Big Cats, and human relationships (updated)

Ever watch a Big Cat Video? That is, a National Geographic or similar production on cheetahs, or lions, or leopards, etc. Back in the VCR, pre-On Demand days, I gave my husband a boxed set for Christmas one year, though we haven’t watched them lately, even though I suppose that now they’re probably readily available.

The same storyline repeats itself regardless of species (except for lions): the hapless female stuggles to feed her cubs single-handedly, while a predatory male lurks in the background, at best useless, at worst, a danger to the cubs. Somewhere early in the program, one of the cubs dies, maybe eaten by hyenas, but by the end, after much struggle, the cubs usually make it to adulthood, thanks to the endless search for food by their dedicated mother.

Don’t you, sometimes, in your more pessimistic moods, wonder if that’s where human relationships are headed? A mother and children as the family unit, and the male as a lone individual? Of course, the mortality rate in the Big Cat world is hardly something we’d tolerate (your kid died because you couldn’t feed it? Too bad, but no big deal, since you’ve still got another one.) but we solve that with food stamps and other welfare benefits at this point anyway.

It makes you wonder, though — has there been any society which organizes itself this way, in which the father is not expected to be responsible for his children?

In any case, the “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle” line was, I had always assumed, meant to read “a man and children,” but we’re now moving to a significant minority, or even a majority, of people, or pundits and Powers That Be, endorsing the Big Cat model of families, with or without the Big Cat dads paying child support, but with no regard to the ultimate path in life of those Big Cat dads.

Update:

Slate’s Double XX blog is promoting Big Cat families in a piece titled, ” Poor Women Don’t Need More Marriage.  They Need More [free] Child Care.”  Not sure if this is really the author’s intention, or if it’s just clickbait (and it hooked me, so I guess it worked — but the joke’s on you, Slate — I didn’t read any of your ads). 

Update again:  I’m resurrecting this because there are new pieces out about this topic:  Megan McArdle, on a new study on millenials, and theothermccain.com, linking to a talk on the underclass in England, where fathers have pretty well vanished.  The “defenders” of single moms lament that the men in their lives aren’t marriageable because they’re poor — but generations of poor people before them have managed to get married, and to do the best they can despite their poverty.