It argues that younger children benefit in that they make greater progress than their peers, but supports findings that they are at a competitive disadvantage compared to their older classmates.
Also interesting:
The benefits of being younger are even greater for those who skip a grade, an option available to many high-achieving children. Compared with nonskippers of similar talent and motivation, these youngsters pursue advanced degrees and enter professional school more often. Acceleration is a powerful intervention, with effects on achievement that are twice as large as programs for the gifted. Grade-skippers even report more positive social and emotional feelings.
The last sentence especially surprised me, as it contradicts what I thought to be conventional wisdom.
I don't understand how men wearing dresses works as a comparison to women wearing pants, as there hasn't been an equivalent attempt by men to adopt dresses as everyday attire.
It took many decades and two wars for women to be able to "get away with" wearing pants. They were adopted for practical reasons as women entered the workforce (skirts are more likely to get caught in factory machinery), and abandoned again when women exited the workforce post-war. Until the women's movement, pants on women were only tolerated when they were considered necessary.
I think you're misunderstanding the previous comment. It says the objective of the monogamous strategy is to increase the chances of survival for a particular set of offspring, not a particular type. That is, if a man partners with a woman and provides for the children they have together, he increases that set of offspring's chances of survival.
The point about marriage and/or monogamy benefitting lower status males is that, in a polygynous system, all or most of the females will be having sex with the few high-status males who can provide for them and their offspring (barring rape). High-status males would have lots of sex partners and opportunities to produce offspring, low-status males would have few or none.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20111646-503544.html