The reason why pedophilia is so widespread
Monogamy ⟹ Pedophilia 🤯
Unfortunately and disturbingly, the evolution of pedophilia and the evolution of monogamy are linked.
Evolution is an automatic process that operates in nature without a brain or an intelligent designer to guide it. Evolution has no ethics. It mindlessly favors whichever methods increase reproductive success (number of descendants) regardless of whether those methods are ethical or unethical.
Consequently, with no ethical rules to restrain it, evolution promotes the following patterns:
The more monogamous a primate species is, the more that pedophilia evolves and spreads.
The more polygamous a primate species is, the more that the males have no interest in sex with children, because polygamous sex with children produces no more children.
Humans are primates, thus the same pattern applies. Therefore, if all humans were strictly and strongly monogamous, then all humans would eventually evolve into pedophiles.
In comparison, chimpanzees practice no monogamy at all. They are promiscuous and entirely polygamous. Consequently, male chimpanzees prefer older females that are capable of producing babies and competently caring for babies. This makes perfect sense, because this preference maximizes the number of descendants that a male chimpanzee produces.
Note that chimpanzees do not form long-term relationships, and male chimpanzees do not assist in the care of children (the mothers are all single mothers).
If a male chimpanzee was ever born with a pedophilic genetic mutation that caused him to feel sexually attracted to prepubescent females instead of mature females, then this pedophilic mutation would quickly become extinct, because he would have fewer descendants or none at all.
In contrast, pedophilic genes in humans did not become extinct, because historically pedophilic men did produce many descendants, because these men formed long-term monogamous relationships with female children (including marriages).
Although the girl was initially infertile, the couple stayed together long enough for the girl to grow into a woman and start reproducing. This behavior enabled the propagation of genes for pedophilia combined with monogamy.
Pedophilia depends on monogamy.
Ruthless advantages to marrying a prepubescent girl
Unfortunately, in the past, there were ruthless advantages to marrying a girl before she reached puberty, provided that the couple stayed together in a long-term monogamous relationship.
Historically, a prepubescent girl was much less likely to infect a man with an incurable sexually-transmitted infection such as syphilis, etc.
She was also most likely a virgin and had no prior children, thus the pedophilic man was not forced to support another man’s children. Remember, proper contraception was invented only very recently whereas humans have been evolving for thousands of years.
For example, if the year was 1400 and a woman was 20-25 years old, then there was a substantial risk that she was already infected with one or more viruses or bacteria, and she already had at least one or two children from a different man.
A man could avoid these disadvantages by marrying a child instead. Choosing a child could also save his life, because syphilis was often deadly in the past. Nowadays syphilis is curable.
Please note that I am strongly opposed to child marriage and sex with children. I am only explaining how evolution operates. Evolution is not an ethical process. It is brutal.
Women can be pedophiles as well
Some people believe in a stereotype that presents pedophiles as being always male, but many different pieces of evidence prove that pedophiles of both genders exist.
A related issue is that pedophilia (or educator sexual misconduct) is a serious problem in schools. For example, more than 1 out of every 10 children (11.6% of children) received sexual comments or sexual images from teachers or other staff members at schools, and 15% of the perpetrators were women, according to a study conducted by the department of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York in May 2022.
There is no apparent reproductive advantage for women to evolve sexual attraction to boys. If anything, it should reduce their reproductive success. The most likely explanation is genetic crossover, meaning that pedophilia evolved in males and then accidentally spread to a percentage of females. Alternatively, the evolution of pedophilia was never 100% successful in limiting the behavior to males.
Alternatively, evolution may have gotten somewhat confused or mixed up by the intended direction of age preferences in women. Historically, young women had greater reproductive success when they were attracted to older men. For example, a pregnant 18yo woman and her baby were more likely to survive with an experienced/proven 30yo man than an inexperienced 18yo man.
Thus, women are supposed to be attracted to men older than themselves, and not to men younger than themselves. This mechanism appears to have mutated or failed in a minority of women.
Prevalence of pedophilia
The prevalence of pedophilia is higher than people realize or want to acknowledge. When men search for their favorite kind of pornography in pornography websites, the most common word that they type in the search box is “teens”.
The word “teenager” covers the age range from thirteen to nineteen. This is convenient for pedophiles, because when they search for “teens”, they wish to find 13yo or 14yo girls (or even younger), but if they were ever accused of pedophilia, then they could lie and claim that they meant nineteen when they searched for “teens” every day for years.
The DSM-5 (published in 2013 by the American Psychiatric Association) provides only an estimation of the prevalence. It states:
“The population prevalence of pedophilic disorder is unknown. The highest possible prevalence for pedophilic disorder in the male population is approximately 3%–5%.”
5% is surely an underestimation, because the majority of pedophiles never admit to pedophilia (especially considering that sex with children is statutory rape). Furthermore, most pedophiles do the right thing, meaning they ignore their attraction to children and never act on it.
Even if 5% is correct, it is still a huge number of pedophiles. The population of the USA in 2024 was approximately 340 million. 5% of that means at least 8.5 million male pedophiles in the USA and 204 million male pedophiles in the world.
What to do if you feel attracted to children
Fortunately, I do not feel any sexual attraction to children whatsoever, but if I did, then I would strenuously suppress this attraction and never act on it, because it is unethical and harmful.
If you inherited a harmful sexual behavior such as pedophilia, sadism, or masochism, then I suggest that you seriously consider doing all of the following:
Never engage in the bad sexual behavior in real life.
Never fantasize about the bad sexual behavior.
Never watch any pornographic videos or images that depict the bad sexual behavior.
Never masturbate or orgasm while fantasizing about, reading about, or watching videos or images depicting the bad behavior, because this activity could potentially strengthen your arousal in response to the bad behavior and thereby worsen your problem.
Visit a psychologist and get professional advice about how to solve the problem as much as possible.
Self-delusion occurs frequently
Many people use the following emotional thought process:
“If X is true, then I would be sad or upset or guilty.”
“I do not want to be sad or upset or guilty.”
“Therefore, I believe that X is not true.”
That is self-delusion or self-deception. It occurs frequently.
For that reason, I expect that many people will strenuously ignore all the evidence and all the logic and reasoning, and they will deceive themselves by angrily insisting that there is no connection between monogamy and pedophilia.
“The strength of a mind can be measured by the amount of truth that it can endure, or more precisely, by the extent to which it requires that the truth be diluted, veiled, sweetened, muffled, or falsified.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche, 1886)