Against polygamy

[Perry Winkle]

Originally Posted by freshnesschronic

Because in a biological sense, marriage for homo sapiens is and always will be universal. Throughout the globe it has been one husband one wife. This solves the postpartum feeding problem, as the mother stays at home and has the father bound to her through marriage so he can go gather food for his offspring.

No knocking on the religion, but polygamy goes against human evolution/instinct.

Um. No. Your model is far too simplistic. It may be the "norm" currently but that's in large part a consequence of path dependence and not anything hard-wired.

It's a really complicated issue and I'm not qualified to really tear up your view. For that we would need an anthropologist.

But here is my only-mildly informed, quickly written view.

Polygamy (or monogamy or polyandry) is societal and not against anything inherent to humanness. It is an attempt at establishing paternity, just like monogamy.

Paternity became important when human societies shifted to be primarily agrarian. Wealth could be kept within the family at that point.

To this day there are tribal peoples where mating pairs are informal and children are community assets (i.e., every male has a vested interested in caring for all of them like they were their own). Desirable males will have many mates. They don't even have the concepts of polygamy and monogamy, and are just fine without it.

That said, polygamy can cause societal problems. I read a research summary claiming that some amount of terrorism from Middle Eastern countries is linked to polygamy. It creates an excess of young men without prospect of marriage.