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can tolerate the difficult learning and practicing required to perfect a
talent (for a first report on this topic, see Nakamura 1988 and Robinson
1986). In the latter study, equally talented high school mathematics
students were divided into those who by objective and subjective criteria
were still involved in math by senior year, and those who were not. It
was found that the involved students spent 15 percent of their waking
time outside of school studying, 6 percent in structured leisure activities
(e.g., playing a musical instrument, doing sports), and 14 percent in
unstructured activities, like hanging out with buddies and socializing.
For those no longer involved, the respective percentages were 5 percent,
2 percent, and 26 percent. Since each percentage point corresponds to
about one hour spent in the activity each week, the figures mean that
students still involved in math spend one hour a week more studying
than in unstructured socializing, whereas those no longer involved
spend 21 more hours a week socializing than studying. When a teenager
becomes exclusively dependent on the company of peers, there is little
chance to develop a complex skill.
173 The description of Dorothy’s life-style is based on personal experience.
174 For Susan Butcher, see The blew Yorker (Oct. 5, 1987, pp. 34-35).
176 Kinship groups. One of the most eloquent essays on the civilizing
effects of the family on humankind is Levi-Strauss’s Les Structures elemen-
taires de la Parente (1947 [1969]). The sociobiological claim was first
articulated by Hamilton (1964), Trivers (1972), Alexander (1974), and
E. O. Wilson (1975). For later contributions to this topic see Sahlins
(1976), Alexander (1979), Lumdsen & Wilson (1983), and Boyd &.
Richerson (1985). The attachment literature is now very large; the clas
sics in the area include work by John Bowlby (1969) and Mary D.
Ainsworth et al. (1978).
Primogeniture. For the effects of inheritance laws in Europe see Haba-
kuk (1955); in France, see Pitts (1964); in Austria and Germany, see
Mitterauer &. Sieder (1983).
179 Monogamy. According to some sociobiologists, however, monogamy
does have an absolute advantage over other mating combinations. If we
assume that siblings help each other more in proportion to the genes
they share, then children of monogamous marriages will help each other
more because they share more genes than children whose parents are
not the same. Thus under selective pressures, children of monogamous
couples will get more help, and thus might survive more easily, and
reproduce proportionately more, than children of polygamous couples
growing up in a similar environment. Moving from the biological to the
cultural level of explanation, it seems clear that, other things being
