Mononormativity

[4] Analysis of monogamy as a social institution dates back to the Nineteenth Century, when works like Lewis H. Morgan's Ancient Society or Frederich Engels' response to the same, titled The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, argued that the difficulty of determining patrilineal descent meant that societies under primitive communism likely developed under a matriarchal, non-monogamous social order that was only overturned with the rise of private property and the consequent enforcement of monandry as part of the "world-historic defeat of the female sex".

"[6] Polygyny is instead largely culturally unopposed in many regions of Africa and the Muslim world, with the Qur'an providing scriptural basis for a man marrying up to four wives at once as long as he is capable of supporting them.

Feminist scholars Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy explored the consequences of sex-negative, monogamy-centric socialization in their work The Ethical Slut, writing: How do you dig up and examine a belief that you don’t even know you hold?

"[14] The concept has been increasingly cited by psychiatrists and other professionals as a point of concern when countering systemic discrimination and improving legal or social representation for polyamorous people.

[1][2][3] University of British Columbia professor Carrie Jenkins explored the impacts of mononormativity in a book titled What Love Is: And What It Could Be, later discussing her own identity as polyamorous and drawing a distinction between "pro-polyamory" and "anti-monogamy".