Using Birth Control leads to Unnatural Selection of Mates

Most everybody I know began using birth control pills or condoms right around the first year of college, save for a few “experienced” friends of mine who got their first prescription birth control pills during high school. Sure, some of my friends said they took birth control pills to regulate their cycles (me, included), but we all knew the real reason…this was the age where we were all beginning to have more and more sexual encounters so religiously taking our pills was a way to have full control over our fertility. However, a new study is showing that not only did we take control of our fertility, but we also may have been changing the way we picked, wooed and kept our mates.

This study, published in a recent Trends in Ecology and Evolution, shows that the impact these contraceptives have on a woman’s hormones may also have an impact on the partners a woman chooses and the chances of reproduction. It has long been known that women are fertile for only a few select days within the span of a full menstrual cycle, right before ovulation occurs. Past studies and research have shown that the partners both men and women prefer ebb and flow based on the natural fluctuations of hormones during a menstrual cycle. In fact, during ovulation, a noticeable shift occurs in terms of female characteristics and behaviors that is used to lure a prospective mate.

During ovulation, women tend to begin preferring men that have masculine features and men that are competitive and dominant. They also tend to lean towards men who are not similar genetically. In fact, some studies have suggested that couples who are genetically similar may be a factor in infertility. On the flip side, other studies have shown that men may also prefer women who are in the midst of ovulation, especially in those scenarios where women can be compared to other women in terms of attractiveness.

With all this background, it may start to make sense how birth control pills can step in and mess with this natural order of things. When a woman takes an oral contraceptive, hormones are altered to mimic those hormones more associated with a state of being pregnant. Dr. Alexandra Alvergne, the study’s author, states, “Although mate choice studies in humans have routinely recorded pill use during the last decade to control for its confounding effects, little effort has been invested in understanding the consequences of such effects of the pill.” Dr. Alverne and her colleague Dr. Virpi Lummaa also suggest that a woman taking birth control pills may have a negative effect in terms of attracting a potential mate. The reason for this is that the disruption the pills cause in a woman’s natural cycle may lessen how attractive she appears to men.

Alvergne and Lummaa also note that women who are on oral contraceptives do not experience that natural attraction to mates that are not genetically similar during ovulation. Lummaa states, “The ultimate outstanding evolutionary question concerns whether the use of oral contraceptives when making mating decisions can have long-term consequences on the ability of couples to reproduce. If this is the case, pill use will have implications for both current and future generations, and we hope that our review will stimulate further research on this question.”