一般而言，男人会与比自己小的女人结婚，女人也乐于嫁给比自己大的男人
Men marry younger women and women prefer to marry older men, in general. But is it culture, genetics or the environment that drives such a choice—and is there an optimal age difference? New research shows that, at least for the Sami people of preindustrial Finland, men should marry a woman almost 15 years their junior to maximize their chances of having the most offspring that survive.
"Sami people married only once in their lifetimes,"says ecologist Samuli Helle of the University of Turku in Finland. "We found that marrying women 14.6 years younger maximized men's lifetime reproductive success—in other words, the number of offspring surviving to age 18."
Ultimately, it is the age at which the woman begins bearing children that is the biggest factor, the paper in Biology Letters suggests: Younger women, in general, bear more healthy children.
一般而言，男人会与比自己小的女人结婚，女人也乐于嫁给比自己大的男人。那么，是文化、遗传或者其他环境因素造成了这种选择，还是客观上就存在最佳的结婚年龄差异？一项最新研究发现，至少对工业化社会前的芬兰土著民族——萨米人而言，男性需要与比自己小15岁的女人结婚，才能最大限度地保证他们的进化适应性。 “萨米人一生只结一次婚，”芬兰大学土尔库大学的生态学家萨姆利·赫利说，“我们发现发现，娶个小14.6岁的女人才能最大限度地保证男人一生的繁殖成功，换句话说，18岁的后代越多越成功。” 归根结底，女性开始生孩子的年龄是最大的影响因素，这篇发表于《生物学快报》上的论文建议：一般说来，更年轻的女性生的孩子会更加健康。
