Monogamy reduces major social problems of polygamist cultures. Summary: In cultures that permit men to take multiple wives, the intra-sexual competition that occurs causes greater levels of crime, violence, poverty and gender inequality than in societies that institutionalize and practice monogamous marriage.
Reasons a person might choose monogamy:
You prefer going deep with one person as opposed to juggling many partners. You enjoy feeling special and uniquely prioritized by a romantic partner. You struggle with maintaining many relationships at the same time, whether because of limited time or limited energy.
The benefits of monogamy include increased certainty of paternity and access to the entire reproductive potential of at least one female (Schuiling, 2003) , reduction in infanticide (Opie et al., 2013) and greater survival of offspring due to higher parental investment (Geary, 2000).
Preferring Monogamy
The Huffington Post champions monogamous relationships as the pinnacle of values like honor, respect, fidelity, loyalty, and trust. However, many polygamous individuals would make the case that the values above might still exist within non-monogamous relationships.
Two people in a marriage who are totally committed to each other will nourish and grow closer each and every day they are married. Having this commitment brings the husband and wife together as one. Monogamy fulfills a relationship with love and honesty.
Numerous studies, however, have demonstrated that the following likely influence monogamy: (1) spatial and temporal distribution of females, (2) parental care costs and benefits, (3) offspring need, (4) infanticide, (5) costs and benefits of multiple mating, (7) mate competition, (8) paternity assurance, (9) the ...
For humans, monogamy is not biologically ordained. According to evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss of the University of Texas at Austin, humans are in general innately inclined toward nonmonogamy.
Polygamy may create a complex family system involving the husband's relationship and relations between subsequent wives and children [1]. Polygamous families have distinct household problems, usually stemming from jealousy between co-wives over the husband's affections and resources [2].
Unhappiness, loneliness, sense of competition and jealousy, and lack of intimacy with the spouse were identified as disadvantages of polygyny.
More recent field research on a large Canadian sample also found that those in open or polyamorous relationships were just as happy as those in monogamous relationships. The Rubel and Bogaert review reports that most non-monogamous people are just as or more sexually satisfied than monogamists.
Monogamous men showed significantly more activation in parts of their brain related to reward than non-monogamous men did. The researchers believe these results suggest that romantic photos, or other stimuli that evoke romance, may be more satisfying for guys who are inclined to be monogamous.
Monogamy, after all, does not come naturally; it is not the norm unless a society enforces it as such. There are immense benefits to doing so. But it is unclear how well we humans can achieve this aim in the present environment.
Recent discoveries have led biologists to talk about the three varieties of monogamy: social monogamy, sexual monogamy, and genetic monogamy. The distinction between these three are important to the modern understanding of monogamy.
If we mean realistic for the species of humans, then the answer clearly is yes. In various cultures around the world people are able to engage in lifelong monogamous relationships.
Most men do so, because of their desire to have a larger number of offspring and most effectively increase their fitness by having many sexual partners. But for women, the reason ranges from having a better gene for their children to social progression and better access to the wealth of the man.
Individual studies report a higher prevalence of somatization, depression, anxiety, hostility, psychoticism and psychiatric disorder in polygynous wives as well as reduced life and marital satisfaction, problematic family functioning and low self-esteem.
Humans are now mostly monogamous, but this has been the norm for just the past 1,000 years. Scientists at University College London believe monogamy emerged so males could protect their infants from other males in ancestral groups who may kill them in order to mate with their mothers.
The Catechism forbids polygamy as a grave offense against marriage and contrary to the original plan of God and equal dignity of human beings.
Traditional polygamy is morally objectionable, because the spouses will always have unequal marital commitments and unequal control over their familial lives. The ideal of monogamy exhibited similar inequalities historically, but monogamy can be reformed into an equal relationship.
The biggest difference between polyamory and polygamy is the gender of the partners. In polyamory, anyone of any gender can have multiple partners—the gender of the person or their partner does not matter. Polygamy is almost universally heterosexual, and only one person has multiple spouses of a different gender.
“The human mating system is extremely flexible,” Bernard Chapais of the University of Montreal wrote in a recent review in Evolutionary Anthropology. Only 17 percent of human cultures are strictly monogamous.
Just like you can be committed to multiple friendships, you can be committed to multiple romantic relationships as well — and there's nothing wrong with being single, whether you identify as monogamous or not!
According to the New York Times, a 2011 paper showed that early humans, or hominids, began shifting towards monogamy about 3.5 million years ago—though the species never evolved to be 100% monogamous (remember that earlier statistic).
By sticking to one female, they conclude, males of many species, especially primates, can increase their chances of siring many offspring who survive long enough to reproduce - the key factor in determining whether a particular behavior survives the brutal process of natural selection.
So, from the perspective of evolutionary psychology, monogamy is natural because fathering is natural in the human species and fathering only evolves with sufficient sexual exclusivity to allow for paternity certainty for men and sufficient resource provision certainty for women.