While doing research on the explosion of crime and its correlation with parental alienation for my upcoming documentary series Cash&Prizes, I was reminded of an evolutionary biology class I had in college twenty years ago.  

In the mid-twentieth century, a flock of cowbirds flew over to Brazil from Africa in a storm. This species of birds became responsible for a serious decline in bird populations, and contributed to the extinction of some species of native birds in the Americas. This is because cowbirds have what is called a parasitic reproductive strategy.  

This strategy involves laying eggs in the nests of other birds while they are foraging. When the hosts return to their nests, they default to their instinct to care for all of the eggs in the nest. As the cowbird chick grows, it will dominate its host siblings, often pushing them out of the nest.

Sometimes the host birds’ normal care behaviors are also altered. For example, a host may destroy some or all their eggs as a reaction to encountering a strange egg in their nest. But more importantly, cowbird chicks are usually significantly larger and consequently more demanding of the host parents. This, in turn, causes the host to be overworked, which starves out the host bird’s biological young as they are raised alongside the cowbird chick.

Because of this reproductive strategy, cowbirds are responsible for as much as 10-20% of the deaths of host birds in the regions they live in. Over time, this has a serious effect on animal biodiversity in the region, and can destabilize its ecology.

Thinking about this also got me jogging my memory of other birds that use a parasitic reproductive strategy, and I was reminded of the cuckoos and the entomology of the term cuckold from Victorian novels. I remembered that the term cuckold took off in the late 16th century because ornithology (the study of birds), became a popular hobby in Western Europe at that time.

This term cuckold, originating from the French word “cocu,” which itself refers to the call of the cuckoo bird and its reproductive strategy, came to describe situations where a man unknowingly works to raise children who are not his own, contributing to his own genetic death, and severely diminishing his contribution to the human story.

Now, in the course of my research on the intersections between the criminal justice system, The New Jim Crow, the family court system, the war on drugs, the welfare state, fatherlessness, parental alienation, and MUCH MORE, I am beginning to see parallels between the reproductive strategies used by cowbirds and cuckoos, as well as various human strategies for reproducing.

Humans, just like animals, respond very dramatically to incentives in their environment, and there are a variety of perverse incentives that have created an explosion of single motherhood, absent, incarcerated, or alienated fathers, tax-subsidies for regressive and contra-nurturing environments that undermine children’s life outcomes, and so on. Essentially, cowbirds are comparable to many of the situations men and women find themselves in today, due to a combination of state policy and Briffault’s Law.

The reproductive principle which famously asserts that “the female, not the male, determines all the conditions of the animal family. Where the female can derive no benefit from association with the male, no such association takes place.”

But how far back does this kind of behavior go in humans? Based on the origin of the term, one might think that this phenomenon originates in the time it grew popular, however ancient texts reveal that this has been a phenomenon in societies for hundreds if not thousands of years.
While I am by no means a bible-thumper wearing a religion on my sleeve, I find it fascinating that ancient books can reveal insight to human nature, and on male and female behaviors.

There is a spooky section attributed to Solomon that was written over 3000 years ago, seeming to highlight the same sorts of problems we see in society today. Based on my research, I conclude it’s the biggest problem we face in contemporary culture, and we see hints of it in the text:

Proverbs 5:1-11
1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom, turn your ear to my words of insight,
2 that you may maintain discretion and your lips may preserve knowledge.
3 For the lips of the adulterous woman drip honey, and her speech is smoother than oil;
4 but in the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave.
6 She gives no thought to the way of life; her paths wander aimlessly, but she does not know it.
7 Now then, my sons, listen to me; do not turn aside from what I say.
8 Keep to a path far from her, do not go near the door of her house,
9 lest you lose your honor to others and your dignity to one who is cruel,
10 lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich the house of another.
11 At the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent.

This text illuminates what might be called the “dark shadow” of female reproduction. It reflects a tendency to choose the self over one’s partner, one’s own offspring, or future generations, and hints at a parasitic reproduction strategy at play.

In 1960, only 2% of children were born out of wedlock. According to the US Census, now 60% of children are; and if you are in the bottom 50% economically, 80% of children are born out of wedlock. More disturbingly, 76% of all children will go through your state’s child support network during their childhood. Most disturbing, according to the US Census, the average age of a grandmother in the top 20 inner-cities in the the US is 31 years old.

In a sense, we are all cuckolded to some degree as taxpayers, which means we are all participating in and enabling parasitic reproduction strategies, which in nature, can cause extinction and wreck havoc on a given environment. 

Sincerely Juan Galt a child of Feminism whose mother had 3 husbands and 4 children for 4 different men. That is cuckoo, literally.