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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stop Mom Never told You?

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Speaker 1: From housetop works dot com. Hey, welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: This is Molly and I'm Kristin and Kristin. Emmy nominations

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Speaker 1: were just announced. One of my favorite shows, Big Love,

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Speaker 1: got nominated for Best Drama. Are you a fan of

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Speaker 1: sham I am a fan of the show. So for

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Speaker 1: those of you never watched it, it's about a Utah

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Speaker 1: businessman played by Bill Packson. It has three wives polygamists relationship,

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Speaker 1: and all the wives sort of have varying degrees of

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Speaker 1: acceptance or tolerance for the situation. Some of them at

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Speaker 1: points are just very happy to have this big family,

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Speaker 1: and other times the wife would just like Bill Paxson

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Speaker 1: to herself right. And of course, um, with Big Love,

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Speaker 1: we've got uh a portrayal as well of Mormonism, because

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Speaker 1: in the United States, when we think of polygamy, we

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Speaker 1: think of Mormon's right and it was actually sort of

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Speaker 1: big deal on that show started the you know, they

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Speaker 1: had all this interface with the Mormon Church because they

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Speaker 1: were worried about how polygamy was going to be depicted

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Speaker 1: in relations to the Mormon Church, which does not officially

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Speaker 1: condone polygamy. It's a church today. In fact, as it's

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Speaker 1: legal in all states. For Utah become a state, the

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Speaker 1: official church had to say, you know, we're not going

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Speaker 1: to go with polygamy. In fact, I was never really

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Speaker 1: in church doctrine, but the churches founder Joseph Smith said

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Speaker 1: he received a revelation that mentioned have multiple wives and

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Speaker 1: that this was the entry point to heaven. And when

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Speaker 1: the Mormon Church outlawed the practice, then some sort of

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Speaker 1: splinter fundamentalist groups went off and decided that they would

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Speaker 1: live according to Smith's original principle of plural marriage. Right.

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Speaker 1: And one of the most well known examples of that

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Speaker 1: now because of what happened last year was the is

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Speaker 1: the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Layar day Saints

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Speaker 1: also known as the f l DS, and that was

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Speaker 1: the church in tech s this that was the compound

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Speaker 1: that was rated and um. I think one of their

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Speaker 1: leaders was also Warren Jeff's who was a former church

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Speaker 1: leader who has been prosecuted and found guilty UM on

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Speaker 1: two charges of rape by accomplice because they were this

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Speaker 1: is all based on the issue of having these child brides, right,

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Speaker 1: So on the news, we've got child brides abuse, these

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Speaker 1: very weird they kind of make us uncomfortable. Fundamentalist sex

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Speaker 1: depiction of of polygamy, a lot of secrecy involved. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And then on the other hand have got big love

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Speaker 1: where it looks somewhat normal. You know, all these wives

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Speaker 1: have their own houses, they have all these kids, they

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Speaker 1: have help. So today christ and I want to examine

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Speaker 1: the females role in polygamy. Can it ever be good

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Speaker 1: for women? Yeah? Because even though in the US we

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Speaker 1: might think of polygamy as being something like a social taboo,

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Speaker 1: it really isn't. If if you look at cultures all

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Speaker 1: around the globe, monogamy is is more in the minority

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Speaker 1: than polygamy is, especially in Africa, the Middle East, Asia.

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Speaker 1: And this a lot of the stems from um the

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Speaker 1: Islamic faith, because the Kuran actually says that you can

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Speaker 1: have up to four wives as long as you treat

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Speaker 1: all of them uh equally. And so there was one

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Speaker 1: statistic that I saw that twenty two, anyway from twenty

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Speaker 1: of marriages in in Africa are actually polygamous. And before

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Speaker 1: we're going further, Christen, let's clarify our terms. Polygamy means

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Speaker 1: having more than one spouse, and it can refer either

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Speaker 1: to polygyny, in which a male has more than one wife,

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Speaker 1: just like Big Love, Big Love, or it could refer

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Speaker 1: to polyandry, in which a woman has more than one husband,

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Speaker 1: which is not that common, which is why polygamy is

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Speaker 1: just sort of used as the umbrella term for polygany.

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Speaker 1: Even though today we're strictly on talk about polygany, we're

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Speaker 1: gonna say polygamy, right, And when we think of polygamy

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Speaker 1: of one man having all these wives that choose from,

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Speaker 1: like if you're watching Big Love, I mean, one of

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Speaker 1: one of the most interesting aspects of it to me

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Speaker 1: is is how he kind of we're Bill Paxon, chooses

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Speaker 1: to sleep every night. Yeah, they have this schedule on

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Speaker 1: you know, some nights are the first wives nights, some

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Speaker 1: nights there's the second nights and so on. And if

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Speaker 1: variety is the spice of life, and he will probably

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Speaker 1: never get bored. Right, So, just based purely on on sex,

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Speaker 1: you would think that polygamy would benefit the man because

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Speaker 1: he would have more variety. And they do say that,

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Speaker 1: you know, it. Basically, one possible benefit might be that

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Speaker 1: you would never really have an affair because any sort

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Speaker 1: of sexual relationship has to be treated with this kind

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Speaker 1: of spiritual viewpoint. This is somebody going to take care

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Speaker 1: of So instead of going outside of the marriage, the

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Speaker 1: man would just be in sort of a big marriage

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Speaker 1: in which she could seek comfort. If a woman was pregnant,

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Speaker 1: she's breastfeeding, if she couldn't have sex. And then on

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Speaker 1: top of that, you have just the status of having

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Speaker 1: more than one wife. I mean, it's not it's it's

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Speaker 1: polygamous or sort of an elite group, because not every

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Speaker 1: man can can just up and take care of for

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Speaker 1: five wives and all of those chill written has to

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Speaker 1: be someone who um has enough resources to allocate to everyone, right,

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Speaker 1: So it's a show of your wealth that you've got,

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Speaker 1: you know, three houses, three wives, all these children, mm hmm.

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Speaker 1: And then um, there was a study um that I

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Speaker 1: was looking at in the Journal of Family Process talking

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Speaker 1: about how among um Arab Bedouins who are polygamous, it's

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Speaker 1: having more children as a chance. It means that you

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Speaker 1: are probably gonna have more sons so you can carry

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Speaker 1: on the family name. And it's also just a sign

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Speaker 1: of prestige among their communities. And you know, interestingly in

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Speaker 1: new scientists, there was a study that it's possible that

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Speaker 1: polygamy could actually lead men to live longer. Yeah, there

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Speaker 1: was a report put out by an ecologist at the

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Speaker 1: University of Sheffield UM that found and this is after

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Speaker 1: accounting for socio economic differences. She found that men who

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Speaker 1: are practicing polygamy lived on average twelve percent longer than

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Speaker 1: men and monogamous relationships. And the thinking was because they

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Speaker 1: had all these extra children, they had to stay in

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Speaker 1: better shape to take care of all of them, and

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Speaker 1: if one wife died, they had another one to take

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Speaker 1: care of them. And sometimes you read stories about polygamy

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Speaker 1: where the wife is the one who says, you know,

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Speaker 1: I might be sick, let's get a second wife in there.

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Speaker 1: That actually happened in Big Love when the first wife

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Speaker 1: got sick. So while we have all these reasons why

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Speaker 1: it might potentially benefit men, there are, obviously there are

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Speaker 1: also reasons why it could potentially harm women. Um. A

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Speaker 1: lot of times men will marry legally, marry one wife,

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Speaker 1: the first wife, and then the other wives will be

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Speaker 1: you know, spiritually wed to them or something like that,

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Speaker 1: just a religious samon, Yeah, exactly, something just informal union.

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Speaker 1: But that can be very problematic, especially with issues of immigration.

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Speaker 1: There was a two part series on NPR about UM

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Speaker 1: Muslim immigrants in the Philadelphia area who were practicing polyga

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Speaker 1: me and and the fears that these additional wives had because, um,

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Speaker 1: if anything ever happened, Uh, they're not legally married to

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Speaker 1: their husband who might have a green card. So uh,

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Speaker 1: they they're just totally vulnerable to do something happening, right,

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Speaker 1: They have no legal recourse And that's I mean, that's

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Speaker 1: the legal part of it, but it's obviously easy to

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Speaker 1: identify if the emotional part of it. You know, you're

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Speaker 1: you're married, you love your husband, and you know, let's

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Speaker 1: say one day you have a fight. The next day

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Speaker 1: he comes home with another wife, freaky right. Well, and

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Speaker 1: that was an interesting point brought up in the study

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Speaker 1: on UM. The bed one Arabs was a lot of

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Speaker 1: times the first wife would have been an arranged marriage

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Speaker 1: between the family's parents, and so that meant meant that

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Speaker 1: the next wife might the husband might do on the

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Speaker 1: next wife a little bit more because he probably he

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Speaker 1: sought her out for the first time as opposed to

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Speaker 1: to the first wife. Yeah, and so even though the

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Speaker 1: Kuran says you must treat all these wives equally in

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Speaker 1: terms of finances, it also means emotionally. It just seems

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Speaker 1: like that's an impossible stand to hold and that someone's

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Speaker 1: going to get hurt. But Molly, question of the day

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Speaker 1: is whether or not polygamy can benefit women. Right now,

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Speaker 1: it's stacking up for the men, it's all it's all

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Speaker 1: good for thecau. It looks bad for women because, you know,

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Speaker 1: we look at these cultures where polygamy is allowed, let's

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Speaker 1: say in the Middle East, they're just not cultures where

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Speaker 1: women have a lot of rights. In the United States,

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Speaker 1: when we see it on the news, we're seeing child brides,

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Speaker 1: we're seeing a lot of abuse. It just doesn't seem

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Speaker 1: like a very good environment for women. But then yet,

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Speaker 1: when you watch Big Love, they talk about sometimes this

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Speaker 1: sense of community they have. They've got a sister wife,

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Speaker 1: they've got a friend, they have built in daycare. But Molly,

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Speaker 1: the fascinating thing about all of this is if you

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Speaker 1: boil it down just to theory, okay, based on supply

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Speaker 1: and demand, the tables start to turn. Yeah, this was

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Speaker 1: really interesting we started looking at the economics of polygamy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because the thing about it is, if just in a

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Speaker 1: theoretical polygamus side, you could choose to be polygamoust or monogamous. Now,

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Speaker 1: only the top tier men, okay, the Bill Paxton's among us,

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Speaker 1: who are few and far between, are going to have

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Speaker 1: the resource allocation and the emotional wherewithal to manage multiple

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Speaker 1: wives and dozens of children. Right, So they're gonna be

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Speaker 1: let's say, you know, the crement crop. All right, So

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Speaker 1: in a polygamoust society, if you have um more women

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Speaker 1: flocking to this one man, that's gonna leave an excess

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Speaker 1: of men. The ratio of men unmarried men to women

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Speaker 1: is going to to shift, right, And so they're saying

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Speaker 1: that women who choose not to be in a polugamoust

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Speaker 1: relationship benefit. Like let's say, okay, let's say Robert Pattinson

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Speaker 1: from Twilight, he does nothing for me for me, so

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Speaker 1: let's say that you are willing to be like his

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Speaker 1: third or fourth wife. I take that, yeah, exactly, like

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Speaker 1: you would be willing to have like just part ownership

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Speaker 1: of something that you really love. Whereas since I don't

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Speaker 1: really like that guy, but always women do it frees

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Speaker 1: up all the like other celebrities for me. Yeah, let

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Speaker 1: me to To put it into more concrete terms, there

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Speaker 1: was an article in New York Times by economist Robert H. Frank,

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Speaker 1: and he put it this way. So ten of adult men, okay,

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Speaker 1: the Robert Pattinson's among us, would take an average of

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Speaker 1: three wives apiece, and all remaining marriages would be monogamous

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Speaker 1: because the other men would not be able to you know,

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Speaker 1: don't have the appeal, the sparkly appeal um. And so

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Speaker 1: among the aspiring monogamous, there would be nine men for

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Speaker 1: every seven women. So here's where the seven women can

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Speaker 1: afford to be really choosy. Like, you're not going to

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Speaker 1: settle for like a schlub. You're gonna want a guy who,

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Speaker 1: you know, if Robert Pattinson represents top tier, you're gonna

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Speaker 1: want second tier. You're gonna want a guy who brings

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Speaker 1: you flowers, who promises to do the dishes always. Like

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Speaker 1: you can start settling, uh, sen your terms. One economists says,

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Speaker 1: maybe females would stop paying for weddings. That would be

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Speaker 1: so desperate to hook a girl that the male's family

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Speaker 1: will start to pay for weddings, right, And they kind

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Speaker 1: of framed it in this idea of survival of the

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Speaker 1: fittest um. They would think that, you know, slobs would

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Speaker 1: not be able to just you know, kick back on

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Speaker 1: the couch all day. They need to start taking care

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Speaker 1: of themselves more to you know, win this like smaller

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Speaker 1: minority of leftover of leftover women, um. But they were

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Speaker 1: saying that the exception would be um for highly desirable

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Speaker 1: women because if you're highly desirable woman, you might have

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Speaker 1: then have the social power to have a monogamous relationship

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Speaker 1: with also a desirable man. You'd have your pick of

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Speaker 1: the litter, right. And you know, so how this all

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Speaker 1: ends up is ultimately men do lose in polygamist Society's

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Speaker 1: the men who can't either afford or win a woman.

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Speaker 1: And I think that we also have to say that

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Speaker 1: this whole theoretical argument is based on the notion that,

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Speaker 1: you know, women and men would want to be in

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Speaker 1: long term relationships together and reproduce together. I mean, it's

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Speaker 1: a very kind of narrow view of it, but it's

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Speaker 1: interesting to think of it that way. But there are

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Speaker 1: cultures where that idea of mating and reproducing can actually

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Speaker 1: help you move up in in these African and Middle

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Speaker 1: Eastern countries, marrying the guy who, even if you're the

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Speaker 1: third wife, who has all the resources, is a good

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Speaker 1: economic move up right. As as John Tierney with New

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Speaker 1: York Times put at, polugamy isn't the cause of women's

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Speaker 1: low status in traditional societies, but rather a consequence of

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Speaker 1: like you said, they're trying to lose up because the

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Speaker 1: biggest losers aren't these women. It's those men who really

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Speaker 1: can't get their acts together and get get a lady.

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Speaker 1: But so then in Western culture, let's say that you

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Speaker 1: are a woman who has the means, thinking might be

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Speaker 1: that once you know you have your own job and

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Speaker 1: you have your own money, you'd want someone just to

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Speaker 1: focus on you. But this brings us to the case

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Speaker 1: of Elizabeth Joseph, who is a lawyer and also a polugamist. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think that she is one of I think at

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Speaker 1: least at one point nine wives. And uh she was

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Speaker 1: interviewed at one point for on This American Life um

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Speaker 1: and she was talking about her experience with polygamy, and

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Speaker 1: she is very pro polygamy. She thought that, you know,

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Speaker 1: she just thinks it's a wonderful arrangement. It's not for everyone.

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Speaker 1: She she did, you know, she kind of reiterated the

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Speaker 1: fact that it does take a very special man to

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Speaker 1: be able to have nine wives and that large of

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Speaker 1: a family. But she actually said that it is, in

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Speaker 1: her opinion, the ultimate like feminist community because you have,

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Speaker 1: like you were talking about earlier, this idea of all

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Speaker 1: these sister wives, you have all of the support. Um.

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Speaker 1: If if someone needs to go to work, you've got

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Speaker 1: you know, eight other people who can help out around

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Speaker 1: the house while you're gone. There's a lot of give

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Speaker 1: and take itself. You know. She made it. She made

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Speaker 1: a pretty convincing case for it. Yeah, she's In one

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Speaker 1: of her speeches, she said that if polugmy didn't exist,

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Speaker 1: the modern American career woman would have invented it because

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Speaker 1: and else can you, um and these are my words now,

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Speaker 1: not hers. When else could you go off to work

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Speaker 1: and have all the success you want to and yet

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Speaker 1: still have a kid who's not just in daycare but

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Speaker 1: with someone you know and trust. And then when you

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Speaker 1: weren't tired, you know, you had a man around, right.

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Speaker 1: But I will say, though there was one there was

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Speaker 1: one part of the interview that really stuck out in

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Speaker 1: my mind. It was when Ira Glass was asking her

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Speaker 1: about how often she slept with her husband, because, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, if he's circulating among among nine different women,

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Speaker 1: it seems like it would be kind of few and

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Speaker 1: far between, and um, and answering that she mentioned that, um,

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Speaker 1: he doesn't come to their bedrooms as you see in

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Speaker 1: Big Love. He has his own separate quarters and they

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Speaker 1: go and sleep in his bed. And I just thought

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Speaker 1: that that was kind of, um, a little creepy. I

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Speaker 1: don't want to say creepy, um, but I think that

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Speaker 1: kind of leaves you with sort of hang ups about

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Speaker 1: whether or not that really can that kind of arrangement

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Speaker 1: really is benefiting a woman at the end of the day. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't think it's ever going to be an easy

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Speaker 1: relationship Christian by any stretch of imagination. I do remember

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Speaker 1: when Big Love came out, they had some women in

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Speaker 1: plural marriages watch it, and they said, sort of the

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Speaker 1: comfort and support you get from your religious beliefs about

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Speaker 1: polygamy never really entered into that equation. So it's possible

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Speaker 1: that if you had kind of that belief that, uh,

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Speaker 1: we're all going to get to heaven together, it'd be

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Speaker 1: a little bit easier to put up with, but I

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Speaker 1: personally just can't imagine not having intense jealousy over the

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Speaker 1: whole situation. Yeah, there was no There was no source

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Speaker 1: that we found out there that that advocated polygamy as

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Speaker 1: an easy option right for for men or for women.

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Speaker 1: But I do think that several of the sources did

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Speaker 1: indicate that if it was a little more acceptable, then

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Speaker 1: maybe there wouldn't be these kind of seedy undercurrents that

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Speaker 1: we see in the news because people are forced to

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Speaker 1: kind of go underground and these cult like uh situations,

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Speaker 1: that that's when the more nefarious elements get in there.

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Speaker 1: M M. But I think it is always fun to

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Speaker 1: play around with theory, supply and demand economics of mating.

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Speaker 1: The economics are pretty convincing, especially psychology. To day blogger

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Speaker 1: pointed out that we are all basically somewhat polygamists in

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Speaker 1: the fact that we are in a culture where we

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Speaker 1: serially marry and divorce marriage, divorce, marriage, divorce. Whereas how

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Speaker 1: is that any different than just doing it all at

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Speaker 1: the same time. Well, Molly, I think that that is

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Speaker 1: as good a time as any for us to read

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Speaker 1: some listener mail that is also about women. Okay, um,

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Speaker 1: this was part of our reading list request. Um Monique

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Speaker 1: wrote in and she says that she likes to do

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Speaker 1: summer big summer reading projects and this summer she's reading

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Speaker 1: about pioneer women. Sounds pretty awesome, um, she said, I've

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Speaker 1: already read Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Eleanor PRUITTZ

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Speaker 1: Stewart and Pioneer Women Voices from the Kansas Frontier by

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Speaker 1: Joanna L. Stre And next up she's reading Hearts West,

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Speaker 1: True Stories of Mail Order Brides in the Frontier by

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Speaker 1: Chris Ends. It sounds like a lot of fun, she said.

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Speaker 1: This is her favorite big reading project. Yes, even yet

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Speaker 1: that even tops last summer's paleo anthropology bender. And in case,

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Speaker 1: in case we think that she's no fun, she does

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Speaker 1: have a sub project for this summer, which is the

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Speaker 1: Scott Pilgrim series, which is a series of animated comics.

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Speaker 1: Are all comics animan? Yes? I just thought I would

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Speaker 1: be very clear. So thanks Monique for writing in, And

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Speaker 1: of course we love to hear about what you are

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Speaker 1: reading as well, so you can send us that along

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Speaker 1: with any questions or comments that you have. Um at

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Speaker 1: Moms stuff at how stuff works dot com. And if

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Speaker 1: you want to know what Molly and I are up

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Speaker 1: to during the week, you should head over to our blog,

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Speaker 1: how to stuff. You can find our blog and also

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Speaker 1: an article on how polygamy works. Um at how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of

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Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com brought

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