Polygamy and other alternative forms of marriage

Polygamy is possibly the most widely practiced alternative form of marriage. It has been the practice of men who could afford it almost universally outside of European tradition. It is useful to discuss it, why it has been so widely accepted, and its validity or usefulness under Social Contract theory.

Polygamy offers many advantages to a woman. The dream of many women in many cultures in history has been to marry a man rich enough to afford several wives. When a woman is in such a marriage she can split the chores, trade off on child care duties, and otherwise live a much easier life. Consider if polygamy was legal in the US today. If a husband and wife needed a babysitter for a romantic evening out, the wives could take turns caring for the kids. A different wife could prepare food on different days during the week so that wives could have regular days off from the full spectrum of household chores. If a straying husband has an affair with another woman, the new woman could be married into the family and the original wife could continue to enjoy the financial support and stability of her home. It is not necessary that an affair should end a marriage. The strain on ‘trophy’ wives would be much less because an interest by their husbands in another woman would not necessarily threaten their own position. Obviously the laws against polygamy were created by male chauvinist pigs to force women to work harder and settle for less in a husband. So the argument could go.

Ms. Gowaty is arguing for greater reproductive freedom for women and she certainly doesn’t favor polygamy, or even seem to approve of marriage, but isn’t the right to share a single optimum mate an exercise of female reproductive freedom. Aren’t the laws against polygamy discriminatory against women because they limit women’s reproductive freedom?

In this book, the assumption is constantly made that evolution is an efficient mechanism. Monogamy is a religious commandment in the West because of a line or two in the epistles of Paul. This is a very incidental, accidental variation in the Western moral tradition from that of the rest of the world. It is similar to a random mutation in the genetic code. Periodically in the history of the West its acceptance has been questioned by legal and religious scholars. Arguments have been advanced at various times allowing Kings and Princes and other great men to have multiple wives. Many have fairly openly done so regardless of religious or legal sanction. Nonetheless monogamy has spread and become a moral norm throughout the developed world. Selective pressures have led it to, today, have a nearly worldwide dominance. Why is this particular structure of marriage so successful?

One reason is that the cultures which have embraced it as the norm have dominated world history for the last few centuries. Is that a coincidence or is there a possible relationship between the structure of marriage and the vitality of a culture? Consider the difference in motivation between a single man and a married man. Every time the single man has to do something to succeed, he has only one person to worry about. The only person who will suffer if he fails is himself. The married man suffers the fear of how it will effect his wife and children. On a daily basis when married men compete with unmarried men, the married group will show a consistently higher level of motivation and determination. They will be consistently more successful than the single men. This kind of reasoning is the basis of Adam Smith’s economic principles. This being so, there should be a measurable difference in success between married and unmarried men. Do a web search using the words ’marriage wage’. You will find hundreds of articles like this.

As usual, the effect is noticed but the causes are ignored because they do not fit politically correct mindsets. The idea that married men are more successful just because they are more motivated does not cross peoples minds. This motivation would drive them to work for their families at home as well as to make the necessary sacrifices at work. The increased drive would not necessarily be shown by less time at home.

http://stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2002/b/pages/marriage.html Abbigail J. Chiodo and Michael T. Owyang, “The Regional Economist” April 2002. This paper argues that married men are more successful because the kind of men who make good husbands also make good workers. There may be some truth in this, but it doesn’t really look at the issues in human terms. Expectations are powerful influences on people, being put into a leadership role frequently makes people become leaders. Being put into a subordinate role tends to make people subordinates, etc. Self-selection hypotheses always seem to underestimate the role of expectations and environment on human performance.

These people have no insight into the human heart. The need to spend more time reading poetry and less time looking at numbers. A political philosopher with no appreciation of great poetry is like a painter who is color blind.

The ratio between the sexes is fairly equal. For every man who has two wives there is one man who has no wife. For every man who has four wives there are three men who have no wife. A society where most of the population is married and the sense that others are depending on them drives them to work harder, will be consistently more productive than one where a large portion of the population is unmarried. In terms of creating a vital successful Social Contract monogamy is superior to all the various alternative wedding arrangements which have been proposed because it produces a larger percentage of the total population in the most productive relationship.

http://www.churchstatelaw.com/cases/reynoldsvus.asp is a searchable database on legal issues between the Church and the State. It includes the full text of various legal decisions including many on polygamy. To quote from U.S. Supreme Court, REYNOLDS v. UNITED STATES, 98 U.S. 145, October Term, 1878;

This decision looks at the psychological conditioning effects of the law on society as a whole and concludes that the psychology of polygamy is antithetical to the psychology of freedom and Democracy. Patriarchal arguments were frequently used to establish the legitimacy of Divine Right of Kings in defense of a more absolute Monarchy in England than the Parliament desired. Locke spends a great deal of time refuting this view in his Second Treatise on Government.

In accepting the authority of Congress to outlaw polygamy as strengthening the psychology of patriarchal authority and endangering democracy, the court was following the precepts developed by the political philosophers who laid down the basic principles on which the US was founded. The concern over the psychological effects of polygamy on the Citizens shows that the doctrine of evaluating laws on the basis of whether or not they promoted the psychology of democracy, developed in the section of this book on the third amendment, has been accepted as legitimate by the SC in its past decisions. The patriarchal principle is a male dominant variation of pecking order behavior. This book has identified pecking order behavior as the antithesis of all legitimate human rights psychology. Nothing new or never said before.

Thus polygamy is potentially psychologically harmful to the state in at least two ways, it decreases the percentage of highly motivated single couples in the state decreasing the vitality and productivity of society. It strengthens the feelings of patriarchal power and authority which when projected by members of a polygamous society on the state render it more likely to become a monarchy or tyranny.

It is also injurious to the psychological status of women. In a polygamous society a woman is not the wife and life partner, but one of several wives. Her status is inherently less as one of many than as the one and only. Since the number of wives a man has depends on his financial status, she is inherently more like a purchased item, and less like a partner. Thus polygamy while possibly more comfortable for a woman in many ways than monogamy is inherently threatening to the legal status of women. While outlawing polygamy or polygyny as scientists like to call it may seem like an attack on women’s reproductive freedom, it protects women’s freedoms in other ways.

The Social Contract has a greater interest in promoting monogamous marriages than other forms of Marriage. Marriage creates a contractual entity with a special contractual relationship to the State.

The formation and dissolution of this union is a valid area of interest for the state. Other alternate forms of marriage have been proposed and they could be discussed here one after another. Each forms theoretical advantages could be raised and the reasons it would not fulfill the societal functions of marriage discussed. Cultural evolution has selected monogamy. The burden of proof is on those proposing alternative forms. The section of this book on gay issues dealing with same sex marriage discusses other alternative forms at slightly greater length in terms of their structural validity.

There is little discussion of how economic forces dictate the structure of marriage outside of how economic power renders one partner or the other dependent. There are economic forces at work which will render any form of marriage to structurally dissimilar to the nuclear unit impossible. A flexible labor force is necessary for a modern economy. The section on slavery in this book discusses how slavery fails as an economic system because it creates a labor force which cannot adjust to fluctuations in employment and demand. When industries change, workers have to move from one job to another. Smaller more discrete family units can move to new economic opportunities more easily than larger more complex units. It is far easier for one man, one woman and their children to move from one locale to another locale as job opportunities change than for an extended family of fifty or a hundred people in a kinship group to do so. Likewise it is far easier for one man and one woman with their children to move than for some alternative marriage system where multiple partners are united in a form of communal sexuality between multiple partners.

Economic pressures force individuals into the smallest discrete familial unit because that is the unit most capable of taking advantage of changing employment opportunities and of adapting to changing economic conditions. The nuclear family is the smallest discrete family unit possible which provides the basics of familial life. Sexual partnership, both male and female role models to children, and a stable environment for children. This means that it is probably, practically speaking, impossible for any other form of family structure to exist in a modern economy. These economic realities have actually changed kinship structures in the recent past reducing the closeness of extended kinship groups. Idealists and dreamers may engage in ivory tower speculation about any number of strange family structures but it is almost certainly impossible that anything larger than the nuclear family can successfully be achieved by the majority of citizens in a modern economy.

Contracts confer contractual rights and duties separate from those natural rights and duties which are inherent in the Social Contract. The existence of this contract between the State and the Couple is the basis for legal rights relating to marital status. The State owes a union between Citizens the legal rights of a married couple exactly to the level that that union can be expected to fulfill the societal role of a married couple and no further. There are no Natural Rights associated with Marriage. Equal Rights arguments in the sense of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness do not apply here.

Should the Social Contract be allowed to forbid relationships which do not fulfill the societal role of monogamous marriage? Clearly not. It is contrary to the psychology of a free society to make marriage mandatory or to otherwise interfere in the private lives of Citizens. People should be free to form such relationships as they please so long as they do no harm to others. However the existence of such relationships does not entitle them to the rights of marriage or to recognition as the same as marriage, because those rights derive from the role which marriage plays in society and the services which marriage supplies to the Social Contract.

The basic assumption of a free society is that given freedom to do so enough people will do what is necessary to maintain the State. Since those doing these things are doing them of their own will and choice they will do them with greater passion, dedication, and resolution than if they were compelled to do them by the State. Hence free societies are stronger than totalitarian societies. An example this can be seen in the fact that religious belief is stronger in the US than in Europe. All European countries had establishments of religion which mandated belief under law. People forced to believe do not do so as strongly as people free to choose what to believe. Religion tended to become weaker the more mandatory it was.

A free Society may recognize that it needs parents to have and raise children, but it does not make marriage and child raising a legally binding duty on its Citizens. Freedom begins to fail as the state becomes more socialistic and less democratic. Socialist agendas like welfare make it mandatory for the State to interfere in private domestic arrangements like polygamy. The idea of welfare for children in poverty and unwed mothers has created a huge amount of welfare fraud in Utah and Arizona where polygamy is still practiced. This theft of taxpayers money to support a marital system which is fundamentally antithetical to the principles on which the US is founded forces legal interference in polygamous unions. Every responsibility the state assumes automatically gives it greater authority to invade the privacy of its Citizens.

Measures for aiding the children of single mothers and the poor are suggested in the section of this book on a practical proposal for implementing a right to work. Churches should be involved in aiding the parental process for women. A model system was discussed on Oprah in one of her shows, it is called Mocha Moms. http://www.mochamoms.org/ It is not a religious organization, but religious organizations should be arranging for aid like this to new mothers in their congregations. A church should be more than just a fancy building where people sing a few songs together once a week. It should be the center of a community which supports its members in various subtle ways. Churches should help older more mature women, grandmothers, etc. connect with younger mothers, or mothers under the strain of a new addition to their family and enable them to share the experience and the burden. In terms of Natural Law theory, one of the roles of the Church is to provide a small local community roughly of the size that would have existed in hunter-gatherer groups which provides the kind of emotional support and extended family support that people would have possessed in that kind of environment. Churches should attempt to facilitate this within their congregations.