Negativity of Polygamy

Abstract
Polygamy, the practice of courting/marrying multiple wives or husband, is something that has gone as far bad as to the medieval age. Our experience as human beings generally shows that the art of polygamy just simply doesn’t work. It might seem all good in the beginning but in the end relationships like those can never stand the test of time. In the society one lives in today, polygamy is considered as a despicable act, due to the fact that polygamy, alone, goes against the beliefs of many religions. Also, not only does it degrade ones society but according to statistics countries that allow polygamy starts to really descend economically and eventually become unstable compared to those who don’t allow polygamy. In other words, under polygamy there is no balance. Awareness of such issue is necessary for ones country to continue to strive.

The Negative influences and Effects of Polygamy Polygamy can be quite troublesome for both the ones involved in the relationship and for the country in which polygamy is being practiced in. “Polygamy in the U.S. was never truly considered to be an institution or anything legally recognized or something that the western culture found adequate or normative” (Polygamy in the US, 2011). However, it has been present for a very long time and still remains very present to this day. First starting with the Natives Americans, polygamy soon found its way with the Mormons when polygamy was announced as a practice of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1830’s and 40’s (Origins of polygamy among the Mormons, 2008). Of course it happens with any marriage, some arrangements worked better than others, and some homes were happier than others. Some wives enjoyed their polygamous lifestyle while many hated it. In the end, no one can truly stay happy with a practice as such. Polygamy, itself, brings along more bad than good.
Polygamy Defined polygamy comes from a variety of forms but the more prominent ones seem to be these three different forms: polygyny (where a man has more than two wives at the same time), polyandry (where a woman has more than one husband) and plural marriages, where a family is made out of multiple husbands and wives at the same time (Richman, 1997). Again, polygamy dates back to a very long time ago and was branched out all over the world. It was accepted quite well until the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church imposed on rules limiting to only one wife.
Upsetting the Equilibrium
There are twice as many bad things as good about polygamy, but there is an issue that just makes polygamy so intrinsically wrong. By nature the determination of a baby’s sex before birth is very much random/ is a very random event. Magnificently, the ratio of men to women in society is usually about half and half with the exception of countries like China. The sole reason why China has an exceptionally large amount of boys rather than girls is due to their one-child policy. Like most Asian nations, China has a traditional bias for sons (Wei Xing & Hesketh, 2005). Many families abort female fetuses or abandon baby girls to ensure that their only child is a son. This leads one to the issue. China already has an problem with an overpopulation of males, even with the banning of polygamy there are still many out there who practices it because polygamy itself has been popular in China for thousands of years and many are still determined to bring it back. However, polygamy is not and will never be a solution to anything and will only dig a greater hole for the population issue.
The problem with polygamy, if this was to occur on a widespread scale, it would create very negative societal issues (Chapman 2013). There would be a few key people who would end up with multiple spouses. Assuming a man ends up having five or more wives. With a 50/50 sex ratio, that would very likely mean that there would be around four men without a wife somewhere else. If this happens on a widespread basis, one will definitely to have a lot of bored, sexually frustrated people with too much time and money on their hands. When one country has too many bored and sexually frustrated people, there will, without a doubt, be more people out there committing crime and more rapists just trying to satisfy themselves. Thus, causing the numbers of crime rates to increase (Hamzah, 2010). One learns almost from birth that more is better, and the more the merrier. The bigger the population is the better. There are theories about birth rates which potentially encourage polygamy as the natural order of nature. Think about it; a female can only be a parent to one child every 9 months (on average) where as a male could conceivably father several children a day. Again, some people argue that the greater the population the better. A large population means a larger workforce, more resources, and so forth. So if one is simply aiming for a greater population then polygamy is definitely a potential option. However, that is not necessarily the case. With a big population one will have more mouths to feed, therefore more people needing to work, more poverty and bigger issues that can easily ruin the country. Equilibrium is important in everything. Polygamy doesn’t create equilibrium it destroys it.
Financial and Family Complications Another thing about polygamy is the financial/tax and family issues that comes along with it. In a typical warm and loving monogamous family there are siblings. With siblings there are days where they will get along and there will be days where they seem like they are at war with one another. However, imagine, in a polygamous family where one has many siblings that comes from different mothers and are not being completely connected to one another, there must be an unimaginable amount of issues that comes up time after time (Hamzah, 2010). For example, who inherits what? How do the wives feel about all of this? Also aside from all of this Polygamy, hurts our economy as well. Many modern polygamists rely on the government as taxpayers for their financial problems (Cooper 2006). Although people might say otherwise, many people who have come out of polygamist backgrounds admit to dealing with emotional problems stemming from the polygamy (Hamzah, 2010). A large-scale study currently underway across Malaysia uncovers proof that polygamy harms everyone involved: from emotionally scarred children, to wives who think they’d be better off as single-parent households, and even husbands who admit that is extremely stressful. There will, most likely, be a lot of competition between the mothers to make sure the father does not neglect them or their children and to make sure they hold a certain place/ rank within the family. As for the kids, when a child grows up in the environment of stress and quarrels, he/she will become dysfunctional the rest of his/her life, they feel neglected and isolated at some point in life. No wonder the incidence of child-dumping, battered spouses, and delinquency. The signs are clear. Something is definitely wrong in the polygamous union. The difficulties of being a supportive, loving father are often noticed by the fathers themselves. Economically, polygamy makes it even more difficult for a father to provide for all of his children because it becomes more likely that he will have many children. When fathers fail to do so, the consequences are dire. Children and mothers experience emotional and financial depravation (Cooper, 2006).. Now-a-days it is quite very common for fathers to abandon their families when they cannot provide for them. However, this most likely would not happen because normally polygamist families usually rely on the government for everything. Polygamists have multiple wives and dozens of children, but the state only recognizes one marriage. That leaves the rest of the wives to claim themselves as single moms with armies of children to support, and so they gain a lot of support through welfare and such. Tax payer should really start recognizing/ realizing that the polygamists are the ones draining off their money (Cooper, 2006).
Morality
There are many people out there who are against polygamy due to religious reasons, because of their own personal values and morals. Those people are absolutely right. It is wrong and is a corruption of God 's perfect definition of marriage between husband and wife ( Smith, 2012). God’s original standard for mankind was for a husband and wife to become one flesh, polygamy was not intended. In polygamy there is usually no polyandry, where a woman is married to/ haves multiple husbands mainly because we live in a society where it is very male dominant. God created everyone to be equal not so men can take advantage of women and strip them of their freedom. Not only has that, polygamy, itself, brought along a risk factor for STDs and incest. Polygamist societies have created a way to stay in good standing with the church and society, while cheating on your spouse. Basically, if one gets tired of your current wife one doesn’t need to go through the hassle of a divorce, or the consequences of being called a cheater. They can simply marry another woman or turn to their other wives. Polygamist wives have the worst of all worlds. In all polygamous cultures, women have extremely low status. All must obey their husbands. Almost none get to choose who they marry, and many are married against their will too much older men (Rauch, 2006). Normally after marriage they end up being single parents, with lots of children, no help, little money and no mutual love or support. Again, most people would argue that women have the support of their other wives, but jealousy would stand in the way of that support. Women right is important. Legalizing and supporting polygamy would only reduce women’s rights. In a short period of time, 200 years of struggle for women’s rights would be gone within seconds (Rauch, 2006). Polygamy and incest are known by many people to be two different things and are worlds apart from one another. However, they are very much tied to one another/are interconnected. The problematic thing about polygamy is the young ones. In a polygamist family one will have children coming out from different parents. When the mothers get too tired of the life style they leave and they bring their kids along. As the kids grow up, sometimes fate plays a little trick, and they end up falling for someone they end up being related to but have no idea about. It’s not only the kids have brings along incest, it’s mainly the fathers. According to multiple polygamous cases many fathers end up marrying his daughters to have sexual intercourse with them to father even more kids because it is part of their “religion”.(Myers, 2002) God made Adam and Eve so they have eyes for only one person, their sole mate, which in this case is one another. Due to polygamy males are used to being with multiple women instead of being committed to just one sole person. The definition of "moral" is different for everyone (in general) and so whether polygamy is immoral or not it really depends on how one looks at it (Smith, 2012) Currently, of course, polygyny is illegal in the U.S. and has been since the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 was passed but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t people out there practicing it. These days polygamy involves old men and young girls. It’s mainly rich men who end up with multiple wives because technically they can and are capable of doing whatever they will. Way back when, polygamy was necessary for survival. When people got sick thousands of years ago, usually they just died. So people had to have more than one spouse with whom they could reproduce many more offspring then the majority does today, because it was likely that one or more of their children would die. Likewise, guess it was necessary for girls, as well as guys to marry and reproduce earlier in life, due to a much shorter life span However, in today 's world, we don 't have the same problems that afflicted our ancestors. Not only do we live longer, healthier lives, but we know so much more about how human beings develop, both physically, mentally and emotionally. We know the type of damage sexual, emotional and physical assault/abuse causes in a child, or young adult. With polygamy there are emotional issues. How do the wives feel? How about the children? In such a large family there has to be competition. It is so rare that every individual child receives the same amount of love from their father. On top of that there are fathers out there that will neglect his very own children, as if neglecting isn’t already bad enough, there are also some that will rape their own kids (Myers, 2002). It is immoral to willingly and freely inflict this kind of mental, physical and emotional anguish on anyone, especially a child. All in all, polygamy is wrong and there is no doubt about it. Not only does it go against god’s words and his reason for the creation of mankind but it also causes the population to become unbalanced. There are many men out there who secretly have multiple wives. Think about it, with a population ratio of 50: 50 if a man has multiple wives then there must be someone/ people out there who don’t have anyone. This in general leads to more desperate cases of rape, suicide and etc. In order to solve such an issue it is wise to get rid of polygamy for good and not just let people slide on through and do it secretly (Rauch, 2006). Polygamy, itself, was never sanctioned by god/ the church and is not accepted by society and should remain that way. To help it remain that way .we shall show no mercy for those who practice it.

Works Cited
Chapman, L. ( 2013). Assisting women and children leaving polygamy since 1998. Retrieved from http://www.insidepolygamy.org/
Cooper, A. (2006) Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2006/05/how-polygamy-affects-your-wallet.html
Hamzah, M. (2010, January 14). Stress, quarrels and neglect: the 'normal ' polygamous family . Retrieved from http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/masjaliza-hamzah-norami-othman/stress-quarrels-and-neglect-normal-polygamous-family
Myers, W. (2002). A father marries his daughters: A case of incestuous polygamy. Case Report, Retrieved from http://www.childbrides.org/Case_study_on_incestuous_polygamy.pdf Smith, G. L. (2012). Polygamy, prophets, and prevarication. Retrieved from http://www.fairlds.org/authors/smith-gregory/polygamy-prophets-and-prevarication Rauch, J. (2006, April 03). Reasons.com. Retrieved from http://reason.com/archives/2006/04/03/one-man-many-wives-big-problem
Wei Xing, Z., & Hesketh, T. (2005, septembe 15). The effect of china 's one-child family policy . Retrieved from http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhpr051833
Young, R. (2010, Febuary 12). Public radio internatrional. Retrieved from http://www.pri.org/stories/politics-society/polygamy-in-america1873.html

Cited: Chapman, L. ( 2013). Assisting women and children leaving polygamy since 1998. Retrieved from http://www.insidepolygamy.org/ Cooper, A. (2006) Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/anderson.cooper.360/blog/2006/05/how-polygamy-affects-your-wallet.html Hamzah, M. (2010, January 14). Stress, quarrels and neglect: the 'normal ' polygamous family . Retrieved from http://www.opendemocracy.net/5050/masjaliza-hamzah-norami-othman/stress-quarrels-and-neglect-normal-polygamous-family Myers, W. (2002). A father marries his daughters: A case of incestuous polygamy. Case Report, Retrieved from http://www.childbrides.org/Case_study_on_incestuous_polygamy.pdf Smith, G. L. (2012). Polygamy, prophets, and prevarication. Retrieved from http://www.fairlds.org/authors/smith-gregory/polygamy-prophets-and-prevarication Rauch, J. (2006, April 03). Reasons.com. Retrieved from http://reason.com/archives/2006/04/03/one-man-many-wives-big-problem Wei Xing, Z., & Hesketh, T. (2005, septembe 15). The effect of china 's one-child family policy . Retrieved from http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMhpr051833 Young, R. (2010, Febuary 12). Public radio internatrional. Retrieved from http://www.pri.org/stories/politics-society/polygamy-in-america1873.html