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In reply to the discussion: Gay people can have multipartner relationships too. [View all]pnwmom
(109,039 posts)that have already been completed would be entered into as evidence -- and they don't support the opinion that polygamy is without harm.
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/01/the_problem_with_polygamy.html
History suggests that it is. A new study out of the University of British Columbia documents how societies have systematically evolved away from polygamy because of the social problems it causes. The Canadian researchers are really talking about polygyny, which is the term for one man with multiple wives, and which is by far the most common expression of polygamy. Women are usually thought of as the primary victims of polygynous marriages, but as cultural anthropologist Joe Henrich documents, the institution also causes problems for the young, low-status males denied wives by older, wealthy men who have hoarded all the women. And those young men create problems for everybody.
Monogamous marriage reduces crime, Henrich and colleagues write, pulling together studies showing that polygynous societies create large numbers of unmarried men, whose presence is correlated with increased rates of rape, theft, murder, and substance abuse. According to Henrich, the problem with unmarried men appears to come primarily from their lack of investment in family life and in children. Young men without futures tend to engage in riskier behaviors because they have less to lose. And, too, they may engage in certain crimes to get wivesstealing to amass enough wealth to attract women, or kidnapping other mens wives.
As marriage historian Stephanie Coontz has pointed out, polygyny is less about sex than it is about power. Rich old guys with lots of wives win twice: They have more women to bear them babies and do household work, and they also gain an advantage over other men. After all, in such societies a young man in want of a wife cannot simply woo her. There is too much competition, and he probably has too little to offer. So he winds up having to do work for a more powerful, polygynous man, bringing him gifts and tributes, in hopes of someday being rewarded with one of that mans many daughters. Often the subordination of women is in fact also a way of controlling men, says Coontz, who was not involved in the study out of the University of B.C.
That polygyny is bad for women is not necessarily intuitive. As economist Robert H. Frank has pointed out women in polygynist marriages should have more power because theyre in greater demand, and men should wind up changing more diapers. But historically, polygamy has proved to be yet another setup that screws the XX set. Because there are never enough of them to go around, they wind up being married off younger. Brothers and fathers, realizing how valuable their female relations are, tend to control them more. And, as one would expect, polygynous households foster jealousy and conflict among co-wives. Ethnographic surveys of 69 polygamous cultures reveals no case where co-wife relations could be described as harmonious, Henrich writes, with what must be a good dose of understatement.
Children, too, appear to suffer in polygamous cultures. . . . .
SNIP
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/polygamy-not-next-gay-marriage-119614.html#.VZ7De2C4mgw
In this article, I noted other research suggesting that societies become inherently unstable when effective sex ratios reach something like 120 males to 100 females, such that a sixth of men are surplus commodities in the marriage market. That's not a big number: "The United States as a whole would reach that ratio if, for example, 5 percent of men took two wives, 3 percent took three wives, and 2 percent took four wivesnumbers that are quite imaginable, if polygamy were legal for a while."
By abolishing polygamy as a legal form of marriage, western societies took a step without which modern liberal democracy and egalitarian social structures might have been impossible: they democratized the opportunity to marry. It's no coincidence that almost no liberal democracy allows polygamy. Here's the map: