I recently came across this blog. It’s written by a woman in a plural marriage (one other cowife) living in rural America. She talks about managing the boundaries and responsibilities of a polygynous family. She argues that raising children in a home where the father’s natural urge for variety is met in a rational way decreases the lying and bitterness that would come with infidelity or unmet needs.
Here’s the kicker:
They’re not members of any religion. All three signed up independently, by choice, based on no preset canon of law or sense of spiritual obligation. It’s a fascinating read and a potent new perspective on an argument in which it is assumed women only put up with polygyny when they’re threatened with Hell.
muse 1:53 am on July 3, 2008 Permalink |
Shrug. Different strokes and all that. I totally don’t get it, but whatever floats your boat. What happens to the “non-legal” wives though in case of divorce?
What I have yet to come across is a workable polyandry situation. Except for this remote Himalayan Indian community.
Willow 9:00 am on July 3, 2008 Permalink |
I don’t get it either–I couldn’t do it–but it is interesting to me that we’re so rabid about criminalizing it when it’s perfectly legal for a man to maintain both a wife and a mistress. And when so many other alternative lifestyles–homosexuality, polyamory, even S&M and things other things that cause physical harm–are also perfectly legal. Seems an odd thing to single out.
Interestingly, I was watching a history show on PBS (yes, I’m a dork) the other day and they were talking about the phenomena of racy fake Mormon memoirs that used to come out in the mid-1800s. “Among the Mormons” and that kind of thing. Very like the industry for ex-Muslims today. Apparently there was a really vigorous move at that time to ’stamp out the twin pillars of barbarism’: namely, slavery and polygamy. No one talks about it this way, but it was a kind of mini-reformation–getting rid of the hangovers of the Old Testament. Very interesting stuff.
razib 9:59 am on July 3, 2008 Permalink |
“Seems an odd thing to single out.”
polygyny is more commonly the ideal for high status males than monogamy. i think the reason it is singled out because it is such tempting social arrangement for males who can afford the extra wives through surplus income or wealth. and i think that’s the reason that people react hysterically to it, they think that a) a polygynous society is plausible b) that it has deleterious macrosocial outcomes. remember, because of a slight surplus of males at birth there are already more males than females alive until the age of 28-29, and many females in their 20s marry older men so there is usually a female deficit for men until around 30. in a polygynous society where that was a common arrangement for higher status males the deficit for non-high status males would increase (men who are poor or uneducated are already the most likely of sex & SES combinations to have never been married). i think genunine polyamory elicits less hysteria because it’s a generally unstable social configuration. polyandry is only common in a few societies, and usually due to resource deprivation as in the himalayas, so a group of brothers will marry one woman and so pooling their resources.