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from the how-do-you-keep-multiple-wives-happy dept.
A study conducted by a team of researchers from the U.K., Tanzania and the U.S. has found an example of polygynous marriage that does not appear to be harmful to women or children. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers outline their study of people living in villages in Tanzania, and why they believe organizations such as the UN need to modify their stance on the practice to better take account of cultural practices.
Polygny is a term used to refer to marriage systems where males can have more than one wife, while polygamy refers to the actual practice of it. In this new study, the researchers looked into the question of whether a polygnynous marriage is in fact harmful to women or children as has been assumed by many in the international community. They looked at 3,500 households in villages in Tanzania, noting the occurrences of polygnynous marriage versus monogamous marriage and the standard of living for those women and children.
In looking at their data, they found that first wives—women who were the first to marry a man with several wives, tended to have better nutrition as did their children, than women in monogamous marriages and their children. Later wives and their children fared on average as well as monogamous wives and their children, but not as well as first wives. This, the team claims, shows that not all instances of polygynous marriage are harmful to women or children—it shows that in some cases, it can actually be a practice that women can use to better their lives and that of their children. It is a matter of wealth and the rules that govern a society—if women cannot own land or other resources, for example, or take a job, as was the case in the Tanzanian villages, they will likely do better in life if they are able to attract and marry a man with some degree of wealth, which in some cases may mean, a man with multiple wives.
How do the husbands fare?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Wednesday October 28 2015, @02:37PM
No, it really doesn't. For every one man that gets 3 wives, there's likely 2 that can't find one. Polygamy heavily favors women as they don't have to be restricted to choosing an unmarried mate.
Men get screwed though as now there's a tin of extra competition from better off men.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2015, @03:21PM
Unless there's a high mortality of young men. In that case, it's rather monogamy that turns up generating many unmarried women.
Maybe it would be interesting to search for possible correlations between polygamy and martialness.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Francis on Wednesday October 28 2015, @03:32PM
That tends not to last very long. Things that kill men off in that kind of quantity tend to eventually get to the women as well. War and famine being a couple examples. For a short period of time you can repopulate or make up the difference, but it's a band-aid fix at best if you haven't figured out how to address the problem of the shortage.
But, in no case is this a good thing for men. I'm not sure how anybody that's not a feminist could think this is good for men. Even the men that wind up with multiple wives have to do so at a premium. Survive the war and amass large amounts of resources.
The better way to look at it is probably women using men for their resources and protection. Or really, objectifying men. So, it really should be better for women in most cases. If there's such competition for men that there aren't enough to go around, creating extra demand for women by doubling or tripling up to a successful man isn't in most men's best interest.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 28 2015, @04:58PM
In the modern world, sure. In the bad old days women would have to have twelve or so kids to have a realistic chance of two of them surviving long enough to reproduce. 80% death rate before reproduction seems sustainable, after all that's where we came from, long enough ago. Sure the death rate probably skewed young, but relatively more men were killed trying to hunt hippos than women were killed by aggressive stalks of wheat falling on them.
(Score: 2, Informative) by DutchUncle on Wednesday October 28 2015, @05:06PM
Sorry, I think in the course of focusing on the chiild-survival rate, you ignored the death-in-childbirth rate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2015, @11:18PM
Yeah, but the death-in-childbirth rate is only already used-up married (or at least spoken-for) women.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snow on Wednesday October 28 2015, @03:28PM
I have a bit of experience here... For those that haven't read my journal entry, my wife and I transitioned our relationship to a poly style.
I think that the story finds that poly families are no worse off is because of the extra support that having extra adults around the house can add. One can look after the kids while another prepares dinner while another is off working. Everyone also shares a living space, so the cost of living/person is lower. Food preparation scales well, so having a couple more mouths to feed isn't that big of a difference.
More adults also means more attention for the children. More time for reading and playing and whatnot.
Does it favour the men? Not in my experience. You think regular dating is hard as a guy? Try poly dating. The pool of available dates is very, very small and there is a lot of competition to get those dates. Women literally get bombarded with potential suitors that they then have to sort through. I suppose things might be better for the men once you get in multiple stable relationships, but that would largely depend on who you got in relationships with, as with traditional relationships.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Wednesday October 28 2015, @03:40PM
You're last paragraph is why the practice of multiple marriages is illegal. It's not illegal because it's necessarily bad for children to have more than 2 parents in the household. It's illegal because it fucks anybody that can't find a partner. Having 1 husband and multiple wives or 1 wife and multiple husbands definitely doesn't work in a stable society. Having 1 husband and multiple wives can work out for a generation or two while rebuilding the population if most of the men get wiped out, but it does cause serious societal issues in the long term.
Most polygamous societies depend upon a high mortality rate for men or you have to somehow deal with the majority of men that can't find even one wife and have no incentive to maintain the status quo. The FLDS has to kick out at least 2/3 of the men to allow the remaining men to be able to have their 3 wives.
Having multiple wives sharing multiple husbands is something that isn't as easily assessed. If it's a relatively even equal number of husbands to wives, the net effect on society at large is minimal, or possibly nothing. But, I'm not aware of anywhere in the world that it's legal to do that.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snow on Wednesday October 28 2015, @04:10PM
I'm pretty sure it's not illegal because of 'fairness' issues. It's illegal because crazy right-wing religious groups marry 12 year old girls who don't have any choice in the matter.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 28 2015, @04:52PM
Don't forget dying intestate and estate tax. If everyone only married singles in that were younger than them, and inheritance laws continued to have large to infinite spouse exclusions, the .gov would not be amused.
I can only imagine the divorce legal entertainment.
The only thing worse than contested unhappy divorces would be uncontested... so I gotta marry the former owner of my house so they can transfer it to me almost for free in the "divorce" instead of paying the usual middlemen and taxmen.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2015, @06:32PM
Where's our "marry young girls" troll when you need him? We've finally got a thread where he'd be on topic!
(Score: 1) by Francis on Wednesday October 28 2015, @08:35PM
Not really, if that were the case, then why hasn't there been a push for it the way that there was a push for same-sex marriage? Under your theory, they're both illegal because of crazy right-wing religious groups, but in one case you've had the left-wing folks pushing back against it and the other you haven't.
Polygamy and polygyny are no different from marrying teenagers. There are serious social problems associated with it and in both cases you don't see the practice being accepted in places where the mortality rate is reasonable. Marrying pre-teens and polygamy are both things that cultures adopted to deal with the problem of population decline due to war and infectious disease. They're not something you see being practiced in the developed world except in secret by small numbers of scofflaws.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snow on Wednesday October 28 2015, @09:08PM
why hasn't there been a push for it the way that there was a push for same-sex marriage?
That's actually a really good question. There are a lot less poly people than gay people, so that's a big reason for the lack of push to change the laws. Also, poly people tend to be white, middle aged, educated, and pretty well-off. A lot of us are pretty privileged, so it's easier to stay on the down low. Some of us work in conservative jobs that probably wouldn't approve. Poly is not a protected class, so we can be discriminated against.
And yes, there is absolutely a difference between poly and marrying teenagers. The biggest difference is that one involves informed, consenting adults, and the other involves children.
I actually feel that poly (non-religious based) is a more honest way of running a relationship. If I don't treat my wife well, she can (and will) find someone who does treat her well. Our relationship would fade. Instead of being stuck with someone forever and ever (the traditional version of marriage) I need to work to keep my relationships strong.
What exactly are the social problems? If you are worried about us poly guys scooping up all the women, don't worry. Normal women aren't interested in us. We date within our circles.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday October 30 2015, @09:10PM
The biggest difference is that one involves informed, consenting adults
Most of the adults I've seen cannot exactly be described as "informed". Having a fully developed brain by no means indicates that you won't make short-sighted and uninformed decisions, and not having one doesn't mean you're incapable of consent. Forced marriages are bad, but I am tired of this attitude where people incorrectly reason that because children (even teenagers) do not have fully developed brains, they cannot make any informed decisions of their own. Not fully developed != nonexistent.
So younger people will make mistakes and probably regret it. Adults do that too at similar rates, and even ingest substances like alcohol that make that even more likely to happen. But making a mistake isn't the end of the world, and you can learn from it. Our society seems to prefer to coddle children with false ideas of innocence and then throw them out into the wilderness once they reach some arbitrary age.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday October 28 2015, @11:41PM
I'm not seeing how those things are at all connected.
(Score: 1) by Squidious on Wednesday October 28 2015, @06:04PM
And yet the laws are somewhat silly because they are tied to legal marriage. Nothing is stopping any combination of adult males and females from sharing a living space and having sex with (and potentially reproducing with) whomever they want.
The terrorists have won, game, set, match. They've scared the people into electing authoritarian regimes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday October 28 2015, @11:31PM
It's illegal because it fucks anybody that can't find a partner.
Now that's freedom for you. Make it illegal because I feel entitled to a partner. Eliminate choice through the force of government.
Having 1 husband and multiple wives or 1 wife and multiple husbands definitely doesn't work in a stable society.
If people want to be in such relationships of their own volition, it's none of your business. Your subjective notions of stability don't really matter.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 29 2015, @03:47AM
>Having 1 husband and multiple wives or 1 wife and multiple husbands definitely doesn't work in a stable society.
Actually, that's only an issue if you assume that one of those arrangements dominates. If instead 10% of the women have 3 husbands (30% of the men) and 10% of the men have 3 wives (30% of the women), then 40% of the population is involved in polygamous relationships, and the remaining 60% if evenly split between men and women. (Well, not dramatically more imbalanced than the normal 49/51% anyway). You also ignores the possibility of gender-balanced polygamy (i.e. 3 husbands AND 3 wives all bound into a single marriage)
Where things *may* break down though are in the biological and economic fronts, which may easily bias such relationships towards a higher woman-to-man ratio within marriages.
(Score: 5, Funny) by tangomargarine on Wednesday October 28 2015, @04:45PM
Women literally get bombarded with potential suitors
People literally load suitors into siege cannons and fire them at their abodes?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Spamalope on Wednesday October 28 2015, @05:05PM
My extended circle of acquaintances includes many folks who identify as poly. The most well adjusted/supportive ones I've seen essentially are couples that have formed an extended group marriage. They vacation together and do family gatherings/car for kids together though most have separate households.
Some others are partly supporting relationships that don't work on all levels. They'll have a primary relationship that meets many of their needs as people, and one or more additional relationships - often with people who themselves have a primary partner. That seems to allow relationships that would otherwise be incomplete for one or both partners to be fulfilling. In a few cases I've seen that be a way for someone with a 'difficult' to match personality to form solid lasting relationships instead of a string of short term incomplete ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 28 2015, @04:00PM
And when a society has a surplus of frustrated young men who can't form meaningful attachments and stable family lives things tend to get ugly for the entire society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 29 2015, @04:16PM
Lighten up Francis
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Tuesday November 03 2015, @05:00AM
by definition only 1 and 1 makes 2. Every other combination is exploitation, whether by design or accident. But by all means, share your partner with 3 others, and let us all know how that works out.