9 ms·

Monogamy reduces major social problems of polygamist cultures (2012)

54 points by networked 11y ago

AdrianRossouw 11y ago
> In cultures that permit men to take multiple wives, the intra-sexual competition that occurs causes greater levels of crime, violence, poverty and gender inequality than in societies that institutionalize and practice monogamous marriage. Wouldn't that just be any culture that has a significantly offset male-female ratio?
- ap3 11y ago
  In a specific cohort lets say age 18-35 - is the only thing that matters for this study "access" to women not how many women a man can married? Wonder what the polygamy male-female ratio is compared to current societies with skewed ratios (CN / IN)?
  - beccasanchez 11y ago
    By "access" are you just referring to prostitution?
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > In a specific cohort lets say age 18-35 - is the only thing that matters for this study "access" to women not how many women a man can married? No. What seems to matter in the study is whether men have acceptable marriage prospects. (It'd be interesting to see, in that context, whether permitting same-sex marriage reinforces the effect observed and further reduces the same problems. It'd also be interesting to see, as marriage itself becomes less of an expectation, whether the effect is more from men being married -- in which case denormalizing marriage would be expected to reverse the benefits -- or whether the effect is more from men not being alienated by being unable to meet a social expectation of marriage -- in which case denormalizing marriage would be expected to reinforce the benefits.)
- Shivetya 11y ago
  My question would be, does this behavior hold up regardless of the culture's average income level? Surely some of the cultures are doing this because the poverty level is great. sarcasm, polygamy and monogamy have the same major social problem, one spouse too many.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Wouldn't that just be any culture that has a significantly offset male-female ratio? A significantly-greater-than-1.0 male-to-female ratio would be a different cause of the same problem; polygyny produces it even without that ratio difference. (Polyandry would seem, in principle, to offset it, but there aren't lots of historical examples of that to study.)
RyanRies 11y ago
How do we know which one is the cause and which one is the effect? Or that it's not just yet another case of correlation mistaken for causation? Do more intense levels of gender inequality lead to polygamous marriage, or does polygamous marriage lead to more intense levels of gender inequality?
- dozzie 11y ago
  Or neither, because both are results of an underlying cause?
- beccasanchez 11y ago
  It has nothing to do with gender equality. It has to do with economic inequality between males. Economic inequality between males means more and more women are competing for a smaller supply of wealthy males. Increased demand for top males leads to gender inequality as more and more women compete for a smaller pool of rich men, reducing the bargaining power of every individual woman and increasing the bargaining power of the few males who are marriage material. Increased demand for top males leads to polygamy and other polygamous arrangements such as mistresses.
  - analyst74 11y ago
    It's not just inequality between males, but also the wellness of poor people. If people worry less about starvation, they will put less emphasis on potential partner's financial status.
    - s_dev 11y ago
      That doesn't explain polygamy in the richer parts of the Middle East where it's far more common than Western Europe. Starvation or even significant malnourishment beyond ones own poor choices aren't common. Relative economic inequality is common though to both places.
  - marknutter 11y ago
    > Economic inequality between males means more and more women are competing for a smaller supply of wealthy males. Increased demand for top males leads to gender inequality as more and more women compete for a smaller pool of rich men, reducing the bargaining power of every individual woman and increasing the bargaining power of the few males who are marriage material. I don't see how any of this holds up in today's society where women are earning just as much as men, and in some relationships, more.
Camillo 11y ago
Would the authors venture to make a prediction on what will happen as the US moves away from monogamy? Edit: I'm not talking about moving towards poligamy. I'm talking about moving away from monogamous marriage in general. To quote from the article: According to Henrich, monogamy’s main cultural evolutionary advantage over polygyny is the more egalitarian distribution of women, which reduces male competition and social problems. It seems obvious to me that this not a specific disadvantage of polygyny, but a specific advantage of monogamy. The state of nature, without marriage, also ought to produce a less "egalitarian distribution of women".
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  Is the U.S. moving away from monogamy? I'm not against polygamy or polyandry, but I don't see a trend in the near term. On the other hand, we've long had a tradition of traditional married couples where the man keeps a mistress on the side, usually in secret (though secrets don't tend to last very long).
  - randyrand 11y ago
    No exactly the same, but it is becoming more common for women in the United States to have children to multiple different men in quick succession. Definitely a form of polygamy. Particularly of note in poverty stricken communities and the African American community which also happen to have many social problems. Its an interesting theory worth looking more into IMO.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > No exactly the same, but it is becoming more common for women in the United States to have children to multiple different men in quick succession. Its perhaps more visible, but is it really becoming more common? Where are the statistics showing this?
      - in3d 11y ago
        I don't know if randyrand has any statistics to support his statement and I don't see it as very similar to polygamy but http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182921/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182921/ says "Although the sample sizes for parents (especially those with two or more children) at younger ages are quite small and the magnitude of the differences is not large, the pattern nevertheless suggests that MPF (multiple-partner fertility) is likely to increase as younger cohorts age." I haven't seen any better estimates of this possible trend. 59% of African American mothers with two or more children have children by different fathers (http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/8338-many-us-women-have-children-by-more-than-one-man http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/8338-many-us-women-have-chi...).
tosseraccount 11y ago
The real paper: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royptb/367/1589/657.full.pdf http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royptb/367/15... (the source material about which the article is written )
- cba9 11y ago
  How pleasantly surprising to see an official link which is the fulltext as well. I'll just quote the abstract to entice people into reading it: "The anthropological record indicates that approximately 85 per cent of human societies have permitted men to have more than one wife (polygynous marriage), and both empirical and evolutionary considerations suggest that large absolute differences in wealth should favour more polygynous marriages. Yet, monogamous marriage has spread across Europe, and more recently across the globe, even as absolute wealth differences have expanded. Here, we develop and explore the hypothesis that the norms and institutions that compose the modern package of monogamous marriage have been favoured by cultural evolution because of their group-beneficial effects—promoting success in inter-group competition. In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (i) the spousal age gap, (ii) fertility, and (iii) gender inequality. By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, normative monogamy increases savings, child investment and economic productivity. By increasing the relatedness within households, normative monogamy reduces intra-household conflict, leading to lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death and homicide. These predictions are tested using converging lines of evidence from across the human sciences."
snipethunder 11y ago
I feel that this is almost an Tautology, I can also say "Polygamy reduces major social problems of monogamist cultures" and it is also true because the two are exclusive to each other.
CrimsnBlade 11y ago
>Our goal was to understand why monogamous marriage has become standard in most developed nations in recent centuries, when most recorded cultures have practiced polygyny I had no idea that the majority of older cultures practiced this. I'm no history buff either though. Still, that's very surprising to me for some reason.
- creshal 11y ago
  Concubinage, harems and the like were quite common. The reverse, polyandry, also saw occasional practice, like in pre- and early Islamic Iran.
littletimmy 11y ago
I wonder how this study applies to polyamory cultures like the one ours is becoming, where marriage is weakened as an institution but people take on multiple partners. It is likely that as top men take on more women, we'll run into the same problems that polygamist cultures face.
- marknutter 11y ago
  > It is likely that as top men take on more women, we'll run into the same problems that polygamist cultures face. What about top women taking on more men?
  - littletimmy 11y ago
    For various reasons (biological and cultural) that seems to happen less often than the reverse. But certainly that would be one way out I suppose.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    For what ever reason you want to speculate, this doesn't seem to happen to enough of a degree to counter out the extent the reverse is happening.
  - bitwize 11y ago
    Women tend not to "take on" men. They attach themselves to one and fuck others as the opportunity arises.
    - stuxnet79 11y ago
      But Halle Berry has to pay child support to all four of her former hubbies.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
danharaj 11y ago
Note that this is not a comparison between monogamy and polyamory, where the bonding relationship is many-to-many, not one-to-one or one-to-many.
gregjwild 11y ago
I can't help but wonder if this is a case of correlation != causation. I'm thinking particularly because the focus is on patriarchal, unequal and heavily stratified societies. That makes me wonder if it would make for a different study if it compared with gender neutral polyamorous societies with many-to-many relationships. I'm not aware that such societies exist in socially significant volumes outside of small groupings though. Still, it smacks a little of Eurocentricism.
stcredzero 11y ago
If there are, "significantly higher levels rape, kidnapping, murder, assault, robbery and fraud in polygynous cultures" and going to monogamy reduces these, then I wonder what happens if we turn that dial even further? What happens when society moves towards polyandry? Polyandry had particular high logistical costs for most of our history, because of childbirth. However, birth control technology has developed to the point where such arrangements are now practical. My current girlfriend and various women I knew in college have reported to me encounter frequencies of 3X per day during their 20's, along with their male partners at the time basically complaining of that rate being "unsustainable." It may well be possible for certain women to be able to sustain polyandrous relationships, and for them to benefit from such relationships while acting as a moderating force in society. (The "Attila" stories by Antonio Sequra and Jose Ortiz have a character who engages in this arrangement in a post apocalyptic world. In the stories, the polyandrous arrangement also serves as a small military force, highly motivated to protect its leader. These stories are probably NSFW, so no links posted here.) Oddly enough, a there is a very "easy" legal/social framework for allowing the establishment for what is effectively a "loosely bound" polyandry: legalized prostitution. Of course, "easy" is in quotes, because, while the legal framework would be very straightforward, the political and cultural barriers to passing the enabling legislation are huge. Also, only a subset of the activity enabled by such legislation could be fairly called a "loosely bound polyandry." EDIT: If we note the prevalent pattern of human behavior, humans are pretty much "serially monogamous" -- where our attentions are mostly, but not exclusively, given to one particular partner at a time. However, the state of nature seems to indicate a pattern of having secondary and tertiary partners or transitory dalliances as well. Given the availability of effective birth control and mechanisms for preventing the spread of sexually transmitted disease, we are probably overdue for a reshaping of societal norms to better fit the actual historical behavior of "monogamous" people. EDIT: I was informed that polyandry was practiced, so was possible before modern birth control.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > Polyandry was not possible for most of our history, because of the logistics of childbirth. Logistics of childbirth don't make polyandry as an institution impossible; the societies in which polyandry, fraternal or otherwise, was practiced have not generally been modern societies or otherwise especially relieved of the natural logistics of childbirth.
NTDF9 11y ago
IMO, humans, male or female, seek the best mate. "Best" is subjective but usually easy to understand. Men want youthful, beautiful women whereas women want strong, resourceful men. In enforcing monogamy, we ensured that male got what they wanted (a young woman) and now, that male can focus his attention on work. This worked well for women too (if they had a choice of male) since they now have a partner as well. Adultery was looked down upon to preserve the "sanctity" of this 1:1 relationship. This also kept men working hard to build the society (since they didn't have to deal with family issues much) and women preserved morality and guarded home upbringing. Today, since adultery/serial monogamy/polyandry/polygamy etc. is a joke and widely "accepted", there is no incentive to get married. So many 18-35 waste their youthful lives just dating, dating, meeting jerks, partying, jumping from partner to partner....instead of focusing on building a REAL stable relationship. By early 30s, most folks are sick of dating and all illusions of love are gone. Monogamy is not practical without heavy penalties on non-monogamous relationships.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > In enforcing monogamy, we ensured that male got what they wanted (a young woman) and now, that male can focus his attention on work. This worked well for women too (if they had a choice of male) since they now have a partner as well. Adultery was looked down upon to preserve the "sanctity" of this 1:1 relationship. Adultery has been "looked down on" (to put it mildly) for a lot longer than monogamy has been a norm.
- erikpukinskis 11y ago
  > Men want youthful, beautiful women > women want strong, resourceful men Ugh.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    Are you against the notion that each gender generally has different characteristics they prefer or just the simplistic nature in which the parent comment expressed that notion?
- stcredzero 11y ago
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
The way I see it: Polygamy: Some men having a chance at a huge family. Most women having a chance at a family, but with a shared husband. Many men having no chance at a family at all. Monogamy: Most men having a chance at a family. Most women having a chance at a family. Now consider that the more one has to lose, the better behaved one is. When men have a chance for a family, they'll do what is needed to make the attempt for a family (normally being productive members of society), after which they get far more needs met than when alone (consider that loneliness is quite dangerous for a person) and they likely have more to lose (especially if they have children). Thus they are more behaved. But in a polygamous society, there is far less of a chance. So more men decide to not play by the rules. They will seek out more dangerous means to meet their immediate needs. All this being said, it isn't the marriage that matters. It is the family that does. A society that only allows monogamy on paper, but which allows a polygamous marriages, and where a divide begins to exist meaning that you have many men without a chance of having a family will have the same issues. Also, I'm not to sure what happens when many women don't have a chance for a family. While one might think it would work the same, there are a few key differences. A man can be responsible for multiple simultaneous pregnancies, but a woman cannot. A woman has, historically, had a level of assurance of the legitimacy of their children that a man does not, and on average men tend to be more physically powerful than women. Also of note is that those last two factors stop being a significant difference with technology (paternity tests and guns being respective examples), so historic data may not fit what trends we will see in a technologically advanced society. (To say nothing of technology increasingly being able to meet a person's needs, which will increasingly make it harder to plot future events based on past data.)
narrator 11y ago
There's an often repeated assertion in some of the less glamorous men's forums online that in online dating, etc. The top 20% of guys in terms of looks and status get 80% of the dates while the dating demand for women of child bearing age is more evenly spread out. This would tend to be indicative of polygamy being a natural tendency, even today, if social norms did not interfere. Has there been any research on this on okcupid data, etc?
bronz 11y ago
Do modern western countries even have monogamy anymore? Cheating is so widespread that I almost want to laugh at the idea of monogamous America. Perhaps polygamy is just taking the dirty, hidden aspects of a supposedly monogamous system and bringing them out in the open.

54 points by networked 11y ago

> In cultures that permit men to take multiple wives, the intra-sexual competition that occurs causes greater levels of crime, violence, poverty and gender inequality than in societies that institutionalize and practice monogamous marriage. Wouldn't that just be any culture that has a significantly offset male-female ratio?

ap3 11y ago
In a specific cohort lets say age 18-35 - is the only thing that matters for this study "access" to women not how many women a man can married? Wonder what the polygamy male-female ratio is compared to current societies with skewed ratios (CN / IN)?
- beccasanchez 11y ago
  By "access" are you just referring to prostitution?
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > In a specific cohort lets say age 18-35 - is the only thing that matters for this study "access" to women not how many women a man can married? No. What seems to matter in the study is whether men have acceptable marriage prospects. (It'd be interesting to see, in that context, whether permitting same-sex marriage reinforces the effect observed and further reduces the same problems. It'd also be interesting to see, as marriage itself becomes less of an expectation, whether the effect is more from men being married -- in which case denormalizing marriage would be expected to reverse the benefits -- or whether the effect is more from men not being alienated by being unable to meet a social expectation of marriage -- in which case denormalizing marriage would be expected to reinforce the benefits.)
Shivetya 11y ago
My question would be, does this behavior hold up regardless of the culture's average income level? Surely some of the cultures are doing this because the poverty level is great. sarcasm, polygamy and monogamy have the same major social problem, one spouse too many.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Wouldn't that just be any culture that has a significantly offset male-female ratio? A significantly-greater-than-1.0 male-to-female ratio would be a different cause of the same problem; polygyny produces it even without that ratio difference. (Polyandry would seem, in principle, to offset it, but there aren't lots of historical examples of that to study.)

RyanRies 11y ago

How do we know which one is the cause and which one is the effect? Or that it's not just yet another case of correlation mistaken for causation? Do more intense levels of gender inequality lead to polygamous marriage, or does polygamous marriage lead to more intense levels of gender inequality?

dozzie 11y ago
Or neither, because both are results of an underlying cause?
beccasanchez 11y ago
It has nothing to do with gender equality. It has to do with economic inequality between males. Economic inequality between males means more and more women are competing for a smaller supply of wealthy males. Increased demand for top males leads to gender inequality as more and more women compete for a smaller pool of rich men, reducing the bargaining power of every individual woman and increasing the bargaining power of the few males who are marriage material. Increased demand for top males leads to polygamy and other polygamous arrangements such as mistresses.
- analyst74 11y ago
  It's not just inequality between males, but also the wellness of poor people. If people worry less about starvation, they will put less emphasis on potential partner's financial status.
  - s_dev 11y ago
    That doesn't explain polygamy in the richer parts of the Middle East where it's far more common than Western Europe. Starvation or even significant malnourishment beyond ones own poor choices aren't common. Relative economic inequality is common though to both places.
- marknutter 11y ago
  > Economic inequality between males means more and more women are competing for a smaller supply of wealthy males. Increased demand for top males leads to gender inequality as more and more women compete for a smaller pool of rich men, reducing the bargaining power of every individual woman and increasing the bargaining power of the few males who are marriage material. I don't see how any of this holds up in today's society where women are earning just as much as men, and in some relationships, more.

Camillo 11y ago

Would the authors venture to make a prediction on what will happen as the US moves away from monogamy? Edit: I'm not talking about moving towards poligamy. I'm talking about moving away from monogamous marriage in general. To quote from the article: According to Henrich, monogamy’s main cultural evolutionary advantage over polygyny is the more egalitarian distribution of women, which reduces male competition and social problems. It seems obvious to me that this not a specific disadvantage of polygyny, but a specific advantage of monogamy. The state of nature, without marriage, also ought to produce a less "egalitarian distribution of women".

blisterpeanuts 11y ago
Is the U.S. moving away from monogamy? I'm not against polygamy or polyandry, but I don't see a trend in the near term. On the other hand, we've long had a tradition of traditional married couples where the man keeps a mistress on the side, usually in secret (though secrets don't tend to last very long).
- randyrand 11y ago
  No exactly the same, but it is becoming more common for women in the United States to have children to multiple different men in quick succession. Definitely a form of polygamy. Particularly of note in poverty stricken communities and the African American community which also happen to have many social problems. Its an interesting theory worth looking more into IMO.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > No exactly the same, but it is becoming more common for women in the United States to have children to multiple different men in quick succession. Its perhaps more visible, but is it really becoming more common? Where are the statistics showing this?
    - in3d 11y ago
      I don't know if randyrand has any statistics to support his statement and I don't see it as very similar to polygamy but http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182921/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182921/ says "Although the sample sizes for parents (especially those with two or more children) at younger ages are quite small and the magnitude of the differences is not large, the pattern nevertheless suggests that MPF (multiple-partner fertility) is likely to increase as younger cohorts age." I haven't seen any better estimates of this possible trend. 59% of African American mothers with two or more children have children by different fathers (http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/8338-many-us-women-have-children-by-more-than-one-man http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/8338-many-us-women-have-chi...).

tosseraccount 11y ago

The real paper: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royptb/367/1589/657.full.pdf http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royptb/367/15... (the source material about which the article is written )

cba9 11y ago
How pleasantly surprising to see an official link which is the fulltext as well. I'll just quote the abstract to entice people into reading it: "The anthropological record indicates that approximately 85 per cent of human societies have permitted men to have more than one wife (polygynous marriage), and both empirical and evolutionary considerations suggest that large absolute differences in wealth should favour more polygynous marriages. Yet, monogamous marriage has spread across Europe, and more recently across the globe, even as absolute wealth differences have expanded. Here, we develop and explore the hypothesis that the norms and institutions that compose the modern package of monogamous marriage have been favoured by cultural evolution because of their group-beneficial effects—promoting success in inter-group competition. In suppressing intrasexual competition and reducing the size of the pool of unmarried men, normative monogamy reduces crime rates, including rape, murder, assault, robbery and fraud, as well as decreasing personal abuses. By assuaging the competition for younger brides, normative monogamy decreases (i) the spousal age gap, (ii) fertility, and (iii) gender inequality. By shifting male efforts from seeking wives to paternal investment, normative monogamy increases savings, child investment and economic productivity. By increasing the relatedness within households, normative monogamy reduces intra-household conflict, leading to lower rates of child neglect, abuse, accidental death and homicide. These predictions are tested using converging lines of evidence from across the human sciences."

snipethunder 11y ago

I feel that this is almost an Tautology, I can also say "Polygamy reduces major social problems of monogamist cultures" and it is also true because the two are exclusive to each other.

CrimsnBlade 11y ago

>Our goal was to understand why monogamous marriage has become standard in most developed nations in recent centuries, when most recorded cultures have practiced polygyny I had no idea that the majority of older cultures practiced this. I'm no history buff either though. Still, that's very surprising to me for some reason.

creshal 11y ago
Concubinage, harems and the like were quite common. The reverse, polyandry, also saw occasional practice, like in pre- and early Islamic Iran.

littletimmy 11y ago

I wonder how this study applies to polyamory cultures like the one ours is becoming, where marriage is weakened as an institution but people take on multiple partners. It is likely that as top men take on more women, we'll run into the same problems that polygamist cultures face.

marknutter 11y ago
> It is likely that as top men take on more women, we'll run into the same problems that polygamist cultures face. What about top women taking on more men?
- littletimmy 11y ago
  For various reasons (biological and cultural) that seems to happen less often than the reverse. But certainly that would be one way out I suppose.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  For what ever reason you want to speculate, this doesn't seem to happen to enough of a degree to counter out the extent the reverse is happening.
- bitwize 11y ago
  Women tend not to "take on" men. They attach themselves to one and fuck others as the opportunity arises.
  - stuxnet79 11y ago
    But Halle Berry has to pay child support to all four of her former hubbies.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

danharaj 11y ago

Note that this is not a comparison between monogamy and polyamory, where the bonding relationship is many-to-many, not one-to-one or one-to-many.

gregjwild 11y ago

I can't help but wonder if this is a case of correlation != causation. I'm thinking particularly because the focus is on patriarchal, unequal and heavily stratified societies. That makes me wonder if it would make for a different study if it compared with gender neutral polyamorous societies with many-to-many relationships. I'm not aware that such societies exist in socially significant volumes outside of small groupings though. Still, it smacks a little of Eurocentricism.

stcredzero 11y ago

If there are, "significantly higher levels rape, kidnapping, murder, assault, robbery and fraud in polygynous cultures" and going to monogamy reduces these, then I wonder what happens if we turn that dial even further? What happens when society moves towards polyandry? Polyandry had particular high logistical costs for most of our history, because of childbirth. However, birth control technology has developed to the point where such arrangements are now practical. My current girlfriend and various women I knew in college have reported to me encounter frequencies of 3X per day during their 20's, along with their male partners at the time basically complaining of that rate being "unsustainable." It may well be possible for certain women to be able to sustain polyandrous relationships, and for them to benefit from such relationships while acting as a moderating force in society. (The "Attila" stories by Antonio Sequra and Jose Ortiz have a character who engages in this arrangement in a post apocalyptic world. In the stories, the polyandrous arrangement also serves as a small military force, highly motivated to protect its leader. These stories are probably NSFW, so no links posted here.) Oddly enough, a there is a very "easy" legal/social framework for allowing the establishment for what is effectively a "loosely bound" polyandry: legalized prostitution. Of course, "easy" is in quotes, because, while the legal framework would be very straightforward, the political and cultural barriers to passing the enabling legislation are huge. Also, only a subset of the activity enabled by such legislation could be fairly called a "loosely bound polyandry." EDIT: If we note the prevalent pattern of human behavior, humans are pretty much "serially monogamous" -- where our attentions are mostly, but not exclusively, given to one particular partner at a time. However, the state of nature seems to indicate a pattern of having secondary and tertiary partners or transitory dalliances as well. Given the availability of effective birth control and mechanisms for preventing the spread of sexually transmitted disease, we are probably overdue for a reshaping of societal norms to better fit the actual historical behavior of "monogamous" people. EDIT: I was informed that polyandry was practiced, so was possible before modern birth control.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> Polyandry was not possible for most of our history, because of the logistics of childbirth. Logistics of childbirth don't make polyandry as an institution impossible; the societies in which polyandry, fraternal or otherwise, was practiced have not generally been modern societies or otherwise especially relieved of the natural logistics of childbirth.

NTDF9 11y ago

IMO, humans, male or female, seek the best mate. "Best" is subjective but usually easy to understand. Men want youthful, beautiful women whereas women want strong, resourceful men. In enforcing monogamy, we ensured that male got what they wanted (a young woman) and now, that male can focus his attention on work. This worked well for women too (if they had a choice of male) since they now have a partner as well. Adultery was looked down upon to preserve the "sanctity" of this 1:1 relationship. This also kept men working hard to build the society (since they didn't have to deal with family issues much) and women preserved morality and guarded home upbringing. Today, since adultery/serial monogamy/polyandry/polygamy etc. is a joke and widely "accepted", there is no incentive to get married. So many 18-35 waste their youthful lives just dating, dating, meeting jerks, partying, jumping from partner to partner....instead of focusing on building a REAL stable relationship. By early 30s, most folks are sick of dating and all illusions of love are gone. Monogamy is not practical without heavy penalties on non-monogamous relationships.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> In enforcing monogamy, we ensured that male got what they wanted (a young woman) and now, that male can focus his attention on work. This worked well for women too (if they had a choice of male) since they now have a partner as well. Adultery was looked down upon to preserve the "sanctity" of this 1:1 relationship. Adultery has been "looked down on" (to put it mildly) for a lot longer than monogamy has been a norm.
erikpukinskis 11y ago
> Men want youthful, beautiful women > women want strong, resourceful men Ugh.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  Are you against the notion that each gender generally has different characteristics they prefer or just the simplistic nature in which the parent comment expressed that notion?
stcredzero 11y ago

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

The way I see it: Polygamy: Some men having a chance at a huge family. Most women having a chance at a family, but with a shared husband. Many men having no chance at a family at all. Monogamy: Most men having a chance at a family. Most women having a chance at a family. Now consider that the more one has to lose, the better behaved one is. When men have a chance for a family, they'll do what is needed to make the attempt for a family (normally being productive members of society), after which they get far more needs met than when alone (consider that loneliness is quite dangerous for a person) and they likely have more to lose (especially if they have children). Thus they are more behaved. But in a polygamous society, there is far less of a chance. So more men decide to not play by the rules. They will seek out more dangerous means to meet their immediate needs. All this being said, it isn't the marriage that matters. It is the family that does. A society that only allows monogamy on paper, but which allows a polygamous marriages, and where a divide begins to exist meaning that you have many men without a chance of having a family will have the same issues. Also, I'm not to sure what happens when many women don't have a chance for a family. While one might think it would work the same, there are a few key differences. A man can be responsible for multiple simultaneous pregnancies, but a woman cannot. A woman has, historically, had a level of assurance of the legitimacy of their children that a man does not, and on average men tend to be more physically powerful than women. Also of note is that those last two factors stop being a significant difference with technology (paternity tests and guns being respective examples), so historic data may not fit what trends we will see in a technologically advanced society. (To say nothing of technology increasingly being able to meet a person's needs, which will increasingly make it harder to plot future events based on past data.)

narrator 11y ago

There's an often repeated assertion in some of the less glamorous men's forums online that in online dating, etc. The top 20% of guys in terms of looks and status get 80% of the dates while the dating demand for women of child bearing age is more evenly spread out. This would tend to be indicative of polygamy being a natural tendency, even today, if social norms did not interfere. Has there been any research on this on okcupid data, etc?

bronz 11y ago

Do modern western countries even have monogamy anymore? Cheating is so widespread that I almost want to laugh at the idea of monogamous America. Perhaps polygamy is just taking the dirty, hidden aspects of a supposedly monogamous system and bringing them out in the open.