Polygamy and the Current State of Marriage

The current issue of First Things magazine points out how polygamy seems to be less objectionable to some folks nowadays, what with the TV shows about polygamy and all. It is obvious that once society becomes accepting of dysfunction like homosexuality, polygamy is the next obvious step. The same issue has an editorial piece about how the current underclass is characterized not only by economic poverty but also by impoverished values. That editorial bemoans the editor's frustation with his liberal friends who seem to only be able to see the economic poverty but cannot see the moral and cultural deficits in the underclass that keep them in their poverty even when they are given the opportunity to get out.

It was striking to me, in reading both the article about moral poverty and the comments about polygamy in a separate article, how both polygamy and the absence of marriage that exists in the American underclass result in many of the same ills. One key point about polygamy really should be obvious upon slight reflection: when a significant number of men have multiple wives, another significant number cannot have wives. One huge problem with polygamy is that it creates an underclass of men who are not able to marry and they of course tend to be those who are less desirable in the first place. Something has to be done with them. They have to be driven out of the community, or killed off in wars, or made eunuchs (like in Biblical times) or something. When they are not dealt with, they tend to take up high risk behaviors to get access to women, like aggression or murder or drunkenness or seeking out prostitutes. As a result, polygamous societies have a permanent underclass of unmarriageable men, with high rates of violence and crime. Meanwhile the women in polygamous marriages get less respect, more abuse, have more children, and end up raising children mostly alone since the father is spread among multiple 'families'. And, yes, homosexuality is a problem, too.

It is striking to me how similar these results are to what we currently see in American low income society where marriage and the family is in crisis, where 70% of the children are born out of wedlock. There we also see a permanent underclass of men who are pretty much unmarriageable due to their high risk behavior, criminality, and lack of education,where women are often abused, where the children are brought up predominantly by women. Homosexuality is also on the rise.

Similarly, in China and India where the one child policy led to selective abortion of unborn girls, there is much concern over the rising generation of men who will not be able to marry due to lack of women as a result of abortion. While the circumstance causing the shortage is different than in polygamy and in America, the expectation and concern is similar for the resulting high risk behavior as men seek to gain access to women: there is great concern that China and India will become violent as this generation of men without wives comes of age.

So in our current world, we have 3 examples of quite different ways to create dysfunction in the basic family structure, but all have similar negative consequences in terms of creating men who are unmarriageable and who will almost certainly engage in destructive behavior.

It is remarkable how fundamental the basic one man/one woman family is to society at large, and how it's demise, no matter how that demise is created, wreaks that same kinds of havoc.