So called evolutionary psychology rarely reflects it accurately either (bc it’s junk science). This stuff about provide and protect is a function of patriarchy - not Stone Age dynamics, and the same goes for men wanting younger, attractive women.
“The idea that men around the world are concerned with the fertility of women but not their control over resources—and that men therefore have innate psychological preferences that compel them to seek women who are young, beautiful, and shapely but not women who are productive, industrious, or depend-able—relies upon a serious misrepresentation of the way subsistence resources are secured, processed, and allocated throughout the world."
“Surely women are concerned to find men who are willing to contribute resources to the family unit; but men are just as concerned to find women with the same qualities. For a hunter who is not attached to a gatherer is a hungry man; a man who catches seals will have a pile of rotten flesh on his hands, and no clothing on his back, if he cannot find a woman who will process his catch; a man who cuts down the forest for a swidden garden has nothing but a patch of burnt ground if there is no woman to plant and harvest the crops; and a man who brings gifts of male labor to a marriage exchange will remain a bachelor unless they are reciprocated by gifts of female labor. Indeed, if men truly chose spouses on the basis of the qualities that evolutionary psychologists purport to be universal male preferences, they would be at a significant disadvantage in terms of their own survival, not to mention that of their progeny.”
“In the end, evolutionary psychologists have imagined a reproductive strategy for men that would be highly unadaptive in most societies and across most of human history. Although it reflects the division of labor in industrial societies, it does not accord with or account for the diverse patterns of the division of labor found in the world.” (emphasis mine)
— Neo-liberal Genetics: The Myths and Moral Tales of Evolutionary Psychology by Susan McKinnon
