You’re assuming that women wouldn’t also marry multiple men.
To what extent that would work to even things out, starting from our current social situation, is another question. How to work out the legalities is yet another question, and a really complicated one – are three partners each entitled to a widower/widow’s share of social security when the fourth one dies? each of them to all of it? each of them to a third of it? and that’s just a start; the child custody issues are as has been said going to be even worse than the financial ones, and the financial ones are going to be really hard. Not everybody’s going to do well-thought-out contracts in advance, any more than everybody now dies with a well-planned-out will.
On the other hand, this is a thing that happens, law or no law. Sometimes messily; but human relationships are often messy. Having some sort of legal structure for it to happen in might well be a good idea. Maybe it could be written to reduce, rather than increase, the chances for exploitative situations. I don’t think I’d even know where to start trying to write it, though.
I have seen it suggested that Afghanistan’s chronic unrest is fueled by the fact that wealthy older men who marry multiple wives create a shortage of younger women. Having a lot of young men around who can’t find a partner creates a powder keg.
Complaining about nor finding a partner because the rich people have taken them is a lot more legitimate than complaining because you’re not able to have a decent relationship with a woman.
One interesting input from our tour guide in Cairo. She was the first of two wives. The law made divorce simple, but if she initiated the divorce it became a financial hardship. And in a polygamous relationship it is easy for the man to ghost the wife or wives he’s not interested in anymore.That’s basically what happened to her.
ISTR hearing some polygamists on TV saying that once upon a time there weren’t enough men for the women, so this allowed the women to have families etc. I don’t remember if they said why…didn’t a bunch die en route to Utah?
The gender gap in Utah’s Mormon population has widened since 1990, when the female-to-male gender ratio was 52-to-48. In 2008, the gender ratio changed to 60-to-40, according to a Trinity College’s American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) as cited in the Time Magazine article.
For Mormons in Utah, that’s the equivalent of three LDS women for every two LDS men.
It seems many of the men are leaving the faith.
Meanwhile, a quick google shows that the NYT, WaPo, and the Atlantic brings up a theory that women could take more than one husband in China, the female infanticide having created a deficit of baby girls.
I imagine most dopers are familiar with the half sibling concept—two people have one common parent. What if that one common parent were repeated over and over?
I heard this on NPR—not sure if it’s this exact story.
I learned a term while reading up on this today: 3/4 sibling. This would be like back in the day if a man died, his brother married the widow. Full sibs are approximately 50% same genes; if a new, totally unrelated man married the widow their children have 25% same genes as the original sibs. But 3/4 sibs had a parent who was half the same as the other parent. They are 37.5% the same as that first group.
If you don’t like the idea of first cousins marrying…consider that they have 12.5% same genes.
The children from his sperm were scared they might inadvertantly marry someone from across the country who turned out to be a half sib.
Tracking all that with plural marriages could get tricky. If you limit the number of men who can father children, in a sort of “closed system” (since members may refuse to marry outside their people of their religion in their immediate vicinity, etc.) then it really pushes the possibility of birth defects from recessive genes being expressed.
“Polygamy” derives from the word “polygyny,” which means one husband and many wives. The corresponding term is polyandry – one wife with many husbands, but yes, polygamy is the general term here and now.
As to the OP, I had a professor who advocated for marriage law to just become like contract law. There could be different forms of partnerships, etc., and what happened at death or dissolution should be spelled out in the contract, as well as intentions as to children, how new members may be added, and so forth.
It’s an interesting intellectual exercise, but I suspect that existing inequalities might make it too easy to abuse in really big ways.
What’s clear to me is that people should be allowed to arrange their families and households with whatever combination of people they mutually want.
What the role of the government should be is to protect people’s individual rights to autonomy. No one should be forced to stay in an abusive relationship whether it’s a traditional monogamous heterosexual marriage or anything else. And people should have inheritance rights and hospital visitation rights and child custody rights, etc.
Facilitating what people already want to do isn’t going to change the problem of the availability of partners. That kind of thing is due to a lot of societal factors.
Oh, yeah. I know some that have lasted lifetimes. I didn’t mean to imply that they never do, just that more people means more people to get discontented and decide the relationship needs to end for them - and sometimes with only one person in the marriage. And due to lack of legal protections, its easy to get completely screwed when that happens.
The fact that polygamous marriage of the one man-several women variety is terrible for society is a good reason why one should be legal and the other not. And lets not pretend there would be an equal number of women marrying several husbands.
Certain groups that practice polygamy also raise their girl children to be subservient. So who knows if they even know they have a choice.
Well, that’s the rub, innit? In a perfect world, the women would choose. In the world we live in, most do not.
But in practice that’s not gonna happen, not in our society.
That’s because the law up there is also part of the cult I mean community. And the cult leaders know how to skirt the legalities of multiple wives. Since they don 't have multiple “legal” wives, there’s nothing the law can do anyway. And none of the wives are going to swear out a complaint, that’s for sure.
Why are you so sure about that? I have in the last few years become acquainted with a lot of polyamorous/nonmonogamous women. I have encountered many women who have multiple male partners, many of them in long-term relationships in which they share households.
A lot of the problems derive from the fact that our Western law doesn’t really address polygamy, other than to forbid it. The law would need to be changed to protect EVERYONE involved in a relationship.
Yeah, this seems like one of those things where the illegality itself leads to exploitation. If it were fully legal, exploited women could be emboldened to come out of the shadows. And, consenting adults could enter into whatever arrangements they want, and you may see all kinds of variations.
AND get compensated with support in divorce proceedings, which might discourage some of the exploitation.
There are many other things going on in a cult like the FDLS. e.g. Marriage with 30 year age differences - where the woman is barely a legal adult (and sometimes isn’t, but state law will permit the marriage with parental permission), arranged marriages. But if we said “women in the FDLS are being exploited - its the age difference” and then passed a law that said there couldn’t be more than a five year age difference in marriage - that would be a huge over reach.
I can’t either. But I can see huge harm from an age difference law. I have a number of friends with very happy marriages with 10 or 15 year age differences. (And my father in law is happily married to a woman my husband’s age. Squicky for my husband, but…)
ISTM that there are a few aspects that support separate discussions, but that are currently all mixed together because we haven’t (as a society) done the deep talking.
As others have noted, there is a rich vein to be mined on the legal front. Laws can be passed, and would likely be adjusted until the end of time. Taking the business contract approach seems the most useful model, as one can now enter into as many business arrangements as one likes with as many other individuals as one likes. Sex/gender having no bearing (Party A, Party B, Party C). The result would be book shelves full of legal findings and case law, and new career paths for attorneys and judges. Fundamentally, nothing wrong and bad here.
Separately, there would have to be a deep discussion of the patriarchal power dynamics / child bride universe that exists under the umbrella of polygamy. Due we define any aspects of this as wrong and bad, and what do we do about it? These are very complex questions that would need answered.
The important point would be to separate the discussions.