Extreme polygamy

Factual Questions
61

That’s actually common in polygamous cultures worldwide. Generally, each wife and her children have their own house (even if that’s just a small, thatched hut) and the men travel between their wives’ homes. About the only time you get two wives under one roof is when the wives are full sisters.

There are exceptions, of course, but that’s a pretty general rule.

In the few polyandrous cultures the woman stays with the house. Sometimes it’s a group of brothers with one wife (Tibet, Nepal, and adjoining parts of China) between them (which gets back to siblings sharing a house), in others it might be one husband staying with the wife while the other goes on a weeks-long hunting trip, with the two men switching out when the one guy gets home and the other goes out hunting (seen among some Aleut and Inuit groups). As usual, Wikipedia has an article on it with more information.

It’s pretty clear, though, that polygyny is much more common than polyandry or polygamy incorporating multiple people of each different gender.

62

Yes and 20,000 people claim to have been there even though it was played in a HS auditorium in Hershey, PA that seated just a few hundred. I believe in both of those claims about equally.

63

The Himalayan area and the far east in general seem to be notable for the number of monasteries and monks. I often wondered what the surplus women did, or was this a case of there being less than a surplus of women? Surprising that intense monasticism goes with polyandry also in the same society.

(I tried to ask our guide in Tibet this question but I don’t think he understood).

64

I am not sure where you were (exactly) and this may be a zillion miles off but FWIW:

The Mosuo (Chinese: 摩梭; pinyin: Mósuō ) are a small ethnic group living in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in China, close to the border with Tibet. Dubbed the ‘Kingdom of Women’ by the Chinese,[1]: 2 the Mosuo population of about 50,000 live near Lugu Lake in the Tibetan Himalayas

< snip >

The Mosuo people are known as the ‘Kingdom of Women’ because the Na are a matrilineal society: heterosexual activity occurs only by mutual consent and mostly through the custom of the secret nocturnal ‘visit’;[2] men and women are free to have multiple partners,[2] and to initiate or break off relationships when they please. - SOURCE

Not sure this counts as polygamy though. Maybe…I dunno.

65

It’s complicated.

Polyandry was mostly concentrated in just one class of people, it wasn’t universal. In a family with no sons you could wind up with polygyny. Also, remember that there were nuns as well as monks in Tibet, the monasteries/nunneries soaked up some of the “surplus” population of either gender. I also suspect that pre-annexation by China there was a significant mortality in childbirth given a lack of medical care.

66

Sex-selective infanticide has a long history. Now largely replaced by sex-selective abortion. There’s some evidence the whole practice is slowly fading worldwide. But it’s taking longer than we thought.

Sex-selective anything almost always results in excess surviving boys and a shortage of surviving girls. 20 years later monasteries (or wars or prisons) soak up the excess young men. Which largely obviates any drive for significant amounts of polyandry.

67

I suspect the imbalance in the modern world will correct itself in a generation or two, especially as the traditional motivations disappear. Economist mentioned a mail-order bride scam in China, where desperate men pay large sums for a bride from Vietnam, only to have her disppear with the money after a few months - possibly to rinse and repeat.

68

China and India are facing a serious problem along these lines and a solution would take a few decades to sort it out. In the short term, not sure what they can do about it. Letting women have more than one husband might help some but not sure their cultures would allow that.

In China and India, men outnumber women on a massive scale. The consequences are far-reaching.

Nothing like this has happened in human history. A combination of cultural preferences, government decree and modern medical technology in the world’s two largest countries has created a gender imbalance on a continental scale. Men outnumber women by 70 million in China and India.

The consequences of having too many men, now coming of age, are far-reaching: Beyond an epidemic of loneliness, the imbalance distorts labor markets, drives up savings rates in China and drives down consumption, artificially inflates certain property values, and parallels increases in violent crime, trafficking or prostitution in a growing number of locations. - SOURCE

69

Yes exactly. A sort of tragedy of the commons, wherein one person seeking an advantage gets it, but a large fraction of everyone seeking that same advantage destroys it.

70

I think we will know the imbalance is correcting itself in the Asian subcontinent when dowry from the bride’s family becomes a thing of the past (or reverses, the groom’s family pays).

(Not sure what the custom is in China).

The key point for gender equality in the West is that women were capable of earning their own living independently, and could rely (somewhat) on being physically safe on their own with the suppot of law enforcement and the legal system. As that becomes more widespread elsewhere, the pressure on social attitudes to recognize this right to equality and independence will increase.

71

Or the backlash will put the whole movement into reverse for a generation or two. Ideas once invented don’t get uninvented. But they can languish unimplemented for far longer than a human lifetime.

72

This may be happening (I do not know) but even if it is this will take several decades to sort itself out. At least one generation if not more. In the short term (short = many years) this will cause real problems.

If all is perfect right now then roughly 50% of the people being born are women and 50% are men. And it will take them 18 years (give or take) to be ready for marriage and family.

Basically, we need to wait for this 70 million man bubble to age out…that will take 30-50 years or more.

73

It will be a painful re-alignment of the social structure. Watch for more stories about how only the rich can get wives, women marrying older men, about girls rebelling over arranged marriages, etc. I suppose the bright spot is that not just China (where one child was enforced) but larger Aisian nations like India and Indonesia are already trending down the curve of lower birth rates, a side effect of a richer society and more advanced, educated lifestyles.

(Interesting site - https://www.populationpyramid.net/india/2023/ )

74

All true. But …

Lower birth rates don’t actually help with the M/F ratio thing. As long as there is a cultural preference for boys, boys will be overproduced by hook or by crook. And in smaller families the importance of boys only grows, not shrinks. A couple girls among 10 kids is no big deal. A couple girls among two is quite the failure.

I predict the lowering of births per mother driven by urbanizing economics and rising incomes per capita will change faster than the social mores which favor boys. With the effect that the M/F birht (or age 1 to account for infanticide) ratio gets more lopsided for awhile before it starts to move back towards the natural ~50/50 outcome.

75

Yes, it falls in the category of “be careful what you wish for”. Canada has no laws against abortion, to the delight of feminists - until they realized that certain populations were using the technology and options - same as in India - to abort a female fetus. India has at least passed a law forbidding ultrasound for this purpose.

But the saying goes “if things can’t go on like this - they won’t.” Sooner or later, things will change.

76

I actually don’t see why they can’t go on like this indefinitely.

Societies can keep overproducing boys and dealing with the adverse social consequences indefinitely. Because the people who benefit from the overproduction and the people who suffer from the overproduction are different people. The society as a whole is worse off due to the overproduction, but that’s not the measure of merit driving individual decision-making.

Please understand I’m not advocating for a lopsided child sex ratio. I’m only saying that I predict it will be far more durable than more enlightened people might expect or wish for.

77

What sort of sex ratio did societies where infanticide was acceptable have?

78

IIRC from something I read, that for (not so?) ancient societies it was a form of birth control. The future population level was roughly determined by the number of girls. When population got too high (i.e. the poorest could not afford to feed another mouth) then baby girls were the first to go. (Sorry, kind of a morbid subject all around).

Some societies the tradition of dowries has become so extreme that girls are a drain simply because the family cannot afford the dowries for multiple girls. (Google “bride burning”) It was (is?) a problem in India where the groom’s family decides that the dowry was insufficient and the bride’s family should pay more. (What I find interesting about this is it appears the dowry goes to the groom’s family, not the groom…)

79

That depended on the society. The final result was a combination of both the infanticide and what might happen to older/adult people, as things like warfare could kill off a lot of men bringing the adult sex ratio closer to 1:1 (or in some cases, when most or all of the men of a group were killed off, it could go the other way).

Among the polyandrous Inuit/Aleut the sex ratio about about 2:1 male, but that’s because marriages were assumed to be two men and one woman. This was enforced by infanticide.

In the islands of the Pacific, infanticide was a means of population control on very limited islands. Infanticide in general was one way to limit population, but a number of island cultures were specific in limited female infant survival. Excess male population might be taken care of by warfare with other groups. Excess population in general could be solved by piling people into a canoe and sending them off to find another island.

In Ancient Greece and Rome infanticide was used to eliminate deformed children as well as unwanted children. Some of them were rescued and became slaves but others weren’t. The upper class Romans had a lot of families with multiple sons and only one daughter, which leads to the question of why only one girl? Well, there’s your explanation. I think that was connected at least in part with their dowry system.

Some cultures forbade infanticide, such as the Ancient Egyptians, who were considered weird for keeping all infants by the Greeks and Romans.

Some cultures that were smaller than the ancient empires, and who were at war a lot, had the opposite problem: so many men killed by violence they had surplus women. They wouldn’t want to kill off female infants because of the need to replenish their numbers, and they wouldn’t kill off young boys because of the need for warriors. So you often would see polygyny in such places and there wasn’t an issue with the skewed sex ratios.

Some modern cultures that allow polygyny do have to deal with “surplus” males. This is a problem in groups like the polygynous Mormon splinters who don’t limit births and advocate each man having multiple wives. There aren’t enough women to go around and they don’t engage in warfare so “excess” boys are simply abandoned in their teens along highways, the so-called “Lost Boys”.

There are quite a few cultures that will specifically kill off infant girls. There are others who will kill off both boys and girls. I don’t know of any that will selectively kill off boys.

80

As I mentioned, limiting the number of girls was the best form of population control in the old days. Extra males were just more labour, canon fodder, whatever. The number of people in the next generation is determined by the number of females. (Generally no shortage of males to ensure there is a next generation, even if the men have to take multiple wives). The only reason to kill off infant boys is if there is a serious shortage of resources to feed them - but generally, once the social procedures are in place, the population should be steady-state with whatever sex ratio works, as long as the number of women is constant.

Europe also used monastic life - male and female - to limit opportunities for procreation. (In theory)

Also keep in mind childbrearing was a dangerous process before modern medicine, and childhood diseases, especially in crowded towns and cities, was an issue - so a little wiggle room in replacement ratios could be expected.