Polygyny

[2] Some scholars theorize that the slave trade's impact on the male-to-female sex ratio was a key factor in the emergence and fortification of polygynous practices in regions of Africa.

[4] Historically, polygyny was partly accepted in ancient Hebrew society, in classical China, and in sporadic traditional Native American, African and Polynesian cultures.

[8] Ester Boserup was the first to propose that the high incidence of polygyny in sub-Saharan Africa is rooted in the sexual division of labor in hoe-farming and the large economic contribution of women.

In many of these cases, the task of felling trees in preparation of new plots, the fencing of fields against wild animals, and sometimes the planting of crops, is usually done by men and older boys (along with hunting, fishing and the raising of livestock).

[13] A 1930s study of the Mende in the West African state of Sierra Leone concluded that a plurality of wives is an agricultural asset, since a large number of women makes it unnecessary to employ wage laborers.

[15] Anthropologist Jack Goody's comparative study of marriage around the world, using the Ethnographic Atlas, demonstrated a historical correlation between the practice of extensive shifting cultivation and polygyny in many Sub-Saharan African societies.

Goody says, "The reasons behind polygyny are sexual and reproductive rather than economic and productive" (1973:189), arguing that men marry polygynously to maximize their fertility and to obtain large households containing many young dependent males.

[20] Polygyny also served as "a dynamic principle of family survival, growth, security, continuity, and prestige", especially as a socially approved mechanism that increases the number of adult workers immediately and the eventual workforce of resident children.

[30] Despite the expenses of polygynous marriages, a 1995 study suggests that men benefit from marrying multiple wives through the economic and social insurance that kinship ties produce.

The slave trade's impact on the male-to-female sex ratio has been cited as a key factor in the high prevalence of polygynous practices in this region of Africa.

[58] In addition to noting that countries where polygyny is widely practiced tend to have higher homicide rates and rates of rape, political scientists Valerie M. Hudson and Bradley Thayer have argued that because Islam is the only major religious tradition where polygyny is still largely condoned, the higher degrees of marital inequality in Islamic countries than most of the world causes them to have larger populations susceptible to suicide terrorism, and that promises of harems of virgins for martyrdom serves as a mechanism to mitigate in-group conflict within Islamic countries between alpha and non-alpha males by bringing esteem to the latter's families and redirecting their violence towards out-groups.

[60][61] Citing Atran and other anthropological research showing that 99 percent of Palestinian suicide terrorists are male, that 86 percent are unmarried, and that 81 percent have at least six siblings (larger than the average Palestinian family size), cognitive scientist Steven Pinker argues in The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011) that because the families of men in the West Bank and Gaza often cannot afford bride prices and that many potential brides end up in polygynous marriages, the financial compensation of an act of suicide terrorism can buy enough brides for a man's brothers to have children to make the self-sacrifice pay off in terms of kin selection and biological fitness (with Pinker also citing a famous quotation attributed to evolutionary biologist J.

According to Natali Exposito, "in a study of the Ngwa Igbo Clan in Nigeria identified five principal reasons for men to maintain more than one wife: because having more than one wife allows the Ngwa husband to (1) have the many children that he desires; (2) heighten his prestige and boost his ego among his peers; (3) enhance his status within the community; (4) ensure a sufficient availability of labor to perform the necessary farm work and the processing of commercial oil-palm produce; and (5) satisfy his sexual urges.

Interviews conducted with some of the Logoli tribe in Kenya suggested they feared polygynous marriages because of what they have witnessed in the lives of other women who are currently in such relationships.

Some of the husbands fail to share love and other resources equally; and envy and hatred, and sometimes violent physical confrontations become the order of the day among co-wives and their children.

[21] Research shows that competition and conflict can intensify to unbearable level for co-wives causing women to commit suicide due to psychological distress.

Professor Ifediora also believes that polygyny is a "hindrance to social and economic development" in the continent of Africa due to women's lack of financial control.

[76] In most cases, women do not have access to their children if they decide to leave polygyny, nor are they allowed to take them, due to cultural ideas of ownership in relation to progeny.

Interviews with some of the contemporary Logoli men and women who recently made polygynous marriages yielded data which suggest that marrying another wife is usually approached with considerable thought and deliberation by the man.

[86] Efforts to abolish the practice and de facto recognition of polygyny have been widely apparent throughout the recent years in Malawi; led mainly by anti-AIDS organizations and feminist groups.

Several factors for this include infertility or long-term illness of the first wife, excessive wealth on the part of the husband enabling him to support widowed or divorced mothers, and the economic benefits of large families.

Other fragments in the Buddhist scripture seem to treat polygamy unfavorably, leading some authors to conclude that Buddhism generally does not approve of it[132] or alternatively regards it as a tolerated, but subordinate, marital model.

[citation needed] Most Christian theologians argue that in Matthew 19:3–9 and referring to Genesis 2:24,[c] Jesus explicitly states a man should have only one wife: Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?In the New Testament, scriptures state that polygamy should not be practiced by certain church leaders.

For example, during the Protestant Reformation, in a document referred to simply as Der Beichtrat (or The Confessional Advice ),[134] Martin Luther, whose reformation caused a schism in the Western Christian Church leading to the formation of the Lutheran Church, granted the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, who, for many years, had been living "constantly in a state of adultery and fornication",[135] a dispensation to take a second wife.

[136] Some fifteen years earlier, in a letter to the Saxon Chancellor Gregor Brück, Luther stated that he could not "forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict Scripture."

(Ego sane fateor, me non posse prohibere, si quis plures velit uxores ducere, nec repugnat sacris literis.

Additionally, paragraph 1645 of "The Goods and Requirements of Conjugal Love" states "The unity of marriage, distinctly recognized by our Lord, is made clear in the equal personal dignity which must be accorded to husband and wife in mutual and unreserved affection.

This way you are less likely to commit injustice.There are strict requirements to marrying more than one woman, as the man must treat them equally financially and in terms of support given to each wife, according to Islamic law.

The verse also emphasizes transparency, mutual agreement and financial compensation as prerequisites for matrimonial relationship as opposed to prostitution; it says: Also ˹forbidden are˺ married women—except ˹female˺ captives in your possession.

The husband, however, is only allowed to take other wives if he has the means and ability to treat them equally to the primary wife, and even then only if there was no anti-polygamy clause in their marriage contract from either party.