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It could never work for me personally, and while I am not a fan of it, I suppose it may be ideal for some families. It's clearly a cultural thing, because no matter how many Dateline specials I watch, I just can't wrap my head around being okay with sharing my husband.
I tend to be more of a live and let live person, but I'm going to be the first to admit that this is one of my bias areas. I'm sure not all kids resulting from polygamous marriages are abused or even unhappy, but it's honestly one of my only uncomfortable topics. I can't stop seeing it as invented by a man who just wanted to brainwash women into thinking if they complained about him taking more wives they'd be less happy or rewarded in the afterlife. (I know it was found in other religions, too, but can't remember if it was cultural or religious there?)
I'm looking forward to seeing others' answers on this, as it is something I have not had any firsthand experience with, and am not personally familiar with beyond tv documentaries and Big Love.
I would never ever participate in such a relationship, but I don't think it's my place to dictate to others what kinds of relationships they can participate in. As long as it is equal and women are allowed to have multiple husbands as well, then I don't see how I can oppose it. The thing that is most disturbing to me about polygamy now is the way the children are so often raised in completely closed communities and the kids (usually the girls) have very little choice about whether that is the type of relationship they want for themselves or not, it's just forced upon them. Maybe if it was legalized, these communities would not be so closed off and these kids would end up having more control over their own marriage choices because they would be exposed to all the options.
I think its a crock of crap, how can anyone feel that its ok to have multiple partners? its disgusting and obviously made up my a selfish man who didn't want to commit to one woman so he made people believe that it was ok. Fromw hat I know about it, it seems that the majority of polygamists are men. Hope that wasn't snarky, because that is definitely how I feel. I agree with greenleaf, maybe if they legalized it the children wouldn't feel trapped in an existence they want no part of and be able to live a normal life as they see fit.
While I get that it's how some cultures are, I don't think it'd really work in America. We are a lot more selfish than most cultures and we no like to share our significant others.
But, I will say that polygamy has been around for thousands of years. I wouldn't go so far as to say polygamy is for selfish men who don't want to committ. That's just how some cultures are and how some cultures foster survival. The whole "The king gets to sleep with as many women as he wants" sort of thing. I don't agree with it, I don't want it, but I understand it's been around for awhile and it works in other cultures, typically I think those that are not as developed? I think it just showed up in the same way men in the 1500's were expected to have mistresses and have illigitimate children or men in the old days of China (like ming dynasty type era) had concubines for sleeping with. The concubines became part of the women's community. They weren't liked, but they had a place and it was expected.
Some cultures are just different but I can't personally get on board with it. If polygamy is legalized in America, I don't think enough people would be on board. Those kids would be made fun of and I think it'd be an exclusive little community and it'd be too shut off from the real world. I don't like communities like this in general, though.
But, the only main difference I see between having multiple wives and having mistresses when your married are, well, the wives are legal. It's all "bad" in my eyes though.
And how in the world can one man provide support in America for multiple wives AND tons of kids? I see it becoming more of a "wife you work for me and bring home money" kind of thing
I think it works if a person is from a cultural background where it is normative. Most North Americans come have very different cultural assumptions about the importance of two people entering into a relationship 'to the exclusion of all others,' but not everyone has this foundational belief.
As to the advantages - I guess since many polygamous families have very 'traditional' views about gender roles, having many wives means that women can share household/child rearing duties, and may even have fewer worries about the double burden (ie. one wife can work outside of the home while another works inside the home without worrying about suitable childcare). I suppose children who grow up with multiple siblings and parents living under one roof might also have strong family ties (although the same could be said of any family really). And of course, for people who are part of polygamous relationships for religious reasons, the belief that plural marriage is a necessary prerequisite for salvation/heaven probably overrides all other concerns. I don't pretend to understand this belief at all, and it really bothers me that women might be put into the situation of having to agree to plural marriage or lose their eternal salvation, for some people, this is their belief system.
I personally would never ever be comfortable with this kind of marriage, and as a feminist I have very strong reservations about assumptions made about women within this conception of marriage and family. However, it absolutely does happen in North America (not just FLDS on compounds or in Colorado City - 'normal looking' polygamous families live all over the place, and I know an imam who used to perform marriages for Muslim men who wanted more than one wife). And therefore, because it happens, I think society needs to have a discussion about the merits and demerits of polygamy because it is a reality which is not going away.
Realistically, it's not for me. But the idea of someone doing all of the cooking and cleaning and making a living so that I could be a stay at home mother sounds pretty appealing. (I could make those demands since I have senority, right? lol)
Thankfully FI is very much a 1-gal kind of guy, and I am a 1-guy kind of gal.
I saw an interesting argument about this subject once that said the problem wasn't the three, it was the two, by which they meant that sharing your partner with someone else is the hard part that doesn't come naturally. We are jealous creatures by nature, I think, which is why so much polygamy comes down to men getting lots of wives but not having to share them with each other or another man. Which is not happening in cultures where they respect women as equals.
From another perspective, I have seen African polygamy work both very well and very badly. In a traditional village, it can mean that the women live together in a compound and share the (massive amounts of) work, share the raising of children, the overhead costs are lowered, and the man's (overly domineering imo) attention is split among them. But this only works if you accept fairly strict gender roles and a certain lifestyle. Otoh, for middle-class men in the city, it can mean two or three households splitting one man's income and semi-single mothers carrying the load of child-rearing basically alone.
So yeah, in the modern Western world most of us want to live in? Not a good idea, I think.
You know, I was thinking....technically most religious groups value "their" religious beliefs above those of the states. So in their mind, if they are married by some priest or religious person of their religion, then they think they ARE legally married. They may live together, have kids, etc. They probably do not care if their marriage is recognized by the united states. They have obligations bigger than the state to take care of their spouses and children.
Not that they get healthcare or anything, but maybe they do not care because of their religious bleiefs
It's worked for thousands of years. I'm sure if we all had a different outlook, it would work just fine here.
The "problem" is expectations. Marriage is not just a partnership for economic well-being and raising children in our culture. Here, we expect companionship, love, fidelity, emotional support, etc. Our expectations aren't well built for the essentially patriarchal and group mentality polygamy requires.
I think the issue is that ever since the women's movement gained momentum (and that really didn't happen until the late 80's/early 90's) most people polled said that the purpose of marriage was to create and raise children. As the womens' movement progresses, ideas have shifted, and now the majority of those polled say the purpose of marriage is a spiritual fullfillment of each other. (If I had better google priveleges at work I could bring up the study on this...) If the purpose of your marriage is merely to make babies, polygamy works and works well. You aren't jealous or possessive of your partner because his work was done once you got pregnant. I think that the ideas about what exactly a marriage is are what cause people to think polygamy is good/bad. And I don't want to judge others, because there are monogomous relationships that are pretty crappy, so saying that a relationship is bad just because one man/woman shares multiple partners, I think, is a little closed-minded.
In theory, I support freedom of choice. In practice, polygamy usually means under-age brides and brides forced into marriages. Also, societies overrun with single, unattached men are typically not ideal. I struggle with this one.
On the other hand, *I* could totally use a wife!
@ alicia... when I'm doing laundry after 12 hours of work, I think the same thing....
monitajb said it really well.
Also, there is still some question as to why humans force themselves into one-one marriage partnerships. I have not studied it well enough to go in-depth here, but some people think that we have socialized ourselves into thinking this is the optimal setting for families/couples/life, when it may not really matter/be counterintuitive from an evolutionary perspective. Again, I really need to read more on this so I don't think I could elaborate much more; I just thought it was something interesting to consider.
I personally think that as long as everyone involved is of age and willing, and that nobody is being abused, taken advantage of, or hurt, then adults should be allowed to do whatever the heck they want.
I've got to agree with monitajb. I think the expectations for marriage overall in our country are more than just societal contract and while I think it's possible for one person to have deep loving relationships with more than one person, I think the stress of it may make polygamy unlikely to function practically.
I don't think I could do it personally, and I doubt the US will ever do it but if pigs started to fly and the we did move in that direction I would hope that it would be embraced by both men AND women. I would also hope that there would be laws put in place to protect people from what we see on the news regarding the issue.
One thing I always wonder about this...how would insurance work? I think someone with 20 wives would put the whole insurance thing out of whack for someone with only 1 wife -- I just think it would somehow make their personal cost a lot higher (I have no data to support this idea of mine, it's just something I'm wondering). Or would there be a limit like you could only insure your first 5 wives???
What do you think about when people who don't support gay marriage because of their argument that next polygamy will become legalized?
Probably more like "You can only insure one wife." Because we're based on a monogomous society, I can see how easy it would be to make that a restriction, and you'd have to pay for insurance for everyone else.
I'd also like to point out that as crazy as we think the idea that polygamy in the US could ever be legalized, a lot of the same arguments being made for gay marriage actually transfer to polygamy. So when gay marriage is legalized, it's only a very short legal hurdle and maybe a decade or less before polygamy is also legalized.
Growing up LDS (aka Mormon), I have definitely heard my fair share of polygamy questions (which by the way is not practiced or allowed in our religion...it was done away with back in the 1800s)...and I just don't see it working in the U.S. We really don't have a "what's yours is mine and what's mine is yours" kind of culture. I don't mean to say that as we're not generous and sharing, because I believe many are, but I just don't think people would be that "open" to that sort of relationship structure. When I think of other cultures than have it, it just seems natural. It's been that way for thousands of years and it works, and will probably continue to work for many years to come.
Now, as for me personally, I would never, ever, ever want that kind of relationship. I love my hubby too much and I am sooooo not the sharing type :) lol
@ Lillindy: I can see, from their POV, why this would be a concern. If you think being gay is just a choice, it isn't all that different from wanting two wives as opposed to a husband. In addition, if you think gender roles are an essential part of a major, then same sex marriage is just as fundamental a change as polygamy is.
This is just one of those areas where proponents and opponents of same sex marriage will never really see eye-to-eye. To me, same sex marriage has no real relationship to polygamous marriage. To me, polygamy is not an issue of basic human rights and dignity. From a libertarian POV, I understand the polygamy argument, but it just doesn't drive me, as I don't see a human right implicated in the issue. I also don't think gender roles, or the protection of them, has anything to do with civil marriage, while the choice to legally bind two people does seem rather fundamental.
@ MightySapphire: I don't think the arguments actually made by marriage equality activists transfer. I think versions of the arguments transfer, but only in their most simplified forms.
deep. part of me thinks that, as long as everyone is a consenting adult, who are we to stop them? the other part of me relates polygamy to 'Big Love'.
the whole set up just seems so anti-woman. in these cultures that allow multiple wives, can a woman have multiple husbands? it just seems so oppressive and demeaning.
@MightySapphire--I agree with monitajb about same-sex marriage issues. The medical and legal implications for polygamy are enormous--same-sex marriage doesn't invite a fraction of the problematic issues. Property rights, taxes, insurance, medical decisions, etc., etc.--these make polygamy substantially different from same-sex marriages.
I think that polygamy and same sex marriages are completely intertwined BECAUSE of the idea of basic human rights! If you cannot define a marriage as between a man and a woman, you also cannot define a marrage as between just two people. Really, the government defining marriage in the first place is the problem. I don't think that being gay is a choice, I believe it's something genetic that you're born with. And yet I still think that people have the right to choose how to define their own marriages, and the government has a right to uphold those choices. I just don't see how you can change the definition for one group but not all groups. (Wow, I think I'm actually not opposed to polygamy? Hmm...) As long as no one is being abused by the dynamics (as others have said, no underage brides, no abusive whatevers) then I don't see why it's anyone else's business how a person chooses to live with regards to their relationships.
@Mighty Sapphire - I think there are fundamental differences in the issues, though. For one thing, an estimated 10% of Americans are gay - that's much higher than the polygamist numbers. For another, it comes down to whether or not you accept homosexuality as a part of one's biological makeup and identity. Gay marriage is, to many people (myself included) a basic civil right not simply because there are a group of gay individuals who want to be married, but because they're being denied an inalienable right based on who they are innately. Polygamy, I would argue, is more of an evolutionary crutch that developed when it was necessary to further and strengthen the population, and has carried on because it is obviously favorable to some people. But it's not a hard and fast part of identity, it's more of a developed and chosen identity.
I understand the similarity in the arguments, but I just don't think they're close enough to logically come together - I really disagree that allowing gay marriage would have anything to do with polygamy, other than that polygamist groups might try to use it to their favor.
it's hard for me to wrap my head around the benefits of polygamy and how it would work if it were legalized.
what if one wife wanted a divorce? or one husband wanted a divorce (if a woman was married to multiple men)? would there be limits on how many people a person could be married to? i mean could a woman be married to a man who was married to several other women but also be married to several other men? if same sex marriages were legalized as well then could a man be married to muliple men AND multiple women and vice versa?
legally how would it work? how would taxes work, owning a home, life insurance, health insurance, name changes etc ...? would the other wives be considered the parents of children they didn't birth or just their own, could people still adopt, i guess in my mind the laws that would have to be put on the books to get the whole institution running in the US would be astronomical.
personally i could never do it, it seems confusing and like a ton of work.
So, I do my research in a country much like South Africa, where polygamy is legal but not all that common. I know several people in polygamous marriages, and it seems to work for them. It does, at least in this context, go along with very "traditional" gender roles. Co-wives sometimes get along famously (extra hands to help with the household labor, people to chat with during the day, etc) and sometimes are jealous of each other and unhappy together. I'd compare it to a sibling relationship in many ways.
In most polygamous societies, two things are true: only a small number of men can actually afford to marry more than one wife at a time, and men marry at significantly older ages than women do. So there is not actually a huge issue of men who can never marry, and many women marry more than once (after their first husband dies, or after divorce).
As many others have said, polygamous marriage would not be a good fit for the conceptions of marriage held by most Americans, which involve a romantic relationship that would be threatened by non-exclusive sexual partnership. But that is far from the only way to think about marriage.
@ MightySapphire: If the government remains involved in marriages at all, it will make choices. You can't marry a child. You can't marry a dog. You can't marry a toaster. You can't marry your sister. These are judgments that we as a society have made.
The idea behind the marriage equality movement isn't that making a judgment is wrong, it is opposing the judgment that same sex couples are inherently not equal to different sex couples. As activists, we argue that same sex relationships have the same value to individuals and society as a different sex couple, and that disperate treatment is therefore discriminatory in a way that violates equal rights. The argument is not (at least in the mainstream) that there should be no rules at all about who should get married. I'm for marriage equality, as in allowing two consenting asults to enter into a civil contract requiring certain obligations and granting certain rights. I am entirely opposed to adult men marrying underage boys, for example.
And on the legal side of things: children legally have two parents. Estate planning obviously gets more complicated, and there are customary portions of the estate that go to the children of each wife. Divorce works the same way it does in a monogamous marriage - the other wives are simply not involved (although, again, they are obviously affected by any divorce settlement, which in this context happens through the application of local customary law). Property is owned by individuals, not couples (household property is still allocated to the husband or a specific wife). Again, this is in a context of traditional gender roles, so men tend to own land while women own domestic items, clothing, and may have cash reserves of their own. People can still adopt - again, as a couple.
@historienne thank you for the info, i think it's a very interesting topic. from what you've said i think from a purely practical stance that polygamy wouldn't work in the US simply because our culture/society wasn't set up for it from the beginning. the economy, laws, etc ... are based around a two person unit rather than a group unit.
the overhauling of the system that would be needed to get such a fundamental shift to work would be huge, that's not to say that it would be impossible, but i just can't see the government putting that much time and effort into something that isn't being lobbied for by people who have a ton of money to put into the system (that i know of anyway, i could be wrong).
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First off, let me say that this is no way to bash or degrade those that choose the path of polygamy for religious purposes or any other purpose so be sure to leave out any snarky comments. I am hoping this is can become a true discussion without involving any religious beliefs. I know we all have our views on whether it is morally wrong or not but this is to see if it can physically work for everyone involved.
I heard this on the Steve Harvey radio show this morning. One of his loyal listeners from South Africa had mentioned that their president has 20 kids and 5 wives. So their hot topic was, if it was legalized, can polygamy really work? Later I will share some of the listeners views. They may surprise you. By the way, this stemmed from Steve Harvey making a comment that AA men would not want multiple wives for many reasons. Unfortunately, I missed that part of the show, so I did not get to hear the reasons.
If the US legalized polygamy, do you personally think it can work?
I am interested in your opinions. Who has the advantage? Disadvantage? Can the roles be reversed where the woman has multiple husbands? Would this lead to men sticking around and taking care of their multiple wives and children?