Thread by @arctotherium42

The WEMP includes a unique set of four characteristics:
1) Absolute monogamy
2) Low illegitimacy and cuckoldry
3) Neolocality (marriage waits until couple can form a new household). This is the most unique aspect of the WEMP. arctotherium.substack.com/p/the-western-…

As a result of (3), in bad times (in medieval/early modern period), you had (4): a late age of marriage (often 24-26 for women) and, uniquely, a large number of never married (up to 25%) women (never married men being common in other civilizations).

The WEMP created a negative feedback loop on population, allowing for population regulation below the Malthusian threshold without family planning/infanticide (East Asia), constant extreme war (Eastern Europe) or extremely high disease burdern (SS Africa).

The WEMP is also eugenic, because gating marriage by independent economic success and children by marriage means those who excel in market economy have more children with smaller generation times. This is one of the mechanisms of the Clarkian selection that led to the IR.

The WEMP also aligns men's personal and reproductive interests with those of society at large better then perhaps any other marriage pattern.

The WEMP is often postulated to be related to Northwest Europe's disproportionate achievement and success even compared to other high-IQ populations by incentivizing large-scale impersonal cooperation thanks to neolocality reducing family support.

This forced the development of impersonal institutions to fulfill the role extended family did in other agrarian cultures, and those who couldn't interact well with these new institutions were selected out of the gene pool. Gene-culture coevolution for large scale cooperation.

The main reason I wrote the post is that there is a misconception I commonly see among the small-but-vocal group of "racist feminists". This is that the high age of first marriage typical of the WEMP means that the post-Sexual Revolution Western status quo is normal for whites.

This is not true. The high age of first marriage is the result of neolocality + poor economic conditions. In prosperous times and places, age of first marriage was lower. These include colonial America (first table), immediately post-Black Death, IR Britain, and the Baby Boom.

Needless to say, every NW Euro country today is incredibly prosperous compared to Medieval Europe. The modern West also fails conditions (1) and (2); we are not absolutely monogamous and illegitimacy rates are not low (>50% in many countries).

The WEMP + modern prosperity + contraception gives you the Baby Boom, not the modern day. The post-Sexual Revolution West is closer to Africa + contraception then the Western norm.

While certainly of historical curiosity for explaining the rise of the West, it's not obvious how important the WEMP is today. I think it's more useful to study the Baby Boom directly (most recent application) for prescriptions. But it's important to set the record straight.