There's a lot of evolutionary processes that don't have to do with having more offspring, but increasing the viability of less offspring. Having kids, no matter the species, is a very costly affair. You could argue that mate selection generally reduces the number of offspring, but increases the viability.

I've read a hypothesis (very much unproven) that having some gay members of a species increases the viability by having more people to care for the offspring without being in mate competition. It's called the gay uncle hypothesis

[–] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 6 months ago

The grandma effect of manopause still applies whether or not we evolved with reproductive thresholds in order to secure that advantage.

So whether or not the gay demographic originally served the population by providing more adults to kids, it certainly does now.

[–] SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 months ago

I like this

[–] Wilzax@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

People who can have sex but choose when to reproduce experience more satisfaction and control over their lives, which leads to better outcomes for the children they interact with, who will most typically share a large number of genes, since the children we tend to interact with most are family. Children who experience better outcomes are more likely to themselves raise more children.

All good things for your common man are evolutionarily beneficial.