Post #8: Perspectives on Polygamy

Polygamy in Canada is a heated topic which often garners a lot of public disapproval especially due to several relatively recent news stories documenting cases of reported child abuse and domestic violence among polygamous communities, as in the case of April 2008 police raid on YFZ Ranch in Texas (link). But why is polygamy so frowned upon by Western societies (Canadian in particular)? The actual cases of abuse/female exploitation are rare and usually limited to the more extreme cases of fundamentalist religious groups in the developed world, while polygamy as practiced by many African cultures has been based on the idea of "balance and equal distribution of social, material, security and economic benefits to both women and men" (link). In other words African polygyny (type of polymagy practiced in Africa) has become widely accepted because of a mutual understanding, developed under the particular historical and cultural contexts, that both men and women would benefit from it, particularly single women who often had no choice but to engage in prostitution or "husband snatching" at the time when the female to male ratio in some of these societies was about 10 to 1 (link).

David Freidman looks at marriage from a purely economical perspective, as a sort of business contract between two parties that contains some implicit "prices", such as the dowry provided by the bride's family to the groom's family or to the new couple, or bride's price paid by the groom to bride's family. Marriage "price" also involves specific duties and responsibilities which each partner is expected to perform (link). According to Freidman, the legalization of polygyny (when man has two or more wives at the same time) wouldn't affect the "marriage market" in increasing or decreasing the number of wives willing to accept a marriage contract. But it would raise the contract price for men who only choose to be married to one wife as they would now need to offer her better terms for continued monogamous exclusivity than say becoming a second wife of another man (link). So it is easy to imagine why those from traditionally monogamous cultures would view polygamy with such apprehension. When the topic of legalizing polygamy comes up, not only the dominant Western cultural values but also primal fears of increased intrasexual competition emerge. Nevertheless, Canadian policy makers should take a cultural relativist approach and perhaps reevaluate their position on polygamy in favour of a more inclusive approach to integrating people with different cultural backgrounds into Canadian society. In my opinion polygamy should definitely be legalized in Canada. The men would just need to try harder when it comes to courting.

Websites used:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695268544,00.html

http://www.theperspective.org/polygyny.html

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_21/PThy_Chap_21.html