What benefits do you see with a polygamist lifestyle?
January 21st, 2012 | by admin |Lauren asked:
I think most people would agree that the current situation with the compound children has gotten a little out of hand due to outsiders’ fear. It’s caused me to think about these peoples’ lifestyles more in depth. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and befriend polygamists many years ago. I never quite understood or agreed with their choice, but have had sufficient time to think about it and come to understand, at least partially, why they do it.
I just wanted to know what other people think about it.
Mike
I think most people would agree that the current situation with the compound children has gotten a little out of hand due to outsiders’ fear. It’s caused me to think about these peoples’ lifestyles more in depth. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and befriend polygamists many years ago. I never quite understood or agreed with their choice, but have had sufficient time to think about it and come to understand, at least partially, why they do it.
I just wanted to know what other people think about it.
Mike
3 Responses to “What benefits do you see with a polygamist lifestyle?”
By arc-en-ciel on Jan 24, 2012 | Reply
Ronald
No mileage in it for me personally …….but each to his own.
By lilsoutherndancer on Jan 26, 2012 | Reply
Maurice
I see absolutely no benefits. Like at all !
By Doctor Y on Jan 28, 2012 | Reply
Gene
From a biological perspective polygamy occurs all the time. Many fathers have children by multiple mothers, and many mothers have children by multiple fathers. Nor is it the tawdry thing people often assume - some people have multiple legal marriages, the first having ended through no fault of their own. We already overtly accept that someone may love more than one person and have a good relationship with them. The only stumbling block for many is one of simultanity.
And again from a biological perspective, polygamy is probably a good thing. A larger diversity of genes provides a greater potential for unusual combinations to arise with beneficial effects. It is also pretty obvious that from a reproductive angle, only one male is really necessary to impregnate dozens of females.
Having many people in a relationship also has a much greater potential for stability. If one person falls ill, there are more people to take up the slack. And if it takes two working incomes to support a family these days, you’d have a third person to stay at home and take care of that angle. Even in the unfortunate circumstance of death or divorce, in a sense if one person leaves the marriage might continue, albeit differently.
You start to arrive at a number problems when you consider social interactions, though. A relationship with more than two people is going to have a very different dynamic. No person is going to have the full attention of any one partner, though perhaps that’s made up for by partial attention from several partners. Also, if desirable people are allowed to have more mates, that leaves far less for everyone else. The potential for a larger class of lonely, anxious, sexually-frustrated people is pretty substantial (or, on the other hand, maybe it will be easier for these people to integrate into existing marriages… it all depends).
Likewise it is hard enough to get two people to get along well… how well are three or more going to do it? Maybe a third person could be an impartial judge in disputes, but more likely they’re going to pull in an entirely different direction and make problems far worse. It depends greatly on the people involved. I don’t think there’d be much difference in the overall divorce rate - some unstable marriages would be stabilized by extra people, while some would be destroyed by them.
The elephant in the room is religion, of course. Many religions explicitly forbid polygamy, and some of their practitioners are going to want to impose this preference on everyone around them. Just look how contentious the issue has been with homosexual marriage. This would hardly be much less so. Even if it were legally permitted, I don’t doubt that there would be a lot of prejudice at first.
At least that’s the lay of things as I see it. There are plenty of examples of happy and unhappy polygamous marriages to be found, if you look. Just don’t ask me how the law or tax code would deal with such things - it’s such a complicated, snarled mess as it is, though, I don’t see how it could get much worse…