Comments on: Monogamous societies superior to polygamous societies

By: Robyn

Robyn — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:58:43 +0000

Forgot to add that I have read that polygamous marriages aren’t the total male funfest most men imagine. The wives are jealous and gang up on each other and the man and all try to manipulate him to get the best for themselves and their children. It does not sound like a good environment to raise children. It can’t be good the the kids, especially boys, as it would be very hard for them to get much time with dad with so many kids and wives competing for attention and dad has to work to provide for them all unless he has inherited money.

By: Robyn

Robyn — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 03:54:35 +0000

I always laugh at the “women prefer to share an alpha than have a beta all to themselves” which is ALWAYS claimed by men! This is such a crock. Have you ever actually checked with any real life women? Any women who want an alpha want him ALL TO THEMSELVES and will only very reluctantly share him. They will only share him in the initial stages hoping to get him all to themselves, and will only angrily share when he has moved on to another if they are hoping to get him back or financially dependent on him.
Most women would prefer a man all of their own and even betas stray and women are afraid of that. Large numbers of women divorce if their man is unfaithful – how does that fit with the “happy to share” mythology?
Many women like myself and all my friends actively avoid alphas knowing they are vain, self-obsessed, disloyal, promiscuous and full of STDs and just totally repulsive.
Women are still blinded by the “one true love” mythology and expect far too much from a relationship emotionally that most men are not able to provide, this is what is responsible for the massive increase in marriage breakdown in the West, female emotional dissatisfaction. They leave hoping for someone better, but this someone better does not exist outside fairytales. Women want to permanently remain in the blissful honeymoon stage which is physically impossible in a relationship with the same person. Needs to be much more education around this as marital instability is wreaking havoc on our children.

By: Steve Sailer

Steve Sailer — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 08:51:35 +0000

” A major twist here though is that they are proposing that the selective process operates upon cultural, not genetic, variation (memes, not genes).”

One way to think of this is: “Who wins the wars?”

By: paradoctor

paradoctor — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:49:04 +0000

Monogamy is sexual socialism. Left to laissez-faire, the marriage market would become unbalanced by monopolists, resulting in large numbers of unmarriagable men; and such men tend to become a hazard to themselves and to others. Therefore, for the sake of social order, share-and-share alike is enforced by law. This is classic socialism, and it has the classic consequences of socialism; mostly it works as advertized, but there are ironic unintended consequences.

By: Onur

Onur — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:40:55 +0000

Interestingly, Tunisia prohibits polygamy. It’s the only Muslim land I know of that does, probably due to French influences.

Polygamy is also illegal in Turkey.

By: Clark

Clark — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:09:09 +0000

Leor, OK. I fully admit to not being up on the details of the history and I’ve seen it used to apply to all European Jews rather than just Germany and northern France. That’s why I asked.

By: pconroy

pconroy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:44:19 +0000

@Leor,
Another thing to remember is that just because something is officially banned or frowned upon, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not practiced.
A friend used to work in HIV surveillance, and you’d be surprised at the HIV positive rate among married Hassidim – it’s not that high, but it’s entirely linked to homosexual sex among married men in this community, no matter that they are the father’s of scores of kids…

By: pconroy

pconroy — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:37:00 +0000

#29, Leor,

I don’t understand Yiddish…

My informant about Satmar and other Hassidic groups in Brooklyn was my real estate broker, a former Hasidim, who left the community decades ago, but spoke Yiddish and interacted with these people daily. Now he may have been somewhat biased, but probably only in degree…

By: Justin Giancola

Justin Giancola — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:24:46 +0000

“One could posit that perhaps males have a preference to accumulate status. In a pre-modern society even the wealthy usually did not have many material objects. Land, livestock, and women, were clear and hard-to-fake signalers to show what a big cock you had.”

Bravo. It’s about time this has come up…no pun.

By: Leor

Leor — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:18:16 +0000

Clark — I meant Ashkenazim according to any standard definition. Spain is de facto out — that is Sefarad, not Ashkenaz. Although Ashkenazim did arrive in Spain in the middle ages, they most definitely would have brought the prohibition with them and disseminated it. I wouldn’t dispute that polygyny was practiced by non-Ashkenazim, but the assertion that modern day Satmar hasidim marry multiple wives acc to Jewish law is absurd. They’d be lynched faster than Razib in Mecca.

By: Clark

Clark — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:44:07 +0000

Anthony (28) in theory (if not always in practice) actual wives have more rights than a mistress does. Consider what happens at the death of man in terms of inheritance. This of course varies from culture to culture. The more liberal west tends to have strong child support laws which while hardly unproblematic at least attempt to give non-married women some support from men.

As for the difference between having children and not having children there’s the question of resources and genetics. Which I find interesting even if others might not. (If only because it seems an aspect of the distant past that actually remained long after it apparently disappeared formally) I think the social structures will be quite different if there isn’t a question of children though. In some ways a lot of social structures end up being about children and probably have roots in various instincts – even if I’m a bit dubious about some “just so” stories the evolutionary psychology movement puts forth on sexual instincts. Admittedly some of the issues might be tied to the whole issue of heirs which may well be somewhat unique in its form the way it developed in the west. (I just don’t know enough about sex and marriage in other cultures to dare say much)

Leor (29) I think that depends upon how narrowly you take Ashkenazim. If you just mean Germany and not all of Western Europe then you’re probably right. If you include Spain and souther France I’m fairly sure there was modest practice up until the inquisition periods. And as someone else mentioned there were parts of the middle east where Jews continued to practice it – and I’m fairly sure there were a number of American immigrants in America that practiced it leading to the Reform Judaism ban in 1869 in Philadelphia. (I fully confess this isn’t something I know much about)

Dan (30) Serial monogamy often isn’t that serial. Rather you have guys playing the field. Even someone like Gingrich who moved from wife to wife had some overlap (and who knows what else he was doing). In some communities it’s pretty frequent for some men to have children by many, many different women – and not in a terribly serial fashion. This happens with the elite a fair bit (NFL and NBA stars have a reputation here) Birth control ought really change all the behaviors though. Modern singles who have numerous sexual partners in one sense are somewhat like polygamists but in other important sense aren’t simply due to the lack of anything like a shared home or resource not to mention the much, much lower incidence of children.

As for the decline in marriage. Honestly I’m not that surprised – although the US isn’t quite evolving the way Europe has. If a lot of social structures developed to formalize and regularize heirship and you can easily limit children and heirship doesn’t matter to most people then the structures developed to regulate them will naturally deteriorate. That said I suspect we’ll reach a new equilibrium point eventually. The more interesting question is how the intersection between a certain degree of xenophobia and being below replacement reproduction will shift marriage and sexual norms. You already are seeing a lot of state encouragement of children in a lot of European nations. Part of that is tied to the obvious economic problems of the changing demographics. But I think a lot of it is a certain xenophobia and not adopting the immigration stances than Canada or the US have.

By: Grey

Grey — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:26:21 +0000

“Is there a strong preference among the playas in those groups *for* having children by multiple women, or merely an indifference to fathering children?)”

Yes, it’s a kind of a competition and how many separate women have had one of their kids is how they score it. 2+ from the same woman doesn’t count. It’s also why they go after them very young as “if you love me you’ll have my baby” works better when the girls are very naive.

“Is this an indication of a sudden rupture in the very types of norms being praised here?”

The polarity of the social norms has more or less been reversed.

By: Dan

Dan — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:42:47 +0000

One would have to wonder about the steep decline of all forms of marriage in the West.

Is this an indication of a sudden rupture in the very types of norms being praised here? After all, the life of people who move rapidly in and out of the dating market without marrying, which is fairly typical of much of the west now (so-called serial monogamy) seems a lot like polygamy:

- low investment as compared to marriage
- an abundance of unsatisfied males as a few males date more than their share of women

Certainly the West is in economic crisis and has been for some time. Low new family formation is a reason mentioned by financial greats like Pimco’s Bill Gross.

By: Leor

Leor — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:27:21 +0000

@pconroy — that’s BS. you are shmutzing up the heimishe yidden of Brooklyn with your naarishkeit “reasonably good authority.” There have been no multiple marriages among any Ashkenazim for about a thousand years! No Satmar rabbi would permit that any more than he would permit Razib’s Thai food…

By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:54:35 +0000

What is the social difference between a society where a smallish number of powerful/wealthy men have, aside from their formal wives, mistresses who bear them children versus having mistresses who generally do *not* bear them (or any other man) children ?

Some English kings are notable for large numbers of bastards, while others are well-known to have had mistresses, but not bastards (or not many). Have there been societies with formal mongamy where one type of mistress is more common than the other as a social practice, rather than as individual preferences/luck? Upper-middle-class white Americans seem to prefer that their mistresses not have children, while among lower-class whites and among blacks in the U.S., there doesn’t seem to be a strong preference against fathering children among multiple baby-mamas. (Is there a strong preference among the playas in those groups *for* having children by multiple women, or merely an indifference to fathering children?)