When a person has more than one spouse, the word is polygamy. If the spouses are wives, polygyny is a more specific term. If the spouses are husbands, the appropriate word is polyandry. Thus, polygyny and polyandry are two forms of polygamy.
“While more male babies are born than female, men are more likely to die than women either in accidents or from violent causes.”
Now the question of polygamy (man having many wives). In other words, while in normal circumstances, a family comes into being through the union of a single man and a woman, and the social aspect of the man being the maintainers of the family. Men on the other hand in society life don’t live as long as women because of wars and by not taking care of themselves like women. Women live in a more secured way of life by being on top of their health care whereas most men don’t. The question regarding polyandry (woman having many husbands at the same time). It is common sense that if a family is to come into being not only should there be only one head but also one person should not be placed under the command of multiple heads other wise, great anarchy would result. Since, in the family set, husbands are to head the family, if a wife has multiple husbands, she would be placed under the authority of many husbands at the same time. This of course would only hasten to tear apart the fabric of a family unit. Furthermore, the lineage of the child borne by a woman having more than one husband cannot be ascertained. How would the father be ascertained? Someone might say that a DNA test would be able to do so. However, even if this test is used, there still are great chances of dissent between all the husbands with one claiming to be the father and the other denying him.
Polygamy, polygyny, and polyandry are forms of plural marriage. This entry provides an overview of plural marriage from the perspective of evolutionary and sociocultural anthropologies, paying particular attention to the multiple ambiguities, choices, and constraints that both men and women face in these relationships. It briefly considers collateral kinship and marriage, the therapeutic potential of polygamy, and religion and polygamy. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss106.
Historically
Polygamy, on the other hand, has been around ever since people created marriage. Notable men like Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon from the Torah/Old Testament had multiple wives and did a lot of begetting with them all. Wealthy men have had access to multiple women in every society, past and present, that anthropologists and sociologists have identified. Sometimes this access is (thinly) veiled by deceit with covert mistresses or commerce with prostitutes. At other times, powerful men’s access to multiple women is condoned by religious and state authorities.
Religions
Currently, polygyny is usually part of religious cultures that structure elite men’s access to multiple wives and provides an outlet to redirect poorer men without women. Two primary religious subcultures practice polygyny in the United States:
- Muslims, who are mostly African Americans, immigrants from Muslim cultures, and a few white converts.
- Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint/Fundamentalist Mormons who are almost always white. A few Christian sects in the U.S. also allow men multiple wives.
Among adults who have participated in my with children, polyamory is only loosely associated with religion. The majority of the sample had no religious affiliation at all, and some were fairly militantly atheist/rationalist. Religious polyamorists gravitated towards unconventional, accepting, and multiplistic spiritual communities such as (in descending order of frequency) Pagans, Unitarian Universalists, Buddhist, Jewish, and Bahai. Today, polygamy is in which religious customs limit women’s access to multiple male partners and condone certain men’s access to multiple wives. In some cases, women are also limited from accessing public space or driving, which makes it very difficult to go to school or get the kind of work that would allow personal freedom and control over their own lives. Frequently, family members arrange the women’s marriages for them in negotiation with their future husband, and/or his family if he is quite young.
“It is also worth pointing out that whilst polygamy is often linked to religion, the same cannot be said about polyamory. Another difference between the two is that polygamy does tend to only refer to the act of a man having more than one wife and it is, therefore, based on gender.
Conclusion
Men and women are not the same nor are they “equal” as some folks would have us believe. Whatever is on one side of an ‘equals’ sign must be exactly the same as what is on the other side without any difference in value, only in the way that it is expressed. How then could we say that a man, who is unable to conceive or give birth and then breast feed a baby is the equal to a woman who can?
Polygamy is the blanket term used to describe any form of multiple marriage, perhaps with the exception of bigamy, in that bigamy can occur without some partners knowing, while Polygamy generally is classified by all partners knowingly being involved in a multiple marriage. Ergo, while we often think of polygamy as a man with multiple wives or “polygyny,” it also can include a woman with multiple husbands, or “polyandry.”
Freedom and Order
Freedom is a natural right that American’s must safe guard…The rights of freedom of speech to protest and to demonstrate. It’s a fact that America society fancies order over their rights of freedom; a good example is the Second Amendment the right to bear arms is a right that the government and the people are constantly a current topic in the media. I think personally that this right is always threaten by the media and government. Of all of the Bill of Rights I think that this Amendment is the most threaten. The media and society chooses their order over freedom at times when their are clashes of people having a different opinion about how certain classes of people are treated in society. A good example is white privilege. Most so-called minorities are under the impression that that white people have certain privileges that other ethic groups don’t have. Most protest are aim or geared in the areas of those issues.
Sources:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-polyamorists-next-door/201807/what-is-the-difference-between-polyamory-and-polygamy. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118663219.wbegss106
