Monogamy reduces major social problems of polygamist cultures (2012)

Polygamy:

Some men having a chance at a huge family. Most women having a chance at a family, but with a shared husband. Many men having no chance at a family at all.

Monogamy:

Most men having a chance at a family. Most women having a chance at a family.

Now consider that the more one has to lose, the better behaved one is. When men have a chance for a family, they'll do what is needed to make the attempt for a family (normally being productive members of society), after which they get far more needs met than when alone (consider that loneliness is quite dangerous for a person) and they likely have more to lose (especially if they have children). Thus they are more behaved.

But in a polygamous society, there is far less of a chance. So more men decide to not play by the rules. They will seek out more dangerous means to meet their immediate needs.

All this being said, it isn't the marriage that matters. It is the family that does. A society that only allows monogamy on paper, but which allows a polygamous marriages, and where a divide begins to exist meaning that you have many men without a chance of having a family will have the same issues.

Also, I'm not to sure what happens when many women don't have a chance for a family. While one might think it would work the same, there are a few key differences. A man can be responsible for multiple simultaneous pregnancies, but a woman cannot. A woman has, historically, had a level of assurance of the legitimacy of their children that a man does not, and on average men tend to be more physically powerful than women. Also of note is that those last two factors stop being a significant difference with technology (paternity tests and guns being respective examples), so historic data may not fit what trends we will see in a technologically advanced society. (To say nothing of technology increasingly being able to meet a person's needs, which will increasingly make it harder to plot future events based on past data.)

If by "monogamy" one means having one stable primary relationship at a time while having dalliances with secondary/tertiary partners and transitory partners, then "monogamy" seems to fit the baseline human sexual behavior for the majority of people, across cultures, and across history.

Today, since adultery/serial monogamy/polyandry/polygamy etc. is a joke and widely "accepted", there is no incentive to get married. So many 18-35 waste their youthful lives just dating, dating, meeting jerks, partying, jumping from partner to partner....instead of focusing on building a REAL stable relationship.

If society looked at the actual data, and adjusted to the patterns of behavior people actually exhibit -- serial monogamy with possible secondary partners -- then I suspect there would be more scope and opportunity for building stable real relationships. There would be less pressure on keeping the strictures of such a monogamy. It would be easier for people to remain "faithful." There would be less drama. There would be less sexual dissatisfaction and boredom.

(My data: My previous relationship was with someone "poly." My current relationship is traditionally monogamous, to which I do adhere.)

That's speculative, and not at all what the study found.

It could be that that's what's important; it could be, instead, that what is important is the social expectation of marriage combined with the opportunities available for it. It could be something else. It could be a combination of any of the three.

> Thus if you had some society which allowed only monogamy but also allowed concubines, you would likely see the same issues as caused by polygamy.

Since concubinage is generally exclusive in the same way as marriage is (and exclusive of marriage), you'd expect in pretty much any case it to have similar social effects to polygyny (if it isn't just considered a form of polygyny in which there is a wife with a formally preferred status, which is common in polygyny.)

> Or if you had a society that didn't do marriage at all, but the relationships that formed tended to be greater towards polygamy than monogamy.

OTOH, if it is the social expectation and opportunity aspect of marriage that is at issue, a society which lacked the formal marriage and social expectations tied to it might not have the problems of a formally polygynous society even if the informal relations formed were generally polgynous rather than monogamous.

And if, on yet another hand, there is a stabilizing effect of socially-recognized relationship, the absence of social recognition might produce problems similar to those in a formally polygynous society regardless of the form of the informal relationships that form.

* Keep rape illegal

* Reduce male economic inequality

* Reduce female personal wealth

Since rape would still be illegal, female desire would still be the agent that determines reproduction and mating. But since females have no personal property, they would have to acquire resources by accessing a male's resources. Since males are all roughly equal, she will prefer to find a male who does not provide resources to other females.

Voila! Monogamy.