Despite their questionable moral appropriateness, extended non-monogamous marital unions have existed for centuries. As the SYG2000 course illustrates, opinion polarization exists in relation to multiple phenomena that benefit various groups unequally, which can be applied to polygamy. Being almost synonymous with polygyny, it possesses various advantages for men, including a wider selection of partners and a lower incentive to cheat in marriage. The week’s reading demonstrates that polygynous unions can also be instrumental when the number of widows with children increases (Kramer, 2020). The disadvantages are even more numerous; from the psychological viewpoint, polygamous families can create some unhealthy competition between one husband’s wives and result in violence, trust issues, and depression (Hertina et al., 2021). One of my acquaintances lives in an unofficial polygynous family and confirms that constant comparison has lowered her self-esteem, and no religious beliefs reduce her feelings of jealousy and distrust. Aside from polygynous wives’ emotional suffering, non-monogamous marriages increase the population’s susceptibility to sexually transmitted infections and require substantial financial investments by husbands (Hertina et al., 2021). Therefore, polygamous marriages are inseparable from health and economic issues.
Social institutions’ impacts on plural marriages vary to a large extent. As an institution, religion can be conducive to polygynous families’ normalization, which can be noticed in both large official religions, such as Islam, and Christian sects, including the Church of Jesus Christ (Kramer, 2020). Regarding the economy, peculiar demographic conditions, for instance, high female-to-male ratios resulting from mass armed conflicts, might serve as the rationale for polygynous unions even if they remain illegal (Kramer, 2020). In collaboration with religion, the government makes decisions on polygamy’s appropriateness and sets limitations or requirements to confirm each union’s economic feasibility. For instance, as the week’s reading mentions, in Djibouti, the husband’s prosperity and previous wives’ acceptance of a new spouse are examined prior to approving the extension of the family (Kramer, 2020). Thus, society’s major societal institutions normalize, create incentives for, and ban or regulate plural marriages.
References
Hertina, H., Nurwahid, M., Haswir, H., Sayuti, H., Darwis, A., Rahman, M., Yendra, R., & Hamzah, M. L. (2021). Data mining applied to polygamy using sentiment analysis on Twitter in Indonesian perception. Bulletin of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, 10(4), 2231-2236. Web.
Kramer, S. (2020). Polygamy is rare around the world and is mostly confined to a few regions. Pew Research Center. Web.