Comments, anyone? Excerpted from Thought Contagion : How Belief Spreads Through Society by Aaron Lynch. Copyright © 1996. ...All "girlishly helpless" behaviors mimic somewhat the intrinsic "personality" of any young child (boy or girl). Young children have less mental aptitude, cannot pay bills, take little responsibility for contact with others or mutual transportation, behave whimsically, are deemed "innocent" by adults, and are preferred to relate deferentially to adults. Therefore, a woman who projects a "helpless" image toward a man tests his reaction to a child-- without needing any conscious or subconscious plan. If the man accepts this childlike, innocent helplessness and responds with "manly responsibility," he shows more promise for acting that way as a father with real children. He also shows promise for supporting a wife slowed down by pregnancy or nursing. In short, he makes a more plausible family man. The "girlish helplessness" meme acts as a "family man finder" for its female host, thereby explaining its replication advantage. Whether a woman deliberately seeks a family man or not, mating with one usually boosts her reproductive career. This of course gets her meme imitated by more young girls than happens with a "womanly responsibility" role. The "helpless" meme thus enjoys a gender-linked version of parental propagation. This meme acts blindly, in that it has no built-in sensitivity to what individual women want, and presumes no uniform desire for children among its hosts. Thus, blindly, it finds family men even for women who plan to remain childless. This in turn helps some of them change their minds later and have children, ultimately passing down more copies of the "girlish helplessness" meme...
