{"id":288749,"date":"2011-03-04T05:15:05","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T05:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/03\/04\/marriage-polygamy-good-for-men-bad-for-women\/"},"modified":"2011-03-04T05:15:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T05:15:05","slug":"marriage-polygamy-good-for-men-bad-for-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/03\/04\/marriage-polygamy-good-for-men-bad-for-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Marriage: Polygamy good for men, bad for women"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"195\">\n<p>                  \t<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Click for Full Image Size\" onclick=\"window.location='\/image_preview2.asp?img=d2lmZXMuanBn';\" class=\"img1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nigeriafilms.com\/image.aspx?img=Y29udGVudC9jb250ZW50L3dpZmVzLmpwZ3w2MDA=\" border=\"1\" \/><!-- news_468x60 --><br \/>Although Christianity and the constitution substantially outlaw polygamy, it is still a popular system of marriage as Islam and traditional religion encourage it at various levels. While Kogi State-based Abubakar Masaba is, however, currently the reference point with his 86 wives, a study has highlighted how the practice shortchanges women, reports Eniola Akinkotu<\/p>\n<p>In modern society, the conventional system of marriage is the union between a man and a woman. In fact, many scientists, feminists and activists support monogamy, not only because it represents gender equality, but because it also promotes intimacy between spouses. Many claim that in a world plagued with HIV\/AIDS and many other sexually transmitted diseases, monogamy is the best form of marriage. However, a new research has shown that men who practise monogamy experience less sexual pleasure than men who practise polygamy.<\/p>\n<p>The research reveals that scientifically, polygamy is good for men but bad for women. The research shows that while polygamists have many children, polygamy has a contrary effect on women involved. For every wife added to the fold, the average number of children per wife dropped by one. This implies that women who are married into polygamous homes have fewer children than women in monogamous ones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dThe more wives a woman\u2018s husband has, the fewer children she is going to have personally,\u201d says Michael Wade, a biologist at Indiana University Bloomington, who conducted the research. \u201dThat\u2018s interesting, and evolutionary biologists would say then that polygamy is good for males and may be not so good for females.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wade and his colleagues reported their findings in the March 2011 issue of the journal, Evolution and Human Behaviour. Wade conducted the research by studying the history of members of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity most commonly known as Mormons. Wade observed the Mormon shift from polygamy to monogamy in the 1800s and concluded that the decision by these Christians to eschew polygamy and practise monogamy reduced sexual pressures on men by more than half.<\/p>\n<p>The change closed the reproductive gap between men with many wives and men with none. It also brought men\u2018s competition for wives in line with wives\u2018 competition for husbands.<\/p>\n<p>According to Wade, Mormons make an excellent test case for evolutionary biologists for two reasons. First, they keep precise genealogical records. Second, Mormons are a rare example of a group of people who changed their mating practices.<\/p>\n<p>In 1862, the United States made polygamy illegal in its territories, including the Mormon stronghold of Utah. In 1890, the Mormon church issued a declaration ending the practice of polygamy. Of married Utah men born in 1833, almost 18 per cent had multiple wives, Wade and his colleagues estimated. But a few decades later, less than one per cent of married men were in polygamous relationships.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dHere, with this single population there\u2018s a change, an externally driven change, in the system of mating from polygamous to monogamous,\u201d Wade says. \u201dAnd even better, nothing else changes. They don\u2018t change their lifestyle, they don\u2018t change what they eat, or where they live.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The researchers decided to find out how the change affected the evolutionary pressures on Mormon men and women, particularly sexual selection, in which there is competition between males (or females) to win a mate. It\u2018s this pressure that explains a male peacock\u2018s glitzy tail. Polygamy exacerbates such sexual selection. After all, for every man with five wives, there are four men with no wives at all. Thus, the multiple-wife system separates men into those with huge amounts of offspring and those with no children at all.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dThe bigger that difference, the stronger selection is,\u201d Wade said.<\/p>\n<p>To measure selection, the researchers pulled genealogical data on almost 150,000 men and women born between 1830 and 1894 and almost 635,000 of their offspring from the Utah Population Database \u2014 a sample size 18 times larger than those of all previous studies on the topic combined. The researchers used US Census Bureau data to round out their estimates of the number of people who never had children. They also corrected for \u201dserial monogamists,\u201d or people who had been widowed and remarried, but weren\u2018t involved in polygamous relationships.<\/p>\n<p>Predictably, the men who acquired lots of wives also produced more children. For each additional spouse, a man could expect about six more children. Each wife in the relationship could expect to produce an average of one fewer child for every additional wife.<\/p>\n<p>When polygamy was outlawed, the reproductive gap between successful polygamous men and wife-less singletons plummeted by 58 per cent, the researchers found.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dIf you only have one partner, the maximum number of offspring for the male is going to be the same as the maximum for the females,\u201d Wade says. So the end of polygamy brought the genders into line, he adds. \u201dThe variation from one male to the next with monogamy becomes almost equal to the variation from one woman to the next with monogamy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2018s no surprise, said Henry Harpending, a professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, who was not involved in the research. Historical Mormons are particularly interesting to study, Harpending told LiveScience, because there is little question as to the paternity of offspring. In other polygamous cultures, Harpending adds, marriage doesn\u2018t always mean sexual exclusivity, making similar studies difficult.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dThis is the best that has ever been done, and it\u2018s very impressive,\u201d Harpending says of the study. However, he cautions, the variation in reproductive success seen in the Mormon population doesn\u2018t necessarily mean that evolutionary selection is taking place.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dThe guys that have three wives may have three wives because it\u2018s simply random or because they\u2018re better at something,\u201d Harpending notes. \u201dIf it\u2018s because they\u2018re better at something, then that\u2018s changing the gene pool and that\u2018s selection. If it\u2018s just random \u2014 my Uncle Charlie helped me buy a farm and I got three wives \u2014 then that doesn\u2018t change the gene pool.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There are other details in the findings &#8211; like the cost of extra wives for women, Harpending says. Perhaps, those women\u2018s husbands are older and less fertile, or perhaps, they\u2018d previously been widowed and had thus missed a potentially fertile year, he explains.<\/p>\n<p>\u201dWhat I\u2018d like to see done is life histories of women, so we could ask, \u2018What\u2018s the effect of being widowed?\u2018 \u2018What is the per-year birth rate for a woman, age-corrected and correct for husband\u2018s age?\u2018\u201d he notes. \u201dThere are so many questions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <span>Do you have a story\/gist for publication? Please email it to story@nigeriafilms.com   <\/span> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading here:<br \/>\n<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nigeriafilms.com\/news\/10852\/20\/marriage-polygamy-good-for-men-bad-for-women.html\" title=\"Marriage: Polygamy good for men, bad for women\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Marriage: Polygamy good for men, bad for women<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Although Christianity and the constitution substantially outlaw polygamy, it is still a popular system of marriage as Islam and traditional religion encourage it at various levels. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Marriage: Polygamy good for men, bad for women - 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