What's wrong with Polygamy

[Billion Backs]

You know how bad divorces can get?

Imagine that. Except worse.

This, and...

Most people find the idea of having to "share" your lover kinda' weird and mental-scar-inducing, therefore they stop other people from doing it.

This.

Marriages, successful ones, are hard enough as it is. It takes real work to be and stay with someone you love. The legal ramifications of divorcing would be crazy, especially if there were children from multiple women involved. And the psychological issues of kids having many moms and dads would be weighty, I'm sure, along with the fact that most people aren't polygamous in nature.

With roots in showing a man's power and authority where women were used as bartering tools to gain land and wealth, it just seems like an extremely bad idea, overall.

What you don't consider is that people who aren't comfortable with having and sharing multiple partners - most likely the majority given our cultural indoctrination - would probably NOT enter a polygamous marriage.

Saying that something should be kept illegal because a lot of people might feel uncomfortable doing it with no other detriments to anyone or anything is just absurd.

It's like the argument against gay marriage I've heard from some Christian guy on youtube (And yeah, this is pretty much a strawman because I don't remember the name. It was probably one of those annoying youtube vloggers like yokeup and jesusfreak). It went something along the way of "If gay marriage becomes legal, everyone will marry their own gender and humanity will die out!". And an argument of this nature is probably one of the stupidest things one could say.

A freedom to do something for people who want to do it doesn't hurt those who wouldn't do it in the first place. Gay marriage being legal doesn't turn straight people gay. Neither would polygamy or group marriage in general somehow turn people who prefer monogamous relationship into people who prefer polygamous relationships.

Gay marriage is legal in Canada, and I'm not surrounded by gay couples with no straight relationships in sight. Why exactly would it be different for polygamy?

 

[Quiet Stranger]

Like someone said it's the same reason why gay marriage is banned. Old views and marriage is sacred should be one person and different sex etc. etc.

I'll be a bit biased on this though because I was raised in a polygamy family so yeah.

hahahaha.....got any sisters!!? XD

 

[JEBWrench]

It's completely illogical.

There is one choice above all others, because humans will always compare when given two of anything different.

In other words, why bother marrying second best?

 

[Quiet Stranger]

There are a lot of issues with it.

One that hasn't been mentioned so far is of course that the population is usually roughly around 50-50 male/female. With polygamy you tend to wind up with the very rich/elite men marrying all of the eligible women. In ancient society they might not have much of a choice in the matter either (depending on the culture), in modern society with more women's rights there are other things to consider like the benefits of being married to a really rich guy.

What this does is lead to a lot of societal problems with a lot of very angry (usually young) men who can't get married or generally get with women. Not to mention what it can wind up doing to the population/social order as a whole over generations.

While it was a few years ago, I remember there was a big "Polygamy cult" in the news. I don't remember the names so finding a link is difficult. At any rate, one of the big issues was exactly what I'm talking about above. The "Alpha Males" who were in charge and married basically kicked the male children out of the community as soon as they could legally do so, to avoid the competition.

-

To put things into perspective, for a lot of guys having 2 or 3 wives (or more) probably seems "hawt" especially if you can afford them. But consider for a second what happens if your on the other end of that... your a young man, and there are either only other men around, and whatever women might be around are typically unclaimed by the upper crust for good reason..... meaning they probably have no redeeming values whatsoever (this can go well beyond physical appearance, since ugly but smart women might be taken as wives to do other things, especially if your dealing with a Harim type enviroment... a Harim is where Shiek apparently keeps his wives, while a harem is where he keeps his mistresses).

Well for the guys who kicked out the younger males, those are who we would call douche bags

 

[DanDeFool]

Evolutionarily speaking, the problem with polygamy (aside from an arguably unhealthy lack of diversity in the gene pool, and the often abusive nature of such set-ups) is that it adversely affects the majority of the male population. We'll even ignore the whole "most polygamous societies (Fundamentalist Mormons being the example that comes to mind most easily) either kill or exile male children in order to keep their gender ratios sufficiently imbalanced" thing.

Basically, it's just a numbers game. For every man with two wives, one man goes without a wife. So, here's how it breaks down:

Polygamy:

-Good for the most desirable men, who can really live like a pimp.
-Good for the majority of women, who can share the most desirable man, and be both supported by the wealthiest man/men, and have the "best" babies
-Bad for the most desirable women, who have to share the most desirable men.
-Bad for the majority of men, who won't get a wife at all, and thus are unlikely to reproduce

Monogamy:

-Good for the majority of men, who are likely to get at least someone to make babies with
-Good for the most desirable women, who can monopolize the most desirable men
-Bad for the most desirable men, who have to accept being limited to only one wife when they could have many
-Bad for the majority of women who have to accept marrying from the unwashed masses of undesirable men.

Thats just Polygyny. Polygamy can be both ways, with a woman having several men. I assume you are male and didn't even consider the other way around. And polygyny is good for most woman becaquse they can share the most desirable men? Damn I didnt know if I could share my car with more people that would be much better then keep it just for myself. That also throws down your assumptuion women monopolizing man with monogamy is a bad thing, as a man you just prefer men to monopolize women. I guess even going through the rest seems a very sexist point of view. You just put it on men perspective.

I guess its that way of thinking that makes me fill polygamy is a bad idea because like you put it, most men just think of polygyny. Men tend to see women as inferior and like many people already said it would (like you actually see on polygamist societies) increase even more the gap between both gender rights.

I tend to agree both with Seldon's argument and Vitor's counter-argument, but I have a point against the latter. You assume that women having multiple husbands is just as likely as men having multiple wives. Personally, I have never heard of a queen or a female leader having a harem (or whatever it's called) of men; but I have heard of several kings who had harems of women. My point is that our current male-dominated social system makes man-having-many-wives much more likely than woman-having-many-husbands.

You also have to think about human nature, and the nature of the mating arrangement. With a man married to several women, each one of those women gets to bear that man's child; no one gets left out of the mating arrangement. Whereas in the case of a woman married to several men, there is a chance that some of the men may not get to father a child with that woman. Since childbirth is a risky process, even in the modern age, a single woman may not be able to have more than a handful of children throughout her life.

From a familial perspective, in the case of man-with-women, each of the children in the relationship has a familial tie to the father and one of the women, whereas with the woman-with-men situation many of the men may have to raise and support children that are not their own.

So no, Seldon's argument is not inherently or intentionally sexist, it's just that the man being married to multiple women is more likely to occur due to the nature of human reproduction and the inborn paradigms that humans are wired with (with the man as the provider and the woman as the caretaker: not universally true, but occurs more often than the opposite).

Still, you are justified in saying that man-with-several-women is not the ONLY arrangement that would emerge in a polygamist system. Personally, I think that cases where you have a very desireable man with several wives would be the exception rather than the norm, and the cases where you have a very desirable woman with several husbands would be the extreme exception. Rather, the most likely arrangement would probably be a sort of communal marriage like in Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", where you have several men and several women all married to each other and raising a large family together.

Of course, there's no telling if any of these systems would really work unless they are tried. Human beings seem to have a love/hate relationship with monogamy, which is also tied to our reproductive drives and social programming, and you'd probably still see a large amount of monogamy in a system where polygamy is allowed.

EDIT: Read a few more comments on this thread, and I remembered that in Heinlein's novel the polygamist system developed on the Moon because the Moon was a penal colony and as such had a lot more men on it than women (How's that for sexism? Man = More likely to be a violent criminal. And yet it's true.). So basically they opted for polygamy because a monogamous system would have been intractable in that particular circumstance. In a culture where the ratio of males to females is close to 1, monogamy may be the preferred mating arrangement.

 

[Billion Backs]

It's completely illogical.

There is one choice above all others, because humans will always compare when given two of anything different.

In other words, why bother marrying second best?

So you basically generalize the whole human race without providing any evidence for your argument?

Nobody forces one to marry. If they do, there's a much bigger problem behind the scenes. The odds of someone not already interested in a polygamous relationship for various personal reasons entering one are about as likely as the odds of me entering a straight traditional marriage.

A couple of millions to one, I'd imagine.

 

[Treefingers]

I personally wouldn't be able to handle sharing a wife with another man. Wanting multiple wives would make me a hypocrite.

Perhaps that's just me.

 

[JEBWrench]

So you basically generalize the whole human race without providing any evidence for your argument?

Nobody forces one to marry. If they do, there's a much bigger problem behind the scenes. The odds of someone not already interested in a polygamous relationship for various personal reasons entering one are about as likely as the odds of me entering a straight traditional marriage.

A couple of millions to one, I'd imagine.

A situation wherein one is completely equal to another cannot exist - humans, by their very nature, will prefer one or another for whatever reason, even if that reason is completely arbitrary. (Shoelace is untied).

Please stop mistaking polygamy with polyamory - there is no logical reason to marry multiple spouses, there's no benefit to it.

 

[Gralian]

I don't think polygamists should be allowed to marry more than one person though. Aside from taxes, could you imagine the awkward conversations with friends and co-workers alike?

Ah yes, we should totally forbid an entire life style between consenting people because conversation would be awkward. Yep, sounds like a legitimate and solid reason.

Not only that, but you will most likely foster a society where both sexes will compete to have the greatest number of "lovers", and it will get pretty damn crazy pretty damn fast. Men will feel inferior to the dominant males who have many wives and the women will feel unattractive if they don't have as many husbands. It's just not good, period.

As opposed to what happens now....?

But, that sounds to me like you're just afraid to belong to the "disfavored" group. So the option is try to force women to be with you out of desperation alone? This seems legitimate to you? Really?

This sounds less like a legitimate sociological problem, and more straight up fear of inadequacy.

You want a legitimate sociological problem? How about cost.

Think you could afford to support two, three or more wives? Really? How about kids? Think having one kid or more per wife is something you could really cope with?

Sure, you could have one kid with one wife and be done with it, but the other may get jealous and want one of her own, and the same may be said for the other, etc.

As for what happens now, casual sex is just that - it's just another tally on the scoresheet, but having and maintaining an actual lover is something entirely different. You can say "I've slept with X number of women / men" and the higher the number the more status you gain, but as aforementioned people WILL strive to be the "alpha male" (or female equivalent), which will lead to a dreadful hierarchial system where competition is removed, and men end up competing for the position of alpha male with most desirable females.

And you might sit there and spout "fear of inadequacy", but what if you ARE inadequate? What if you have low income or are less attractive - you won't get a partner, period. Forcing women has nothing to do with it. But if there are less clusters of women tied to a single man or vice versa there's a bigger chance for everybody. Look at the bigger picture here.

 

[Manatee Slayer]

If everyone is fine with it and no one gets hurt then who am I to say it's wrong?

My only problem with it though is that I have seen quite a few polygamis marriages and none of them have been very functional, the first wife usually seems to resent both the man and the other woman/women.

Also, I believe the reason it is less common for a woman to have multiple husbands is due to both good old fashioned sexism and because the woman is the carrier of children, so it would usually be hard to tell what guys baby it is. Just a thought.

 

[Soxafloppin]

I think if its kept secret, then its bad.

If all the participants know, then why not?

 

[ClunkiestTurtle]

I don't see anything wrong with it if all parties are happy although any more then three wives and i think it would be hard to be there emotionally and physically for them all.

So basically i need three female volunteers to test the merits of this arrangement and so we can come back to this thread in a few years time and give you our findings.

Come on girls its in the name of science......

 

[Crisps]

The capital P.

 

[Billion Backs]

So you basically generalize the whole human race without providing any evidence for your argument?

Nobody forces one to marry. If they do, there's a much bigger problem behind the scenes. The odds of someone not already interested in a polygamous relationship for various personal reasons entering one are about as likely as the odds of me entering a straight traditional marriage.

A couple of millions to one, I'd imagine.

A situation wherein one is completely equal to another cannot exist - humans, by their very nature, will prefer one or another for whatever reason, even if that reason is completely arbitrary. (Shoelace is untied).

Please stop mistaking polygamy with polyamory - there is no logical reason to marry multiple spouses, there's no benefit to it.

There's no logical reason to enter a monogamous marriage either.

Raising a child? Hah, in my experience, couples who intended to raise a child together would do so okay anyways. And those who didn't and spent all the time fighting or divorced didn't really do much raising anyways - either one spouse looked after the child or none at all.

Well, yeah, there are also the whole deal with child support in case of divorce. Which generally makes marriage even less of a good option for a man, considering the fact that courts are generally very biased and the woman generally gets the custody of the child unless she REALLY fucked up. And the man has to spend half of his paycheck supporting a child while his ex-wife can easily enter another relationship and work.

So what is marriage for? To create a better environment for raising children, I guess. I don't see any other logical reason behind it. And it doesn't exactly achieve it that well either, in my opinion.

Now, consider polygamy. More people living in the same household, I'm speaking about adults here, means greater concentration of resources. Generally, you can expect most adults to have jobs - the unemployment rate, while generally not including full time students and certain other groups that might not have a job due to reasons, is generally around or lower then 10% in most developed countries on average.

And it's a pretty obvious fact that it's generally cheaper to run one household then two separate ones - unless the conditions are very different. With greater overall income and greater number of adults in a household, it's a safe guess that if such a polygamous relationship decides to have children, they might be better economically supported, and such position would be more stable because if multiple adults in the family work different jobs, even if one loses a job, the rest can pull through while the unlucky one(s) collect severance pay and look for another job with less urgency then it would be in a monogamous relationship.

And then take this into consideration - with greater number of adults in a household, it's more likely that there would be at least someone to pay attention to children. With greater economical stability of such a marriage, it would even be possible for a willing member to quit their job to look after kids without endangering the income such a household would make as much as they would in a monogamous relationship with just 2 adults working.

One can also expect a polygamous relationship interested in raising children to have more then 1-2 kids - especially if there are multiple females in the relationship. It would be a bad idea to have more then 1-2 kids in a monogamous relationship for obvious reasons - income, potential lack of care, and physical problems with having too many children - child rearing can be a big deal even today. But in a polygamous relationship - assuming there are multiple wives - it would be possible to have more then 1-2 children without such detriments. Hell, it would probably even have positive impact on the children themselves - they would always have someone near their age to talk to, which would lead to development of healthy social skills and so on.

And in case of a polyandry, the child/children would just be better supported on average.

And group marriage, a la Heinlein's Moon is a Harsh Mistress, would probably reap the most rewards given abundance of both husbands and wives.

Woah, wall of text.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

House did an episode about this just last week, and I think it pointed out a lot of problems with it. Jealous, backstabbing, divided loyalties, lies, etc...

I notice a lot of people are using "two" as the number. It probably is possible to find two people who would be find with it, but both of those people would need to find one or two more people who would be fine with it. Odds of that happening: pretty small.

If I had a girlfriend (I wish, sigh...) I would get a little jealous if she even flirted with another guy. Can't imagine how I would be if I had to "SHARE" her.

 

[Caliostro]

You want a legitimate sociological problem? How about cost.

Think you could afford to support two, three or more wives? Really? How about kids? Think having one kid or more per wife is something you could really cope with?

Sure, you could have one kid with one wife and be done with it, but the other may get jealous and want one of her own, and the same may be said for the other, etc.

I feel this will be a recurring phrase in our conversation but... "As opposed to what happens now"?

There are families who can't afford to have kids. There are families who can't afford to have MANY kids. What does that have to do with anything? You're also forgetting that there's no reason for the women to not work, which would also improve the income per household, and diminish costs (since it's one household for what would once be multiple families).

It still changes nothing. The same social class that could afford a family will continue to afford it, and the same social class that struggles with it would continue to struggle with it.

As for what happens now, casual sex is just that - it's just another tally on the scoresheet, but having and maintaining an actual lover is something entirely different. You can say "I've slept with X number of women / men" and the higher the number the more status you gain, but as aforementioned people WILL strive to be the "alpha male" (or female equivalent), which will lead to a dreadful hierarchial system where competition is removed, and men end up competing for the position of alpha male with most desirable females.

"As opposed to what happens now?"

Women still gravitate towards the most desirable men, regardless. The ones that don't are the one's who simply don't feel like they're up the challenge. This would, again, change very little or nothing.

You also seem to think that it would basically be a handful of guys with all the women, but you seem to forget things like, that guys have standards too (and the more desirable they see themselves, the higher their standards tend to be), that a lot of people don't want a polygamous relationship, that the same would apply to desirable women...etc. A lot of factors you're not accounting for.

And you might sit there and spout "fear of inadequacy", but what if you ARE inadequate? What if you have low income or are less attractive - you won't get a partner, period. Forcing women has nothing to do with it. But if there are less clusters of women tied to a single man or vice versa there's a bigger chance for everybody. Look at the bigger picture here.

I'm not

But either ways, if I am I am. So be it. My girlfriend isn't with me because "I'm the only option" (I can guarantee that), but because she found me to be the best option (her words, not mine, and I know she had/has options).

I'm not sad enough to want a woman to be with me because she couldn't get someone better, because she decided to "settle for whatever she could get". If you need to force a woman to be with you by providing her no other choice, you don't deserve her.

You also don't seem to understand what women want, which would explain why, I'm guessing, you're alone, and consequently why you feel inadequate. Just saying, considering you seem to think it all comes down to mathematic equation of money and looks.

 

[Aurora219]

Biologically humans aren't designed for it. In general, that is.

Some can, some countries endorse it still. Good for them. I couldn't imagine trying.

 

[Kagim]

Right, there actually is the potential of a deep psychological issue stemming from any form of Polyg---.

Essentially. While you can say "all parties agreed" how sure are you of that. With the number of monogamous relationships that exist through threats and abuse imagine that sort of situation with 6 others. I realize that wouldn't always be the case but fear not, i have more points.

As well neglect and psychological damage is quite possible. Whether you will accept it out loud or not sex is considered to be a very intimate thing to our culture. In a relationship of multiple spouses how long will it be before one spouse becomes jealous of the affections given to another. In present society how accepting would your wife or girlfriend be if she found out your having sex with another woman? You can always say "Well everyone agreed to it" but have you ever agreed to something and later regretted it? Now imagine that feeling intensified by the fact the person you love is having sex more often then you and the only ways out are death or a messy divorce. Speaking of divorce...

Entrapment. Lets say you enter a polyg--- marriage. Now lets say at some point you want out. Well if we are talking a modern north American society leaving can quite literally render you homeless and penniless. Currently the system is 50/50 of all possessions. Now imagine it being cut to 1/3 2/3 of all possessions. Leaving the marriage can result in you losing your home and possibly having to pay the other two members money to be allowed to leave. If all people in the relationship are to be considered equal then the leaving party is only entitled to 1/3 of everything while the other two are entitled to 2/3 combined. Now imagine a 6 member marriage. Or a 10 member marriage. With this in mind women(or men) can be trapped in a painful situation, neglect or abuse, that they quite literally have NO power to leave. When your options are stay and get beaten but be fed and sheltered versus living on the street... Well you get the picture.

 

[Billion Backs]

It fosters jealousy and competition between the two or more who are attached to the one. Yes, it is possible to love two people romantically and equally, and for those two to understand, appreciate, and have no problem with it. But it's is very, very improbable. It isn't an inevitability, but it is likely to undermine the very concept of mutual love.

There can be no other men in my house, and I would never bring in another woman. The detriments outweigh the benefits.

Do I have to repeat myself? Those who are unable or simply uninterested in a polygamous relationship wouldn't somehow be forced into one. The same way straight people generally aren't forced into gay relationships in all the civilized places where it's legal. (Hur, the South, hurrrr)

Those who have a problem with it, wouldn't marry in the first place.

The same way I know a number of couples that aren't interested in marriage despite having children. Hell, I'm not interested in marriage of any kind - monogamous or polygamous.

And might I add that a lot of "traditional" marriages don't exactly have much of "mutual love" to pass around, either. Just look at divorce rate. Or you can look at what a marriage is, essentially, without all the fake crap attached to it in the 20th century.

Marriage rarely happened between people who loved each other. Marriage is and has always been a financial contract first and foremost, everything else later.