. But most of the population can't by definition by higher-status.
I prefer an Equestria with a much less skewed sex ratio.
2567917
Yes. And keep in mind that the energy tech level is c. 1850-1900, which means that a lot of work for which we use powered or even automated machinery as a force multiplier gets done in Equestria by muscle-power. The Ponies don't seem to make much use of any muscle-power save for Pony-power, so that means Ponies -- and the bigger and stronger ones at that, who would be disproportionately male.
In my Equestria, the fact that they didn't have good estrus suppressors until the last hundred or so years meant that any job which had to be disproportionately male due to the requirements wound up culturally male. Imagine the problems that would be caused by having a few mares, who had active estrus cycles, working among numerous stallions. Given Equestrian culture, out-and-out rape would be unlikely, but general distraction and emotional conflicts would be very likely.
This has changed, but still -- if you see a team of Ponies hauling, lifting or otherwise applying significant muscular force to do something, they're almost certainly all stallions. Heavy agricultural labor is mostly done by stallions. A lot of construction work, especially the grunt parts of it (thanks to estrus suppressors, there's now little problem with having, say, the skilled finishers, plumbers etc. being mares) is also male. Miners -- mostly male. Sailors and fishers -- mostly male. And so on.
These are jobs which are likely to either kill one outright by accident (Equestrian tech is about as safe as our tech of 75-100 years ago, and it's only that safe because they value equine life very greatly) or through cumulative diseases such as various forms of fibrosis from dust inhalation. That's why we have all the lonely old mares I hypothesized -- many of them married stallions in high-risk professions, were widowed, and never found another husband (after marriages lasting decades, in many cases they didn't want to do so).
To take the obvious example, apple farming is normally not a high-risk occupation, but it is if you live on the outskirts of a cursed forest. And yes, Applejack comes off as a bit masculine to other Ponies because she's a tough field worker in addition to being boss-mare.
What I'm saying is most true for the Earth Ponies, of course, since they're the ones who do most of the muscle-intensive work in Equestria. On the other hand, they're also the majority of the population -- I assume around 51-52 percent. So they have a major influence on all demographic trends by sheer numbers.
And definitely as regards the military, especially when the military needs to be rapidly expanded in wartime. Frontline combat positions would be by far mostly male.
After the Shadow Wars, including the Great Changeling War I'm writing about, Equestria is going to suffer a larger Stallion Dearth than was previously the case. Though mostly confined to one generation, and nowhere near as bad as a 1:6 male-to-female ratio -- the wars weren't disastrous for Equestria. Merely painful.
2567921
Lessened, yes. Erasing it is impossible because of the mathematics involved.
Suppose two bisexual mares fall in love, marry and want to have foals. They do so by mean of casual sex or artificial insemination. They have four foals (two each). Their family now contains 2 adults and 4 children. Even in Equestria, where children are encouraged to become more self-sufficient than in our society, that's a 1:2 adult to child ratio. For the first 5 years of the child's life, it is essentially a consumer, producing no labor of value to the family. For the next 5 years (age 6-10) the child can be trusted with increasingly-productive chores. And for the next 5 years (age 11-15) the child may be able to be pulling her own weight in the family. It's really not until around 16 or so that the child is producing much of a surplus for the (extended) family as she goes out and embarks on her career (which might be on the family farm, as was the case for Applejack).
By contrast, in a monogamous society if a mare meets a stallion and marries, and they have two chidlren, then their nuclear family has a 1:1 adult-to-child ratio, which is much easier for the parents. One of the main points of marriage is that it recruits the males as economic partners. This is even more important in a lower-tech society than our own, because in a lower-tech society everypony is living much closer to subsistence.
One may of course reach beyond the nuclear family of the mother to her extended family; in other words the single mare with foal can ask her parents and siblings for help. In a society like Equestria's, that help might well be more forthcoming than in ours, but such help comes with a price of lessened status within the family. Even if they're nice about it, one's parents and siblings are fully aware that they are being asked to donate their time and effort to support somepony else's offspring, and this puts the foal's mother in the position of a supplicant who is being done a favor, which always reduces the status within her own family of she who accepts the favor.
Inevitably, unless the single mother is very humble about accepting her status reduction, and in some families even if she is humble, there's going to be a screaming argument with somepony asking the obvious question "Couldn't you just keep your tail down?" Indeed, the fear of just this situation is one of the fundamental drivers both of sexual morality and the invention of contraceptives.
What makes it even worse to be a mare in the Stallion Dearth Equestrias is that she may have to take the risk of being in this situation, because if she's not high- or at least middling-status this may be her only hope of reproduction; even if she is, given the competition she may have to accept giving sex without receiving even a promise of marriage because if she doesn't the stallion may lose interest in her. And he may lose interest in her anyway.
Is Twilight exactly the best Pony to be doing this, given her own apparent virginity and only very moderate interest in sex? Or is this a much more sexually-driven Twilight than we see on the show? While Twilight does give off the "socially conscious upper-class meddler" vibe in spades, I'd think that the solution she'd be more likely to seek would be magical in nature, given her training.
Twilight, incidentally, is the poster mare for the higher-status female who would do well even in an Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria, because she is both important and charismatic enough that she could make a monogamous marriage with a high status male, and self-controlled enough that she wouldn't be much tempted to do anything that could get her pregnant beforehand. But then a female like Twilight Sparkle would do well in all but an insanely-misogynistic culture (and might thrive even in such, due to the degree of her superiority and hence male help she could recruit).
2567960
(*nods*) To some extent, yes. And may well wind up marrying Spike, at which point it would be a good thing for both of them if ki-rin are real in their particular worldline. One of the reasons I can see her returning his love is that they're Kindred Spirits, not least of all in their approach toward romantic love.
It seems likely from their displayed romantic and sexual behavior that all of the Mane Six are picking the higher-risk (in a Stallion Dearth world) bigger-payoff reproductive strategy of being very choosy about mates. They are probably either virgins or sexually-fastidious, and are careful about any behavior that could lead to conception. The risk, of course, in a Stallion-Dearth world is that they would never find a mate. The payoff, of course, is that if they do it will almost certainly result in a marriage, possibly a monogamous one.
In my Equestria, of course, their behavior toward males isn't that abnormal, because most mares expect monogamous or only very slightly polygynous marriages (one additional wife, or some male marital infidelity). In a Stallion-Dearth Equestria, it would be downright strange.
On Mrs. Cake's pregnancy and childbirth ... yes, but remember that she's got a perfect build for childbearing, and she is IN a monogamous marriage and hence had a committed helper during her whole pregnancy. Teleportation and phasing are at least mid-level unicorn magic, and I would imagine that using these medically (I know exactly what you mean, since I wrote birth-by-Gating as the way Pinkie's bigger and stranger twin Claire came into the world) would be high-level -- perhaps available by calling in a specialist in an emergency, though Ponyville General is suspciously well-equipped for a small-town hospital) (1)
(Tangentially, in an Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria, Cup Cake would have very high status gained by successfully attracting a loyal monogamous husband, much more so than she would have in a more normal Equestria, where her fate would be enviable but not unusual).
Yes, of course it's possible for single mothers to support their children, or absurdly young single mothers to have them raised by their mothers as "little sisters." The latter might even be used as a face-saving fiction. But it's still an economically-bad situation to be in compared to marriage, and that's going to affect the social status of the single mother in a negative fashion.
It does in our society, after all, and we're richer than the Equestrians.
Another problem with single parenthood. When one marries, one gets claims on the loyalty of two parental families -- one's own, and one's in-laws (against everypony but one's spouse). When one is a single parent, one forms no new bonds. Nor does one form bonds for one's family. One has brought less into one's birth-family than one would have done by marriage. This, too, means relatively lessened social status.
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(1) - Why, it's almost as if Celestia knew that the existence of Ponyville where it was would mean a lot of casualties from monsters coming out of the Everfree, and wanted the hospital to be ready to receive them.
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You're assuming here that each mare would want a certain number of biological children, rather than just children to nurture. Even if, for the sake of argument, we take two as the number of foals the average mare would want, it's a pretty big leap to just assume that she would want to bear that many herself when she's in a household with what amount to adoptive or step-children to care for.
Not to mention that, if you do use that assumption, depending on herd size, polygynous marriages wouldn't provide that much more assistance: Lyra and BonBon each have two foals, making the ratio 1:2, but for, say, Roseluck and Daisy, married to Caramel, the ratio is still 3:4, rather than 1:1. But if Caramel then brings Lilly into the mix, the ratio is now 2:3, and the value of a marriage arrangement decreases the more mares are involved.
Much more likely though is that given at least one biological foal and other, non-biological foals to co-parent, few mares would want to increase their family size past the point of economic viability. If the family could only afford a 1:1 ratio, they would each have one. If the situation made more children possible or advantageous (say, a farm) they would have more just like any two parent household.
In a way, that's the plot of the story. She isn't, and she recognizes that, but she's discovered and is very concerned about the population decline. A magical solution on an Equestria-wide scale would be impractical and even possibly irresponsible (Twilight is well aware of the unintended consequences of magic use on a population, after all.)
The tone of the campaign is similar to the resource conservation efforts during WWII ("When you ride alone, you ride with Hitler," etc.) and while Twilight could easily attract a monogamous male mate, she considers it her patriotic duty not to. Prior to her discovery of the problem she's only shown interest in stallions, but she's had a considered-but-dismissed attraction to Applejack (who, in this canon, is a openly lesbian.) This puts her in the position where pursuing that would be the politically and socially responsible thing to do (both out of patriotism and to avoid looking hypocritical), but Applejack is likely to be suspicious that Twilight's intentions with her are at best wishful thinking and at worst only politically motivated, and would never accept a mare who was laying back and thinking of Equestria.
So Twilight has to convince Applejack that her attraction is genuine and confess to why she never pursued it before (she was uncomfortable with changing her perception of herself, both in her own mind and the view of her friends and family, from straight to bisexual.)
(For the rest of the girls: Rainbow Dash was one of he firs mares to sign up to have a foal, hoping to get her patriotic duty out of he way before joining the Wonderbolts and be more attractive to them due to her patriotism and the fact that she's unlikely to need time off in the future to fulfill it. She almost casually recruits Pinkie into a platonic co-parent role to care for the foal once she does join the Wonderbolts, which Twilight and AJ have their doubts about, but given Pinkie's caring nature and affection for Rainbow (not to mention both of them being oblivious to romance) it actually works quite well. Fluttershy reveals that she already is in a romantic relationship with a stallion, Bulk Biceps, but is willing to allow him to stud for other mares. Rarity want to focus on her career at the time, and hopes to be able to attract a stallion when the time comes (patriotism is all well and good, but a mare has needs.))
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I'm pretty sure that how it works, on the average, for successful biological lineages. Those mares who don't want their own children do not contribute genetically to the future generations; increasingly the traits not supporting the desire for one's own children are winnowed from the gene pool. Why else do you think women want to have children in the real world, given the extreme danger and effort required in all but the last century or so to have them?
"That many?" While I'm well aware that replacement rate drops to one-point-something if each stallion is siring more than two children, Equestria in canon has what looks like an expanding population (they are colonizing former wastelands). Two children in a lifetime is not a great number by the standards of most populations in most times and places!
Yes, and that's the problem. Unlike the mare in a monogamous couple, she's not the biological mother of all the children in her family; she has to devote some effort toward raising another mare's children. In other words, she has a rawer deal than she would in a non Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria, which was precisely my point.
Indeed, which is why it sucks to be a mare in an Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria. Though note that they would still have the powerful social-status advantage of having an adult male in their nuclear family -- stallions would enjoy immense social networking advantage, even if they were faithful to their wives, simply because as stallions they would command a lot of attention from lonely, frustrated mares (whether or not they actually took extramarital lovers).
Well, yes -- but that puts them at a disadvantage comapred to higher-status mares who can get husbands, whether shared with other mares or monogamous (in the case of the highest-status mares). They are forced to limit their reproductive opportunities relative to the luckier mares. Reduced reproductive success is in evolutionary terms the harshest and most significant consequence of low status, short of death.
The choice most mares face in an Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria is either a combination of promiscuity with stallions (because they can't keep a stallion of their own) with a bisexual relationship with a mare or mares (which, since they're not genetically predisposed to lesbianism, is probably less sexually-satisfying to them); or participation in a polygynous marriage with a stallion. If they are high-status mares, they can choose to marry a lower-status stallion, which works out okay if you are Cadance and the stallion is somepony as admirable as Shining Armor.
Stallions in the Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria never face this tough choice. They instead choose between promiscuity (lots of sex with a wide variety of mares, but little cultural influence over their children) and polygyny (lots of sex with a small number of mares, but great cultural influence over their children); with a few choosing monogamy (sex with one mare of higher status than themselves, and great cultural influence over their children). In the Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria, it's good to be a stallion -- which is precisely why evolution would act to eliminate the stallion dearth over the generations.
Oh, and I can guarantee that most stallions won't be willing to marry a mare who has another stallion's foal, and will probably avoid ever marrying mares with a reputation for promiscuity. Why? Because in the Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria, they can afford to be the choosier sex where commitment is concerned, because they are the less common one.
If Mr. Stallion insists on only marrying a virgin of higher social status, that is what he will get. And if in the meantime he bangs a whole string of lower-status mares, siring foals upon them and leaving them without support -- well, his future bride won't object too much -- that's what stallions do, after all. (If she lapsed even once, though, and he found out about it -- the wedding might well be off).
What I'm telling you, straight out, is that the Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria is a male chauvanist's dream scenario, rather than a Happy Lesbian Utopia. This follows very logically from the assumptions and the marriage market thus created.
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My point is that you're leaving out several key aspects of pony (and human) society: we're thinking beings who can reason and plan. Having two foals with fewer resources is not necessarily genetically advantageous to having one with increased resources, and humans (and ponies) realize that. Some will choose to have fewer foals and provide them with more resources, others will have more foals with fewer resources.
Additionally, parent foal ratio isn't everything. A single mother with a foal is at a disadvantage even with a 1:1 ratio, because the amount of care foals require (assuming they're like human infants, which canon support) is a major investment. At the same time, the economics of going from a 1:1 to 2:3 or even 1:2 ratio are not just a mater of multiplying resources; taking care of four children doesn't require twice the resources of two because some of those can be shared between children (child care, housing space, equipment.)
And finally, like humans, ponies are social creatures, and the drive to form families is at least partially social (which can be indirectly good for the passing of genes, but sometimes is simply a side effect of our higher intelligence which comes at the cost of individual genetic dominance-- evolution goes for "good enough" not "perfect.") Caring for the young of another pony as one cares for ones own may not be the most genetically successful proposition, but it can easily be just as emotionally and socially fulfilling, which is the thing that really matters to an individual.
So this is to say that you would be correct if ponies were perfect, gene passing machines, and if the key to successfully passing genes was a simple equation of "have two foals with the highest status pony one can find." But they aren't solely focused on reproduction, and the equation is not that simple.
It's a funny thing, you need to take the sentence as a whole to get the actual meaning. What I was saying there was what I detailed above: Two isn't a large number of foals under normal circumstances, but ask a woman with one child and four stepchildren if she wants more children... it's unlikely. For her, one is likely to be plenty.
While that's true, my point was that in an Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria, this is a method many mares would use to make single motherhood and promiscuity viable and less stigmatized, and therefore less of a drop in social standing, than it would be in an Equestria with an equal distribution.
To be perfectly clear, I am not arguing that Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria is likely to be better for mares, I'm arguing that different social arrangements can dull the impact both socially and genetically, and that as intelligent and social being they are likely to use them.
Once again: ponies (and humans) are not flawless genetic reproduction machines. Humans are prone to doing goofy things with social status that work against their genetic best interest-- look at the genetic trainwreck that noble classes often end up with, from Egypt to the fall of of the European nobility-- to see that a drive for social status doesn't always result in genetic success (and that no one at the time sees the flaw in this). Or modern America, where our standard of living is high enough and we're enough of a meritocracy that simple number of children, regardless of ability to support them, is a viable reproductive technique that's allowing those with "lower status" to easily outbreed those with higher social status, who are limiting their number of children in an attempt to maintain that status. Not to mention our tendency throughout history to decide that some group is inferior for no good genetic reason, and refuse to breed with them.
We also do goofy things with personal standards, like our current situation of moving towards serial monogamy, meaning that many Americans at least will end up investing resources in genetically unrelated offspring of their spouse, and would consider themselves immoral if they didn't make every attempt to give them an equal share of resources. Another example is our current philosophy of love matches, which aren't always the product of genetic desirability (Another side effect of higher intelligence is that what people find attractive isn't always the best mate, genetically speaking; we can easily imprint on traits that have nothing to do with genetic viability.) And, as a final example, the artificial gender disparity in modern China where families valued the traditional status of having sons over their genetic best interests, and drove themselves into a genetic brick wall in many cases.
That is to say...
Unless Equestria is a society that has tended to give higher status positions to mares, who might choose to take genetically inadvisable actions to ensure their own social status (such as having fewer foals and raising them by themselves or with a mare of equal status,) rather than enter into a marriage with a lower status stallion or a lower status position as part of a herd.
Unless Equestria has a high standard of living and progressive minded leadership likely to see this issue coming and attempt to nip it in the bud (no matter how genetically inadvisable the attempt.)
Unless Equestrian society is like our own, and develops personal and social standards that make the equation between genetic success and social status messy algebra that's constantly evolving, sometimes backwards, rather than a simple equation of higher status = better genetic success. Because if they're like us, there are social pressures, historic inertia, evolutionary side effects, and psychological drives that make it anything but intuitive.
I don't doubt that stallions who want a lot of sex will end up happy in a situation where it's two (or more) mares for every stallion, but their desirability, social status, political power, and reproductive success, even on average, are by no means guaranteed to be decided solely based on the one variable of gender disparity.
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Indeed. The term for that is "k-selective reproductive strategy," and both Humans and Ponies are prime examples of creatures that do this. The lower-status mare, who has failed to marry and instead wound up a single mother (or, if she's not primarily lesbian, accepting a more-or-less lesbian relationship with another mare as "settling" behavior), must choose between trying to have more children, at the price of less resources devoted per child; or devote the same amount of resources per child, but have less children. She gets to choose; she's not doomed to mindlessly lift her tail for everypony when she's in estrus and hence just keep pumping out foals as soon as she completes one pregnancy (though that, no doubt, is the middle-class stereotype of the underclass, in Equestria as in our world). She's a sapient being, not a dumb beast.
Though note: real horses are good examples of high-k reproducers. They have one foal at a time and carry it for around 11 months. Wild mares are choosy (by non-monogamous animal standards) about which stallions they'll mate. Foals only remain with their mothers for less than a year after birth, but short childhoods are common in herd animals (because if the foals don't grow self-reliant fast, they'll succumb to predators.
Real horses live around 20 years and spend about a year of that as "children" -- the Ponies live around 60-120 years and spend about 15 years of that as "children." Such extendended childhoods and overall neoteny is increasingly common as real kinds of animals grow smarter: compare prosimians to apes to humans, for instance. One reason for it is that the bigger and more capable one's brain, the more one has to learn to become fully functional in a society of similarly big-brained individuals.
(*nods*) That's a good point, and these economies of scale are a reason why mares, especially if they couldn't find husbands, would want to herd with other mares, and such herding might be reinforced by lesbian affect.
Yes, that makes sense.
It can be. The evidence is that, among Humans, there is a rather nasty failure mode where the non biological parent can become violently-hostile to the child, leading to severe child abuse and possibly murder. The Ponies are less violent than are we, so this sort of abuse would be far less common among them; the equivalent among them would be coolness, neglect and at worst abandonment. It would more be a matter of "My other mommy never really liked me much" than "My other mommy cruelly beat me."
Again, this would be a hazard primarily of lower-status families, in an Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria.
Well, actually, "as many as you can support to the best of your ability while still remaining happy and sane." You want "as many as you can support" because that's the r- side of reproduction, "to the best of your ability" because that's the k- side of reproduction ,and "while still remaining happy and sane" because otherwise you are reducing your fitness to be a mother in the future.
Remember that Equestria has a lot of room into which she may expand: the development of an industrial civilization complete with railroads, airships, steamships and cannons give her an immense military advantage over the various barbaric and monstrous creatures who inhabit a lot of the waste lands; at the same moment, steam-powered mass production means that productivity is also rising. Under such conditions, baby booms are the norm. The show plainly depicts a lot of unsettled territory, and new cities springing up in former wastes. Heck, it's even shown conflict with the natives!
We don't have to be flawless genetic reproduction machines: we are, however, good enough genetic reproduction machines to outcompete those humans who don't breed (or aid genes similar to our own if we don't breed) well enough that we were born in the first place. And so, necessarily, would be the Ponies, because they are there, and are the product of an evolutionary history harsher than our own (they faced real competition even as civilized beings from other sapients; we killed off all our serious competitors when we were still savages).
When considering the Ponies in evolutionary terms, don't be fooled by their niceness. Evolutionarily-speaking they are damned tough -- probably tougher than ourselves. They are consummate survivors. Their very niceness has been one of the tools of their survival, because it has facilitated their social cooperation against their foes.
This is actually a common trend historically; when you get an upper class that upper class tends to limit its own reproduction. There is a caveat here -- often it limits its own legitimate reproduction, meaning that while upper-class females have fewer babies, upper-class males may have very large numbers of (unacknowledged) babies. We are fooled by our tendency to focus on only the legitimate lines of descent, because these are the easier ones to trace.
For instance, in the Classical Greco-Roman example you gave, any upper- or upper-middle-class citizen had a household including female slaves. One of the privileges of mastership was that one could demand sex of ones slaves, and many masters (and some mistresses) did just that. This resulted in a lot of slave babies, who were not counted in the reproduction of the upper and upper-middle classes because they were born as slaves. Biologically, the upper classes were reproducing themselves, just not as the upper classes.
The analogue in an Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria would be that an upper-class stallion would have, essentially, as much breeding opportunity as he desired. (His main constraint would be that he had to keep his actual wife or wives happy, and maintain his own sanity by behaving what he considered decently, both of which are important because if he fails at these his home life becomes hell which reduces the "k" he can provide for his favored, legitimate offspring). A slightly-hypocritical upper-class stallion could separate his home life and his debauchery, keeping one or more upper-class wives, a whole string of middle-class marefriends, and enjoying whichever lower-class mares upon whom his fancy settled. He could have his cake and eat it too: he could raise several high-k children with his wives and have a dozen or more illegitimate foals with his marefriends, supporting them with stipends -- and totally ignore the consequences of his most casual enconters. Hence, he could play both the high-k and the high-r ends of the spectrum.
This is a very common fanon interpretation of Prince Blueblood's likely future.
As I said, in Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria, it's good to be a stallion. Especially an upper-class stallion.
A more honorable upper-class stallion? He could expect to marry up socially, and enjoy the attentions of an extremely devoted upper-upper class wife. His children would receive the most high-k possible upbringings, and his children's children probably be numerous and well cared for. And this is the normal fanon interpretation of Shining Armor.
And it's mostly a good thing to be Shining Armor, though it would be even better to be him in an Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria. (The negative side of being Shining Armor? Well, for one thing, enemies have to go through you to get to Cadance. This is a bad thing, given that Cadance has enemies). Then again, not only does Cadance love him, so does his own sister Twilight Sparkle, and both of them are Princesses. (Why does Twilight's love matter in the sense of evolutionary success, given that he's not going to directly reproduce with her? Because she would help protect his children -- her own nieces and nephews -- if anything happened to Shining).
The point of this, reproductively, is to keep your spouse happy. Both because a happy spouse is more likely to be a good parent to any children you have by that spouse, and because a happy spouse is less likely to take it out on one's own relatives, who do share some of your genes. Remember again, it's not all r-, it's also k-, and genes are "selfish" regarding copies of themselves, NOT individuals.
Humans have always been serial-monogamous, it's just that with longer lifespans we now have the option of remaining with the same partner in different stages of our lives more often than we used to. Ponies are probably going through this transition now, as their medical technology advances.
What you're not getting is that subcultures compete within a culture, families and sets within a subculture, and individuals within a family or set. Upper-class mares are much more likely to parlay their higher status (and hence improved bargaining position vis-a-vis stallions) by demanding extremely good treatment within marriages than by not getting married. Note: when I said that stallions would tend to marry up, I did not mean that Lady Elegant Estate would marry Smelly Sewer and let him treat her like dirt; I mean that Lady Elegant would marry lower-gentry Golden Coat and, perhaps, insist on being his only wife, or that any additional wives be from her own family.
Within the noble families themselves, Lady Elegant by having more foals would help ensure the greater likelihood that in the future her own branch of the Estates would inherit land and titles, simply because her branch would be less likely to die out. Her sister Proud Estate, who refuses to marry down and instead marries her (female) school chum, is less likely to produce a foal who inherits than would otherwise be the case. Competition occurs at all levels within the system.
Of course, competition is both r- and k-based. It's quite possible that Proud Estate's choice turns out to be the better one, since her foals have claims on inheritances from both families, which may be better than Elegant Estate's foals' claim on Golden Coat's family fortune (such as it is).
Oh, and by the way: noble families are likely to think of such considerations very explicitly, far more so than in any other walk of life.
The degree of totalitarian control needed to enforce State-approved mating choices would be such that it would require turning Equestria into some sort of People's Democratic Realm. I don't think Celestia would be unwise enough to make the attempt. If any Celestia did, she would be a Tyrantlestia -- if she wasn't before she attempted this, she would be afterward.
If you're talking about some sort of PA campaign, it would fail miserably, leaving mares angry that they were conned into participating in it and damaging their own lives and families in the process, because those mares who were too wise to follow the public line would enjoy greater success not only in r- and k-terms -- BUT ALSO IN TERMS OF PERSONAL HAPPINESS. This is what happens when you try to buck something as inexorable as strong evolutionary-selective logic.
I don't think Celestia would be unwise enough to make this attempt either. She might be willing to let some younger and less experienced Princess attempt it, as a painful lesson in the limitations of state action, though. This would be rather ruthless of her, but then Celestia's capable of ruthlessness in what she deems a good cause.
Oh, the stallions would also be competing with each other for the more desirable mares. As I previously said, the Extreme Stallion Dearth Equestria isn't hell for high-status mares (unless they buy into the random-mating campaign you described, and then it's a self-made hell, made more painful as they see the high-status mares who didn't buy into it enjoy happier lives). It just sucks to be most of them, because the basic equations are exactly as in our own world, save that any living stallion has his desirability multiplied by 5 or more.
That's unavoidable, short of a totalitarian matriarchy, given the Extreme Stallion Dearth.
Their workplace, where they spend a lot of time every day, is also where Pinkie Pie lives. That's enough to explain everything about the Cake twins.
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That's a good point -- she may have warped reality, intentionally or unintentionally.
While this was a problem in season one, given it's more childish tone and marketed to the younger demographic, these days the animators have done a much better job at balancing out the ratio. While it does seem like there are more mares in Ponyville, it's not a great big difference and it seems Ponyville is more of an exception rather than the rule. As is, I don't see any canon evidence for wide spread poly families nor this 'breeding season' that pops up.
That isn't to say that it isn't there, I just don't think it's all that common as it seems that the ponies favor monogamy as we humans do.