Humans: Naturally Monogamous or Polygamous? Does It Matter?

[Laurel]

Many animals have multiple sex partners, while some mate for life.

1) Do you think humans are naturally monogamous or polygamous? Why?

2) Does a natural inclination toward one or the other matter? Should instinct and inclination take a back seat to social reality?

 

[p_p_man]

I think humans are naturally polygamous...

and that monogamy is a state forced upon them by the church and government.

You mentioned briefly about some animals being one or the other, but with monogamous animals you don't find them having extra-marital affairs. Whereas with humans if the opportunity arose I believe a partner, in even the most soldid of relationships, would happily slide into bed with another. They might feel terribly guilty afterwards but they would still do it.

Finally I don't really think it matters a damn.

Now I suppose we all stand back and listen to the usual well worn arguments about the children, undying love, loyalty, trust and the rest...

 

[registered "^^"]

Men are not

naturally monogamous.They are to visually driven to distraction, where as females seem to be more emotionally invouled. This is not to say the women are more monogamous, just look around you. If their emotional needs are not met at home, they will be some where else!

 

[Mensa]

You ask if "humans" are naturally monogamous or polygamous? Males tend toward polygamy whereas women prefer monogamy. The male wants his progeny to have the best chance at survival, this he feels can best be accomplished with several partners. The more places he plants his seed, the greater the chance of success.

Women, on the other hand, are seeking something entirely different. They are seeking a good provider, the better the chance for her children to survive and prosper. They seek the right man to provide stability and furnish needs.

It is only when men get older that they begin to actively seek some of the same things women were looking for all along, a good stable homelife and security. Fortunately for the survival of the human race, both genders manage to agree in the end.

 

[*Lazer*]

I think it is more a question of are people willing to act on a primal level or are they willing to exchange that elemental behavior for a more evolved one that constitutes a choice. The more concious you are to your connection to the universe and each other the more important your choice in behaviors becomes. Most people fear pologomy because of a feeling of inadequency. The "aren't I good enough" immature egocentrical thinking. I think men and women alike would not risk a healthy relationship for the momentary pleasure of sex with a god or goddess. You would look and be tempted to respond but a higher thinking would more then likely make the choice.

Marriage makes it harder to dismiss the "betrayal" of someone responding to that primitive side. You "forsake" all others. It is a choice. My take on it is that this was a way of formalizing the pairing of two individuals for the purpose of raising children and caring for one another. In these times it could be that it is a way of perserving health too.

I think the natural order of things is to be with another person. To bond in a common goal whether it be to have kids or for companionship. The more evolved the individuals in the relationship the less likely it is to be threatened by a quick roll in the hay. The more unlikely the roll in the hay is to happen. I do not think we are monogamous by instinct but rather by choice. But what do I know........

 

[beckbabe]

I think since adultery has been around as least as long as marriage if not longer, that man is naturally polygamous. So called social pressure to be monogamous has actually become part of our survival.

 

[Guru]

 

[*bratcat*]

Monogamy

 

[Mensa]

LOL

Mensa must not be married.

Only on wanting a stable home, beyond that all bets are off!

 

[bluntforcemama]

Shit, this is going to be long, but I thought this was intensely interesting.

Extramarital sex (EMS) is any sexual activity in which at least one partner is married to someone other than the sexual partner. EMS is a social classification based on marital status (not unique sexual properties), which establishes its social consequences.


Sociobiological Explanations
Evolutionary explanations of the origin of nonmonogamy rely on a reproductive double standard. A female bears relatively few children and is dependent during and after pregnancy. Her inclusive fitness (genetic survival) depends on forming a provisioning bond with her offsprings' father. Since a male's inclusive fitness is increased only by raising his own offspring (and supplemented by seeking promiscuous reproductive opportunities), the female's EMS threatens his inclusive fitness. According to Frayser, females exchange fidelity for provisioning by males; males exchange support for women's confined reproductive potential. In evolutionary terms, so long as provisioning for the mate continues, males' EMS is a peripheral issue.

However, the relationship between coitus and parentage is obscured by the delay between conception and visible pregnancy, coitus with premenarchal and postmenopausal women, difficulty in conceiving, and coitus among sterile partners. If hominids' paternal involvement with their own offspring is motivated by an evolutionary drive, what factor determined which offspring and mates were provided for and which were abandoned? Some factor other than inclusive fitness prioritized their relationships to determine which mates and offspring received continued provisioning.

There is an alternative dynamic. Hominid evolution involved two distinct aspects: at some point hominids' increasing mental capacity supplanted biological with social adaptation Increasing brain capacity allowed sexual pleasure to become intrinsically desirable, thereby reducing reproductive dependency on estrus. As acceptivity to engage in coitus extended beyond estrus, females could exchange sex for food over sustained periods, creating a pleasure bond with males. Further, obscuring an offspring's paternity by mating with numerous males in the troupe increased the possibility of multiple males providing for a female's offspring or at least being less likely to kill them.

The issue is whether emphasis is placed on individuals' inclusive fitness or on species survival, the true province of evolution. Species survival and individuals' inclusive fitness are maximized by two factors: (1) when each child has different parents, the probability that all a parent's children will inherit identical genetic defects is reduced (e.g, Tay-Sachs); and (2) when males support infants through reciprocal altruism, irrespective of parentage.


Cross-Cultural Research
Cross-cultural research demonstrates that the dependency of pregnant women and infants can be met independent of the biological father's involvement. Among the Tiwi of North Australia conception is believed to be caused by water spirits. Women are married at birth to older men (age 40) and form sequential sexual relationships with several husbands and extramarital partners. Each child might have different biological and social fathers. As with the matrilineal Nayar, on the southwestern or Malabar coast of India, it is the marriage system, not the biological father, that provides for the dependent female and her children. Thus, cultural values determine the importance of biological parentage, monogamy, and EMS.

Cultures vary significantly in their responses to EMS. Frayser estimates that 49 percent of societies strongly prohibit EMS for females, while 23 percent strongly prohibit it for males. In contrast, 26 percent of societies allow EMS for females while 52 percent allow it for males (25 percent of societies weakly prohibit EMS for either females or males). Although 49 percent of societies have consistent sexual standards (26 percent allow and 23 percent prohibit EMS for both sexes), when double standards exist, EMS for females is uniformly restricted more than it is for males.

The pervasive restrictions on females' EMS contradict the evolutionary monogamy argument. At its simplest, the necessity of imposing rules indicates that female monogamy is not biologically established. More persuasive are the associations between a culture's social structures and its acceptance of EMS.

Macrosociology identifies patterns of sexual regulation reflecting a society's stage of cultural evolution. According to Gebhard, up to 60 percent of preliterate societies allow women some form. of EMS. Similarly, women's sexual autonomy is greatest in hunting and gathering societies, most restricted in agricultural societies, and according to Sanderson increases again in industrial and postindustrial societies. In agrarian and agricultural societies, property rights ascribe economic status, increasing the importance of inheritance. Patrilineal societies accomplish this by confining women's reproductive potential, whereas matrilineal inheritance minimizes the importance of paternity. Accordingly, Frayser found that 76 percent of patrilineal and nonunilineal versus 14 percent of matrilineal societies strongly restrict females' sexuality. Achieved status typifies hunting and gathering societies as well as industrial and postindustrial ones. The emphasis on personal accomplishment also reduces the importance of paternity, hence the need to confine females' reproductive potential.

Sexually induced pleasure and self-disclosure can lead to intrusions into the marriage and kinship systems that organize social life. Violations of the social boundaries protecting marriage and kinship evoke social concern and personal jealousy. This threat can be addressed through avoidance, segregation, or integration. Avoidance reinforces marital boundaries with sanctions that vary in strength from small fines to death, although it is unclear how consistently sanctions are imposed. One reason for extreme sanctions in avoidance societies is the absence of additional social controls to minimize the effect on kinship systems when extramarital relationships do form.

Segregation establishes social structures to minimize EMS intrusions into the uninvolved partner's life space, just as decentralized polygymous households physically separated co-wives to minimize jealousy and conflict. The norms supporting segregation can impose a variety of restrictions on EMS. They may prescribe potential partners (e.g., a Marshallese female's EMS is limited to her sister's husband, or levirate access to an older brother's wife). Restrictions may also give the woman's husband the right to determine her sexual relationships (e.g., wife-lending which the husband may use to establish social and economic ties with other males or communities). Other restrictions may limit location (e.g., not in her own village), time (e.g., only during ceremonial periods), and eligibility (e.g., men but not women).

With integration, additional partners are added to the relationship and sometimes the household. Mahoney distinguishes between EMS and alternative styles of marriage, which incorporate extra members into the marriage. Distinct from polygamy because there is a single marital dyad, integration still brings the external sexual relationship within the marriage structure and therefore technically is not extramarital.

Segregation and integration provide structural mechanisms to minimize the impact of ongoing EMS on marriage and kinship. Avoidance minimizes the complexity external relationships add to marriage, but it allows no ongoing control over relationships that do develop. In contrast, the social norms establishing segregation and integration provide interpersonal and social controls over EMS relationships.


Legacy of EMS in Western Society
Western sexual values reflect two interrelated legacies: Hebrew culture and the Greco-Roman culture. Beginning in the first century A.D., these legacies were combined by the Christian church and early Christianity's heritage continues to dominate sexual values in the United States.

Several feminist scholars have asserted that matrilineal cultures with goddess religions dominated the Middle East until they were overthrown because the sexual autonomy and temple prostitution allowed all women in the goddess religions threatened Hebrew patrilinity and religious authority. Judaism sanctified patrilinity through its doctrine that a male who died without a son to carry his name lost his chance at immortality. Polygyny, concubinage, and the levirate duty helped ensure male offspring, and the confinement of women's reproductive potential ensured legitimacy. Intercourse between a married Hebrew woman and a man not her husband was adultery for which both men and women could be killed. Males' EMS with non-Hebrews or unmarried Hebrew women (e.g., prostitutes) was not considered adultery because it did not affect another Hebrew male's lineage.

The principle of double monopoly on spouses' sexuality did not exist in ancient Greece, where wives belonged to husbands and husbands belonged to themselves. This is made clear in Demosthenes's court oration, "Mistresses we keep for pleasure, concubines for daily attendance upon our persons, and wives to bear us legitimate children and be our housekeepers." Again, women's marital status determined adultery, and an adulterous wife could be divorced or punished by any means short of homicide by citizens if she went out in public.

Under Roman law, adultery became a state matter. The lex Julia precluded casual sexual relationships for women eligible to be matres familias (matrons of the family). The official penalty for adultery was death, but punishment was the state's prerogative not the father's or husband's, and legal texts identified conditions staying execution. Nor could fathers or husbands conceal women's adultery. If they failed to report it within 60 days, they faced charges of procuring, and a knowledgeable person had four months to report the incident or become an accomplice suffering the same punishment as the adulterers Adulterers' only escape from judgment was through a general pardon given to criminals at public celebrations, after which husbands had the option to reintroduce charges within 30 days..

Brown concludes that pre-Christian Rome's sexual tone had been set by somber and careful persons. The ease of obtaining divorces eliminated structural impediments that might otherwise lead to adultery. Socially, the EMS double standard was not universally accepted. Husbands' EMS conduct was examined if they sought divorce on grounds of adultery, and the principle of symmetry was used to argue that husbands failed to lead the family when they required chastity from their wives that they did not practice themselves.

The early Christians' sexual legacy was a dramatic revision of sexuality. To second-century theologians, Christ's victory over death could free humans from the "present age" if procreation, which fueled the unidirectional progression to death, was halted. In contrast to the pagans and Jewish, who believed sexuality could be made a positive element in society, early Christian theologians made no distinction between licit and illicit sex: all sex reflected humanity's separation from God. Early Christianity eliminated the Roman and Hebrew? double standards by condemning all EMS and blurred the distinction between marital and extramarital sex by identifying as adultery lust toward one's spouse, the marriage of separated persons during their spouses' lifetime, clandestine or illicit marriages, and marriages contracted for wrongful purposes.

In 12th-century southern France, I'amour courtois (courtly love) rebelled against marriages contracted for families' economic and political alliances by praising extramarital romantic love. Initially idealized as a spiritual union not possible in marriage, courtly love eventually linked passionate sexuality with romantic love. It was the emerging middle-class, which could not afford both spouses and lovers, that combined the ideals of romantic love and passionate sex with marriage. The Puritans viewed marital sex as a God-given pleasure, which they supported against adultery by requiring couples to live together peacefully. In challenging the Catholic church, however, other 16th- and 17th-century religious publications recast women's image from licentiousness to purity. Religious and pseudo-medical beliefs desexualized women, denying they had any sexual interests other than reproduction and insisting on protecting them from degeneration stemming from sexual arousal. This ideology restored the traditional double standard rejected by the Catholic church but changed the rationale from restricting women's procreative potential to the moral destructiveness of sex, especially for women.

The Christian rejection of the double standard, courtly love, the romanticization of marriage, and the puritan support of marital sexuality did not eliminate the double standard or sex hostile beliefs. Instead of an evolutionary progression in which new values replaced the old, divergent beliefs introduced competing values which fragmented society.


Contemporary Extramarital Sex
Random samples by different pollsters indicate 40 percent to 47 percent of men and 26 percent to 32 percent of women have experienced EMS at least once. Since 79.3 percent of the population considers EMS to always be wrong, there is reason to suspect that random surveys may underestimate the incidence of EMS. Research showing that initial admissions of EMS by 30 percent of a sample doubled to 60 percent during psychotherapy support for this possibility. Conversely, higher survey results like Cosmopolitan's 69 percent EMS rate for women over age 35 reported by Wolfe, and Playboy's EMS rates for those over age 50 and 70 percent for men and 65 percent for women reported by Peterson, et al., may be biased by readers' self-selection.

Compared with men, women's EMS involvement has increased significantly. The 24-percent rate for EMS involvement by women age 18 to 24 reported by Hunt was three times that reported by Kinsey, results replicated by Tavris and Sadd, and by Blumstein and Schwartz. As this cohort aged, the incidence of EMS among middle-aged women rose to approximate men's. In addition to the cohort effect, by middle-age women often overcome the cultural restrictions on their sexuality; thus, increased EMS might reflect a new, active sexuality directed at fulfilling their own desires.

The impact of EMS vanes. In Atwater's sample of urban women, 93 percent reported increased self-esteem, self-confidence, autonomy, and power from their EMS. Gilmartin found similar levels of marital happiness between spouses with secret affairs and a monogamous control group. Nor must EMS always be secret to avoid problems. Cuber and Harroff reported that many people in intrinsic-vital marriages engaged in extramarital sex with their spouses' knowledge or approval. Among the 40 percent of women with EMS experience who were positive their husbands knew, 42 percent stated it caused no problems. Similarly, Hunt found that nearly half of the divorced people with EMS experience did not believe EMS played a role in their divorces. However, Hunt discounted their opinion and the statements of the "many" still married couples who reported no adverse effects from EMS, stressing instead the 50 percent who were affected and pervasive "unseen emotional decay."

Permissive extramarital attitudes are inversely related to female gender, age, religiosity, marital happiness, and marital sexual satisfaction and are directly related to male gender, education, political liberality, gender equality, shared marital power, autonomous heterosexual interaction, premarital sexual permissiveness, sexual pleasure emphasis, and marital sexual experimentation. These variables form three factors: marital satisfaction, sexual permissiveness, and intellectual flexibility, but the factors can obscure important relationships. First, Bell et al. found that 20 percent of wives who described themselves happily married had had EMS. Second, variables like the emphasis on sexuality, increased equality, and autonomy for women identify positive elements in relationships, which coincidentally have nonmonogamous implications. Women's working outside the home alters family dynamics, equalizing wives' and husbands' marital power, gender equality, and autonomous heterosexual interaction. However, there is also an increase in EMS from 27 percent for full-time homemakers to 47 percent for women working part tune or full time outside the home.

The causes of EMS can also be classified into push or pull factors which, like a sexually distant partner or a new love, drive or attract spouses away from the marriage. Alternatively, the causes can be classified according to individuals' rationales. Ellis identified healthy and disturbed reasons for EMS with the implication that people might avoid EMS for unhealthy reasons.

Constantine and Constantine further challenged the idealization of monogamy by asking, "What is wrong with you and your marriage that drives you to stay monogamous?"

The term "extramarital sex" emerged in the 1960s and 1970s when research on swinging and open marriage forced the recognition of alternative marital structures. Adams found that clandestine affairs involve second-order changes, wherein one partner covertly disrupts the relationship by unilaterally violating the couple's implicit rules. Such transgression of the rules is likely to produce feelings of guilt and remorse not shared by those who flatly reject them. Even to people involved in traditional affairs, alternative sexual lifestyles threaten the stability imposed by the principle of marriage as a double sexual monopoly. Whereas adultery transgresses individuals' accepted monogamous standards, nonmonogamous alternative lifestyles reject the double sexual monopoly. The challenge experienced by participants is to establish first-order changes and first-order structures in their relationships by establishing explicit, individualized rules governing their behavior. Most EMS research focuses on rejection or transgression by examining the development of alternative marital structures to replace those rejected or the social and individual pathology of transgression.

The structure of EMS is determined by whether the spouses' activity is consensual and independent or joint. The most common form of EMS is nonconsensual and typically involves transgressions where permissive behaviors exceed nonpermissive relationship expectations. In nonconsensual activity, a spouse violates expectations unilaterally and both a husband and wife, acting independently, might create two distinct sets of second-order rules. Whether such EMS is love or pleasure centered, enduring or opportunistic, depends on the second-order rules the EMS partner creates.

Consensual agreements allowed either partner to engage in EMS under specified conditions in 15 percent of marriages. A source of tension in independent consensual EMS is the possibility of being displaced by the outsider, although Rubin and Adams found comparable marital stability in both open and sexually exclusive marriages. Creating first-order structures and rules minimizes this threat through segregation, which regulates the time and resources expended, possible partners, emotional involvement, potential disclosure, the need for spousal approval, and similar concerns. Doing this, however, is a major task in comarital EMS or open marriage. This process negotiates rules similar to the social conventions regulating EMS in nonmonogamous cultures.

In contrast, joint consensual activity creates rules that structure emotional involvement either through segregation or integration. Research suggests two to four percent of the population has engaged in swinging. Swinging activity, in which spouses are sexually exchanged or shared, vanes from the emotionally detached "hard core" to emotionally committed forms, such as "interpersonal" or "communal" swinging. Hard-core swinging is strictly physical pleasure centered and minimizes jealousy and the potential for emotional involvements by preventing personal contact except during swinging. The emotional detachment of such swinging is similar to wife-lending in which the husband's interest, not the wife's, determines her extramarital partner. In contrast, interpersonal swinging establishes a stable intimate network of emotional ties and occasionally creates a group marriage by extending the definition of family so that extra partners are incorporated.

The assumption of individual pathology among those who engage in EMS is typified by the public's negative perception of swingers. The perception of swingers as deviants misinterprets the rejection of specific sexual values as a general transgression of social norms. In reality, swingers are very conventional in most respects. Compared with nonswingers, swingers have weaker ties to their parents, neighbors, and religion, but are also middle class, politically conservative, more socially active, and better educated. The key factor distinguishing swingers from nonswingers appears to be swingers' low degree of sexual jealousy. Gilmartin identifies the progression from transgression to rejection among women swingers, noting that, "For most women in swinging relationships it took time and considerable difficulty before they were able to undergo this transformation of meaning from their original concept of adultery to their current one." If, however, they make this transition, they tend to en-joy swinging more than men.


Summary
Sexuality is inevitably regulated. When avoidance is used to regulate EMS, there are no social mechanisms to influence the consequences when EMS does occur. The cost of minimizing EMS through avoidance is to maximize the potential for damage when it does occur. Since variables like gender equality, equitable marital power, sexual pleasure, and women's employment are associated with increased EMS, it does not appear that the nonmonogamy reflected in EMS will disappear in the future without dramatic social changes. Reinstating the Roman system of easy divorce combined with strong sanctions against EMS could displace the nonmonogamy of EMS into sequential marital monogamy.

http://www2.rz.hu-berlin.de/sexolog...TION SEXUALITY EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES

 

[Guest]

I am, immensely, enjoying this thread. Nature vs. Nurture. Biology vs. sociology. These subjects are right up my alley!

I can proclaim, easily, that I am naturally a nester. I am a nurturer. I find deep connections with a partner to be sustaining and quite satisfying. Is it due to societal pressures? No. Is it due to religious structure and guidance? No. I have always attracted men and women of similar ideals. So, maybe you are all correct.

Thank you, Myst, for posting the link in your post. It was quite interesting!

 

[Harbinger]

Nice post, Myst. Certainly more work to read than the average post, but well worth it.

Interesting points on jealosy or lack thereof as a factor in monogamy. The natural tendency may be to want to enjoy sexual partners without restriction, but not if the cost is one's most significant other doing the same. I promise I won't if you promise you won't.

Not wanting to cause distress and mistrust in a person I care deeply about is a big factor for me.

 

[Dhalgren]

I think a lot of people fall into having a series of relationships one after another or just overlapping until it all blows up...then the people involved are forced to choose.

It's called serial monogamy..