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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

• 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...).
    • venomsnake 11y ago
      When the black males spend their time in prison - you have serious competition for the ones that are out. It is not polygamy/andry, it is an act of desperation on the women's side to have any kind of economic support. When the social net is thin or unexistent - even if it means risking to have another kid. Add to the fact that poor people are the most restricted with their access to contraception and abortion. And you have a self perpetuating mess instead of social fabric.
      • flubert 11y ago
        But which is the cause, and which is the effect? Could it be that welfare benefits have reduced the necessity for a woman to hold on to a man for financial support, so these men are now "adrift" and more likely to end up incarcerated? It might be interesting to look at welfare benefits and incarceration rates before and after 1964.
        • venomsnake 11y ago
          The benefits are not the problem - you have a lot more generous benefits in Western Europe and UK and still they have lower incarceration rates than US. If they were the cause - the problem in Europe will be a lot worse. It is the other way around - remove the jobs from a community, men turn to crime - initiate "War on drugs" - and you have a positive loopback mechanism. That is multi generational.
          • flubert 11y ago
            >The benefits are not the problem - you have a lot more generous benefits in Western Europe and UK and still they have lower incarceration rates than US. ...That doesn't seem to me to be a proper control population.
        • randyrand 11y ago
          I'm SUPER interested in how welfare/child support has had a negative impact on African Amercian men, and the community at large. More people need to study this. I love examples of good intentions going bad.
    • 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. Definitely a form of polygamy. While sometimes people refer to "serial polygamy", and there are some contexts where its actually reasonable to view that as a kind of polygamy, here, where the focus is on formal, recognized marriage structures and whether men have the opportunity to enter into them, it isn't the kind of polygamy that is at issue, both: (1) because its not a formal, recognized marriage structure, and (2) because even if it were, it would be polyandrous, and the paper is comparing polygyny (not "polygamy" more generally) to monogamy, so this would be driving past monogamy on to the opposite side, if it were relevant at all.
      • randyrand 11y ago
        I still think it's relevant in determining how multiple partners affects social problems. The broader picture.
  • FD3SA 11y ago
    Yes, it is. Marriage rates are at an all time low, divorce rates are at an all time high, never married rate is at an all time high, out of wedlock births are at an all time high, and there is no deterrent for adultery. The west has been in a soft-polygamy system since no-fault divorce was instigated. The only reason the illusion of classical marriage limps on is because the vestiges of the old system, mainly the ideals of classical marriage, remain attractive for those who are uninformed of the reality on the ground. Thus, young average men enter into marriage with women assuming lifelong monogamy, and are surprised to find their wives spending time with above average men. Females of our species have no benefit to be gained by settling for second best genetic material. They want the best, and don't care who provides the provisioning for those offspring. Cuckolding is a powerful strategy for females to have their cake and eat it too, which is why it is so widespread in nature. No advanced civilization has ever survived the onset of polygamy [1]. Will the west be an exception? We live in interesting times. 1. http://www.rexresearch.com/glubb/glubb-empire.pdf http://www.rexresearch.com/glubb/glubb-empire.pdf
    • tosseraccount 11y ago
      Divorce rates at all time high? Looks like multiple sources indicate it's down since 1979 in the U.S. ... https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=U.S.+divorce+rates&hl=en&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=xxx&biw=873&bih=411 https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=U.S.+divorce+rates&hl=...
    • jnbiche 11y ago
      > We live in interesting times. Is that a play on the (probably apocryphal) Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times"?
    • TorKlingberg 11y ago
      Fewer married people and more divorces do not equal polygamy. Rather people have a series of monogamous relationships. You post then ventures into outright misogyny that doesn't belong here. Also the front page of 'rexresearch.com' is not very confidence inspiring.
      • 11y ago
  • dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I'm not against polygamy or polyandry Pedantic, perhaps, but while its generally acceptable to use "polygamy" to mean "polygyny" when you aren't discussing "polyandry" (because virtually all real-world polygamy is polygyny), if you are explicitly discussing both forms, its should be "polygyny and polyandry", "polygamy" includes both. > 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). Its really weird to call monogamous marriages "traditional" when comparing them to the polygynous marriages, since while the latter have fallen out of favor progressively in the last several centuries, they have quite a long tradition pretty much everywhere. That said, its actually in many places a long tradition for kept mistresses, particularly of powerful men, to be fairly open.
    • Digit-Al 11y ago
      Possibly even more pedantic, have you noticed how, even though the authors clearly know the difference between polygyny and polygamy, they seem to somtimes use both terms interchangeably?
      • dragonwriter 11y ago
        > Possibly even more pedantic, have you noticed how, even though the authors clearly know the difference between polygyny and polygamy, they seem to somtimes use both terms interchangeably? Bu they don't: the authors of the "Media Release", who are writing for the general public using language as familiar as possible, use the term "polygamy", but never in quotes from the authors of the study -- which always use "polygyny". The study itself always uses "polygyny" (and, at least at one point, more specifically "non-sororal polygyny"); the only times "polygamy" (or related forms like "polygamous") appear in the paper itself are in discussions of what other others studies found, one mention discussing forms of pair-bonding as "monogamous and polygamous", and in titles of works cited.
• Analemma_ 11y ago
  I don't know that the United States is "moving away from monogamy". I've certainly read more about polygamous relationships lately, but I think that's a consequence of the greater visibility afforded by the Internet, and the decreasing stigmatization of such relationships making people more likely to be open about it. I would want to see some hard evidence before just saying that polygamy is actually increasing in frequency though; I suspect it's no more or less prevalent than it ever was.
  • sliverstorm 11y ago
    It does seem to be moving away from, or at least clinging less tightly to, lifelong monogamy and growing more tolerant of serial monogamy.
    • bduerst 11y ago
      But that's not evidence of polygyny. Lowered sexual dimorphism in humans suggests we have a long biological history of social monogamy, compared to the dimorphism correlation in socially polygamous mammals.
    • erikpukinskis 11y ago
      It's probably not a change in behavior, but a change in what is acceptable to talk about.
• dragonwriter 11y ago
  The US isn't moving away from monogamy (in the sense of this study, as the only formally-recognized form of marriage.) Its arguably moving toward marriage itself being less of an expectation, but its not clear how that relates to the study.
  • iofj 11y ago
    Strictly speaking not true. Monogamous marriage is the only kind of marriage that can be started in the US. The US does, however, recognize non-monogamous marriages.
  • Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    It probably relates because the marriages themselves don't matter, it is the family that forms and the impacts that has on individuals that do. Thus if you had some society which allowed only monogamy but also allowed concubines, you would likely see the same issues as caused by polygamy. Or if you had a society that didn't do marriage at all, but the relationships that formed tended to be greater towards polygamy than monogamy. (You can also have the reverse, polyandry, but this study doesn't seem to look into those societies to see how they differ from monogamous and polygamous ones.)
    • dragonwriter 11y ago
      > It probably relates because the marriages themselves don't matter, it is the family that forms and the impacts that has on individuals that do. That's speculative, and not at all what the study found. It could be that that's what's important; it could be, instead, that what is important is the social expectation of marriage combined with the opportunities available for it. It could be something else. It could be a combination of any of the three. > Thus if you had some society which allowed only monogamy but also allowed concubines, you would likely see the same issues as caused by polygamy. Since concubinage is generally exclusive in the same way as marriage is (and exclusive of marriage), you'd expect in pretty much any case it to have similar social effects to polygyny (if it isn't just considered a form of polygyny in which there is a wife with a formally preferred status, which is common in polygyny.) > Or if you had a society that didn't do marriage at all, but the relationships that formed tended to be greater towards polygamy than monogamy. OTOH, if it is the social expectation and opportunity aspect of marriage that is at issue, a society which lacked the formal marriage and social expectations tied to it might not have the problems of a formally polygynous society even if the informal relations formed were generally polgynous rather than monogamous. And if, on yet another hand, there is a stabilizing effect of socially-recognized relationship, the absence of social recognition might produce problems similar to those in a formally polygynous society regardless of the form of the informal relationships that form.