        
                       Monogamy and Its Discontents
                           by William Tucker
        
                         Editor's Introduction:
        
            This reprint greatly enhances debate number 12
        whose short title is "Against Value-less Education."
        The long description for this debate is: "Against
        Value-less Education: Introducing Denomination-Neutral
        Values Into Our Educational Curriculum To Reduce The
        Nation's Suicide and Murder Rates."  Although the
        written permission for this reprint was granted by the
        author, I was verbally assured on the phone by the
        author that the permission of the publisher, National
        Review, was gained to do this reprint.  My original
        reprint request letter was addressed to the National
        Review who forwarded it to the author.  The author
        submitted the article in electronic form on diskette.
        
           Actually the target of this reprint is not to reduce
        the Nation's Suicide and Murder rates but rather the
        nation's rising increase of single families.  Rather
        than rely upon religious authority for monogamy, the
        author uses the most impressive secular reasons that I
        have ever read for favoring monogamy.
        
        
        
                       Monogamy and Its Discontents
                           by William Tucker
        
                               A Reprint
                Originally Published in National Review
                            October 4, 1993
                    Copyright 1993, National Review
                          All Rights Reserved
             Reprinted by Permission of the Author and the
                       Publisher, National Review
        
            America is in a period of cultural crisis.  For as
        long as we have been a civilization, monogamy,
        heterosexuality, legitimacy, and the virtues of marital
        fidelity have been givens of nature.  We defend them
        simply because we never knew anything different.  The
        major religions have sanctioned them, as do 4000 years
        of Western history.  Out-of-wedlock births,
        homosexuality, and other forms of sexual "deviance"
        have always been a fringe element on the edge of
        society, but have never laid claim to the mainstream.
        
            All this is now coming under challenge.  Part of it
        may simply be cultural exhaustion - the foolish con-
        fidence that the major battles of civilization have
        been fought and won and it is now time for a little
        self-indulgence.  Or it may be the taste for the exotic
        and forbidden, usually confined to a small minority,
        has at last become available to the average person.
        Lacking any new outward territories to explore, Amer-
        icans have turned within to explore the "inner space"
        of sexual and cultural variety.
        
            All this must be tolerated.  In a free country, you
        can't stop people from doing what they want - espe-
        cially when they have the money and leisure to do it.
        The situation is complicated, however, by the existence
        of a vast American "underclass" that does not generally
        share in the affluence, but is daily exposed to the
        sirens of self-indulgence.  While the abandonment of
        cultural norms may have an exotic quality for the
        affluent, it is a palpable threat to the upward aspira-
        tions of the poor.  This has already become clear in
        the matter of homosexuality, where the most bitter
        resistance is coming from ethnic minorities - particu-
        larly those usually enlisted to the liberal cause.
        
            On the matter of single motherhood and
        illegitimacy, the underclass - particularly those of
        African-American origin - have proved peculiarly sus-
        ceptible.  Single motherhood has virtually become the
        norm in African-American society.  (Eighty percent of
        black children in New York City are on welfare.)  The
        failure to adhere to monogamy and two-parent child-
        rearing now forms the single greatest obstacle to black
        advancement in America - and is beginning to set blacks
        apart as an almost unreachable subculture.
        
            Yet to speak in favor of monogamy, sexual modesty,
        fidelity, restraint, and two-parent families in the
        current climate is to find one's self subject to the
        charge of being a bigot, a religious nut, or just hope-
        lessly out of touch.  The common assumption, particu-
        larly among the intelligentsia, is that all the tradi-
        tional arguments for monogamy and two-parent families
        are religious and that everything that could be said in
        their favor was spoken centuries ago.  By contrast,
        "different kinds of families" and "alternate sexual
        identities" are something to be tolerated, if not an
        exciting new frontier.
        
            I cannot agree that this is the case.  For as much
        as monogamy has been sanctioned by Western culture, I
        do not believe that its function as the center of our
        civilization has ever been completely understood.
        There is in everyone a vague awareness that monogamy
        produces a peaceful social setting that is the
        framework for cultural harmony and advancement.  Yet
        this subconscious recognition has rarely been explored
        at any great length.  There is never any real
        articulation that monogamy is an ancient compromise
        whose breakdown only lets loose ancient antagonisms
        that society has long suppressed.
        
            Most of our current anxieties about American civi-
        lization, I believe, can be traced to the unconscious
        recognition that we are slowly drifting away from the
        hard-won victories of a monogamous culture.  Monogamy,
        after all, is only one possible outcome of the ancient
        sexual dance.  There are others, whose characteristics
        may not be quite so appealing.
        
            Yet like all hard-won compromises, monogamy does
        not produce a perfect outcome for every individual.
        When examined closely, it proves to be the source of
        many private dissatisfactions.  These disaffections
        form a nagging undercurrent of discontent in any
        monogamous culture.  Ordinarily, they remain a form of
        "deviance," generally suppressed and disapproved by the
        vast majority, although virtually impossible to
        eradicate.  Only when the core ideals of the culture
        come under attack - when people begin to celebrate
        these discontents and embrace them within themselves -
        only then does the underlying architecture of the
        social contract come into stark relief.
        
            The question that we face today is how much free
        rein we can give the discontents of monogamy before we
        risk overturning the central character of our culture.
        Society, of course, is not without its defenses.  The
        long-standing, almost universal dislike and disapproval
        of child-bearing out of wedlock, of sexual infidelity,
        of easy divorce, of public prostitution and
        pornography, and of widespread homosexuality - all
        these are not just irrational intolerances.  They are
        the ancient, forgotten logic that holds together a
        monogamous society.  As long as these attitudes remain
        unexamined, however, they can play little part in the
        current debate and will be easily dismissed as mere
        prejudices.
        
            What we need, then, is a defense of monogamy based
        on a rational understanding of its underlying prin-
        ciples.  Here is an attempted beginning.
        
            Let us start with some basic arithmetic.   In any
        reproducing population, the laws of chance dictate that
        there will be about the same number of males and
        females.  Under these conditions, there are three ways
        in which the population can arrange itself for mating
        purposes:
        
            1) one female can collect several males as mates.
        This is called "polyandry."
        
            2) one male can collect several females.  This is
        called "polygyny," or more generally, "polygamy."
        
            3) each female and male can mate with one other
        individual.  This is called "monogamy."
        
            Of the three possibilities, the first - polyandry -
        is the rarest in nature.  An understanding of the
        basics of reproduction tells us why.
        
            In nearly all species, the female role in
        reproduction is the "limiting factor," meaning that the
        resource the female controls (usually a womb) is the
        most difficult to replace and therefore determines the
        rate at which reproduction takes place.
        
            This has to do with the differences between eggs
        and sperm.  Sperm are small and motile, while eggs are
        large and relatively immobile.  The egg generally comes
        wrapped in a package of nutrients that will feed the
        fertilized ovum until "birth."  Because eggs are more
        complex - and therefore harder to make - a female gen-
        erates far fewer eggs than a male generates sperm.
        Among mammals, a single male ejaculation often contains
        more sperm cells than a female will produce eggs in her
        lifetime.  Since there are always more sperm than eggs
        - and since it takes one of each to produce an off-
        spring - eggs are the limiting factor to reproduction.
        
            As a result, females have generally gone on to play
        a larger role in nurturing offspring as well.  The
        principle that determines this responsibility has been
        identified by biologists is the "last chance to
        abandon."  Here is how it works.
        
            When fertilization of the egg takes place, one
        partner is usually left with the egg in his or her pos-
        session - often attached to or within his or her body.
        Most often, this is the female.  This leaves the male
        free to go and seek other mating opportunities.  The
        female, on the other hand, has two basic options:  1)
        she can abandon the egg and try mate again (but this
        will only leave her in the same dilemma); or 2) she can
        stay with the egg, trying to ensure its survival to
        maturity.  She is better off choosing the latter.  As a
        result, females become "mothers," caring for the fer-
        tilized eggs - and often the new-born offspring as
        well.
        
            The few exceptions prove the rule.  Among
        seahorses, for example, the fertilized egg is nurtured
        in a kangaroo-like pouch on the male's stomach.  This
        makes the male the limiting factor to reproduction.  As
        a result, the sex roles are reversed.  Male seahorses
        become "mothers," nurturing their offspring to
        maturity, while females abandon their "impregnated"
        sexual partners and look for new mating opportunities.
        
            The logic of reproduction has produced another uni-
        versal characteristic in nature, called "female
        coyness."  Males can spread their sperm far and wide,
        impregnating as many females as possible, while females
        may get only one mating opportunity per mating season.
        Therefore, females must choose wisely.  In almost every
        species, males are the sexual aggressors, while females
        hold back, trying to select the best mate.  Often the
        male is made to perform some display of strength or
        beauty, or go through some ritual expression of respon-
        sibility (nest-building) before the female agrees to
        mate with him.  With seahorses, once again, the roles
        are reversed.  Males are coy and reluctant, while
        females are the sexual aggressors.
        
            It is for these reasons that polyandry - one female
        forming a mating bond with several males - is unlikely
        and unfavorable.  Even though a single female might
        consort with several males, she can only be impregnated
        by one or two of them.   Thus, most males would be
        unsuccessful.  Moreover, the attachment of several
        males to one female would mean that other females would
        be left with no mates.  The outcome would be a very
        slow rate of reproduction.  In addition, any male who
        broke the rules and left his mate for an unmated female
        would achieve reproductive success, making the whole
        system extremely unstable.  For all these reasons,
        polyandry is very rare in nature.
        
            Polygyny, on the other hand - the form of polygamy
        where one male mates with several females - is univer-
        sally common. (Although "polygamy" can refer to either
        polyandry or polygyny, it is generally used inter-
        changeably with polygyny.)  Polygamy is probably
        nature's most "natural" way of mating.  The driving
        force is the ability of a single male to reproduce with
        more than one female.  Given the inevitable differences
        in size, strength, beauty, or social skills among
        males, it is inevitable that - in an unregulated sexual
        marketplace - successful males will collect multiple
        mating partners while unsuccessful males will be left
        with none.
        
            Polygamy is particularly predominant among mammals,
        where the fertilized embryo is retained within the
        female's body, reducing the male's post-conception
        nurturing to near-zero.  A successful male lion col-
        lects a "pride" of seven-to-ten female lions, mating
        with each of them as they come into "heat."  A male
        deer mates with about six to eight female deer.  A
        "silverback" male gorilla collects a "harem" of five or
        six female gorillas.  Biologists have even determined
        that the sexual dimorphism in a species - the size dif-
        ference between males and females - is directly corre-
        lated to the size of the harem - i.e., the more females
        a male controls, the bigger he is in relation to
        females.  On this scale, we are "slightly polygamous,"
        with male humans outweighing enough to collect about 1-
        1/2 mates apiece.
        
            Polygamy creates a clear social order, with dis-
        tinct winners and losers.  The winners are high-status
        males and low-status females.  The effect upon high-
        status females is somewhat neutral, but the clear
        losers are low-status males.  Let us look at how this
        works.
        
            A dominant male wins because he can reproduce with
        as many females as he can reasonably control.  Thus, he
        can "spread his genes" far and wide, producing many
        more progeny than he would be able to do under a
        different sexual regime.
        
            But low-status females are winners, too.  This is
        because:
        
            1) even the lowest-status females get to
        mate.  There are no "old maids" in a polygamous
        society.
        
            2) nearly all females get access to high-status
        males.  Since there are no artificial limits on the
        number of mates a male can collect, all females can
        attach themselves to a few relatively desirable males.
        
            The unfavorable consequence of polygamy fall upon
        the "bachelor herd, the collection of low-status,
        unsuccessful males that are shut out of the mating
        equation.  In some species, the bachelor herd forms a
        dispirited gaggle living relatively meaningless lives
        on the edge of society.  In others, the subdominants
        form all-male gangs that combine their efforts to steal
        females from successful males.  In a highly social
        species, such as baboons, the bachelor herd has been
        incorporated into the troop.  Subdominant males form a
        "centurion guard" that protect the dominant male and
        his harem from predators.  Among themselves, meanwhile,
        they exercise in endless status struggles, trying to
        move up the social ladder toward their own mating pos-
        sibilities.
        
            Altogether, then, polygamy is a very natural and
        successful reproductive system.  Since all females
        mate, the reproductive capacity of the population is
        maximized.  There is also a strong selective drive
        toward desirable characteristics.  As the operators of
        stud farms have long known, allowing only the swiftest
        and strongest males to breed produces the most
        desirable population.
        
            Yet despite the clear reproductive advantages of
        polygamy, some species have abandoned it in favor of
        the more complex and artificially limiting system of
        monogamy.  Why?  The answer seems to be that monogamy
        is better adopted to the task of rearing offspring.
        This is particularly true where living conditions are
        harsh or where the offspring go through a long period
        of early dependency.  The task is better handled by two
        parents than one.  Quite literally, a species adopts
        monogamy "for the sake of the children."
        
            Among animals, birds are the most prominent
        example.  Because the fertilized egg is laid outside
        the female's body, a long period of nesting is
        required.  This ties the male to the task of nurturing.
        Most bird species are monogamous through one mating
        season and many mate for life.
        
            Once mammalian development moved the gestating egg
        back inside the female's body, however, the need for
        "nesting" disappeared.  With only a few exceptions
        (beaver, gibbons, orangutans), mammals are polygamous.
        
            Yet as human beings evolved from our proto-chimp
        ancestors, the record is fairly clear that we rein-
        vented monogamy.  Contemporary hunter-gatherers - who
        parallel the earliest human societies - are largely
        monogamous.  Only with the invention of "horticultural"
        (shifting agriculture) did many societies around the
        world revert to polygamy.  Then, when animals were har-
        nessed to the plow and urban civilizations were born,
        human societies again became almost exclusively
        monogamous.
        
            This wandering pattern of development has been the
        cause of much confusion.  When monogamous Western
        European civilizations discovered the primitive
        polygamies of Africa and the South Seas in the 17th and
        18th centuries, they assumed that the earliest human
        civilizations had been polygamous and had only later
        evolved into the "higher" pattern of monogamy.  It was
        only with the discovery of monogamous hunter-gatherers
        that the mystery was finally resolved.  Rather than
        being an earlier form, polygamy is actually a later
        development in which many cultures have become side-
        tracked.  Both the earliest and the most advanced (eco-
        nomically successful) human civilizations are generally
        monogamous.
        
            What has made monogamy so successful a format for
        human cooperation?  First and foremost, monogamy
        creates a social contract that reduces the sexual com-
        petition among males.  The underlying assumption of
        monogamy is that every male gets a reasonable chance to
        mate.  Because there are an equal number of males and
        females, simple arithmetic says that "for every Jack
        there is a Jill."
        
            As a result, the do-or-die quality of sexual compe-
        tition among males abates.  When one male can collect
        many females, mating takes on a deadly intensity, since
        the winners take all while the losers get nothing.
        With monogamy, however, a more democratic outcome is
        assured.  The bachelor herd disappears.
        
            Second, because monogamy assures the possibility of
        reproduction to every member of the group, a social
        contract is born.  One need only consider the sultan's
        harem - where male guards must be eunucized - to
        realize that a society that practices polygamy has an
        inherent non-democratic character.  No offer can be
        extended to marginal or outcast members that entices
        them to be part of the group.  Under monogamy, however,
        society can function as a cohesive whole.
        
            This is why, under monogamy, other forms of cooper-
        ation become possible.  Males and females may pair off,
        but they also maintain other familial and social rela-
        tionships.  Both males and females can form task-
        oriented groups (in primitive societies, the line
        between "men's" and "women's work" is always carefully
        drawn).  As society becomes more complex, men and women
        frequently exchange roles and, although there is always
        a certain amount of sexual tension, males and females
        can work together in non-mating settings.
        
            Other social primates have never reached the same
        level of complexity.  Gibbons and orangutans are
        monogamous - but almost too much so.  Mated pairs are
        strongly attached to each other, but live in social
        isolation, rarely interacting with other members of the
        species.  Gorilla bands generally ignore each other -
        except when males raid each other's harems.  Baboon
        troops are more organized and task oriented, often
        encompassing as many as 50-100 individuals in different
        social roles.  But behavior is rigidly hierarchical.
        Females are kept at the center of the troop, under
        close supervision of the alpha male and his close asso-
        ciates.  Subdominant males guard the periphery.  Only
        the alpha and an occasional close ally mate with
        females as they come into heat.
        
            Perhaps the most interesting attempt is among our
        closest relatives, the chimpanzees.  Chimps practice a
        polymorphous polygamy, where every female takes care to
        mate with every male.  Sex takes place in public and is
        relatively non-competitive.  When a female comes into
        estrus, her bottom turns bright pink, advertising her
        receptivity.  Males queue up according to status, but
        every male, no matter how low on the social ladder, is
        allowed to copulate.
        
            This creates its own social harmony.  For males, it
        reduces sexual rivalry.  Within the "brotherhood" of
        the tribe, there is little overt sexual competition
        (although it persists in other subtle ways).  As a
        result, male chimps also work together hunting monkeys
        and establishing territories to exclude other males.
        
            The system also creates an advantage for females.
        Within a polygamous social group, one of the greatest
        hazards to child-rearing is male jealousy.  The male
        owner of a female harem constantly guards against the
        possibility that he is wasting energy protecting the
        offspring of other males.  When a new male lion dis-
        places the former owner of a pride, he immediately
        kills off all the young in order to set the females to
        work reproducing his own offspring.  The heads of
        polygamous monkey clans do the same thing.
        
            But with chimpanzees, things are different.  By
        taking care to mate with every male, a female assures
        each member of the troop that the might be the father
        of her offspring.  By "confusing paternity," females
        create a safe harbor for themselves, within which they
        are able to raise their offspring in relative tran-
        quility.
        
            These techniques of unrestricted sexuality and
        indeterminate paternity have been tried from time to
        time in small human societies, notably among small
        religious and political sects.  However, they have gen-
        erally been a failure.    The difficulty is that we
        have eaten too much of the tree of knowledge.  We are
        too good at calculating which progeny are our own and
        which are not.  (Infanticide and child abuse are common
        when a man doubts his paternity.)
        
            Rather than living in collective doubt, we have
        developed complex personalities that allow us to
        maintain private sexual relationships while sustaining
        a multilayered network of relatives, friends,
        acquaintances, associates, co-workers, strangers, and
        fellow human beings, with whom our interactions are
        mainly non-sexual.  The result is the human society in
        which we all live.
        
            Human monogamy thus holds out distinct advantages.
        Yet these advantages - as always - are bought at a
        price.  Let us look at where the gains and forfeitures
        occur.
        
            The winners under polygamy, you will recall, are:
        1) high-status males, and 2) low-status females.  High-
        status males benefit by spreading their genes as far as
        possible, while low-status females are assured access
        to high-status males.
        
            Under monogamy, these parties lose their
        advantages, while compensating advantages are gained by
        high-status females and low-status males.  High-status
        females gain in that they no longer have to share their
        mates with low-status females - a particular advantage
        where long periods of child-rearing are required.  Low-
        status males gain because, instead of being consigned
        to the bachelor herd, they get a reasonable chance to a
        mate.
        
            Perhaps we should pause here a moment to define
        what we mean by "high" and "low" status.  High status
        usually has to do with desirable characteristics -
        beauty, strength, swiftness, bright feathers, or
        intelligence - whatever is admired by the species.
        Among animals where males fight for control of females
        (elk, lions, kangaroos), size and strength are usually
        the deciding factor.  In species where females exercise
        some choice, physical beauty tends to play a greater
        role.  As Darwin first noted, the bright plumage of the
        male bird is solely the result of generations of female
        selection.
        
            In almost every species, youth is considered a
        desirable quality.  In females, it implies a long,
        healthy life in which to raise offspring.  Among males,
        youth and vigor are also attractive qualities.  Among
        the more social species, however, age, intelligence,
        and experience can play an important role.  The alpha
        baboon is usually quite mature and sustains his access
        to females not through sheer strength or aggres-
        siveness, but through the skillful formation of
        political alliances.
        
            Under monogamy, another crucial characteristic is
        added - the willingness of the male to be a good pro-
        vider.  Because child-care requires a long period of
        nurturing, those males that are most domesticated to
        the task become desirable mating partners.  Yet this
        creates a dilemma for females.  Unfortunately, the two
        favored characteristics - physical attractiveness and
        willingness to be a good provider - do not always come
        together.  In fact, they often seem mutually exclusive.
        The peacock, the most beautiful of male birds, is a
        notoriously philanderer and a poor provider.  With
        polygamy, females can ignore this problem and attach
        themselves to the most attractive males.  With
        monogamy, however, females find themselves caught on
        the horns of the dilemma.  Juggling these competing
        demands becomes a vexing responsibility - one that, at
        bottom,  most females would ultimately like to escape.
        
            Alternatives have always been available - at least
        covertly.  In the 1950s, a research scientists began a
        routine experiment concerning natal blood type, trying
        to figure out which characteristics were dominant.  To
        his astonishment, he found that 11 percent of the
        babies born in American hospitals had blood types
        belonging to neither the mother nor father - meaning
        the biological father was not the male listed on the
        birth certificate.  The researcher was so dismayed by
        these findings that he suppressed them for over 20
        years.  Even at a time when monogamy was an unques-
        tioned norm, at least 10 percent of American women were
        resolving the female dilemma by tricking one man into
        providing for the child of another.
        
            With all this in mind, then, let us look at where
        we should expect to find the major points of dis-
        satisfaction with monogamy.
        
            First and foremost, monogamy limits the mating
        urges of high-status males.  Everywhere in nature,
        males have an underlying urge to mate with as many
        females as possible.  Studies among barnyard animals
        have shown that a male that has exhausted himself
        mating with one female will experience an immediate
        resurgence of desire when a new female is introduced
        into his pen.  (This is dubbed the "Coolidge effect,"
        after Calvin Coolidge, who once observed it while
        making a Presidential tour of a barnyard.)
        
            "Hogamous, higamous, men are polygamous.  Higamous,
        Hogamous, women monogamous," wrote Ogden Nash, and the
        experience in all societies has been that the male urge
        to be polygamous is perhaps the weakest link in the
        monogamous chain.  This has become particularly true in
        America's mobile culture, where status-seeking males
        are often tempted to change wives as they move up the
        social ladder.  "Serial monogamy" is the name we have
        given it, but a better term might be "rotating
        polygamy."  A serious op-ed article in the New York
        Times a few years ago proposed that polygamy be
        legalized so that men could be compelled to support
        their earlier wives even as they move on to younger and
        more attractive women.
        
            Marital infidelity, fathering illegitimate
        children, the pursuit of younger women, the "bimbo" and
        "trophy wife" syndromes - all are essential breaches of
        the monogamous social contract.  When a Donald Trump
        deserts his wife and children for a woman almost 20
        years his junior, he is obviously "wrecking a home" and
        violating monogamy's implicit understanding that
        children should be supported until maturity.  But he is
        doing something else as well.  By mating with a much
        younger, second woman, he is also limiting the mating
        possibilities of younger men.  One swallow does not
        make a summer, but repeated over and over, this pattern
        produces real demographic consequences.  Thus, it is
        not surprising that in societies where polygamy is
        tolerated, child brides and arranged marriages usually
        become the rule.
        
            The problems with male infidelity, then, are fairly
        clear.  What is not always so obvious, however, is that
        women's commitment to monogamy is also somewhat cir-
        cumscribed.  The difficulties are twofold: 1) the
        general dissatisfaction of all women in being forced to
        choose between attractive males and good providers; and
        2) the particular dissatisfaction among low-status
        women at being confined to the pool of low-status men.
        
            In truth, low-status people of both sexes form a
        continuing challenge to any monogamous society. Unless
        there  is an overwhelming cultural consensus that mar-
        riage and the joint raising of children forms the
        highest human happiness (which some people think it
        is), low-status males and females are likely to feel
        cheated by the relatively narrow pool of  mates
        available to them.  Their resentments and underlying
        desire to disrupt the rules of the game out of sheer
        personal rancor forms a constant undercurrent of dis-
        content in any monogamous society.
        
            For males, one obvious way of by-passing the rules
        is rape.  Although feminists, in their never-ending
        effort to repeal biology, have insisted that rape
        reflects some amorphous "hatred against women," the
        more obvious interpretation is that it is a triumph of
        raw sexual desire over the more complex rules of social
        conduct.  Rape overwhelmingly involves low-status men
        seeking sex with women who are otherwise inaccessible
        to them.  (Rape is even more of a problem in polygamous
        societies, due to the more limited options for low-
        status males.)  If "hatred" is involved, it is more
        likely to be the low-status male's general resentment
        of monogamy's restrictions, which inaccessible, high-
        status women may come to represent.  But this is all
        secondary.  The basic crime of rape is the violation of
        a woman's age-old biological right to choose her own
        sexual partners.
        
            The other avenues for low-status males are
        prostitution and pornography.  Each offers low-status
        males access to higher-status females, albeit under
        rather artificial circumstances.  Individual females
        may benefit from pornography and prostitution in that
        they are paid (however poorly) for their participation.
        There is always a laissez-faire argument for allowing
        both.  But when they become public and widespread,
        pornography and prostitution become another nagging
        reminder of the dissatisfactions some people will
        always feel with monogamy.  In other words, they
        disrupt  "family values."
        
            Female dissatisfaction with monogamy, on the other
        hand, is not always as visible and galling as rape,
        prostitution, or pornography.  Yet the restrictions put
        upon any female - particularly low-status ones - will
        always be present and, in their own way, form their own
        nagging undercurrent of discontent.
        
            The principal female dissatisfaction is the dilemma
        of finding a mate who is both physically attractive and
        a good provider.  As many and many a woman has dis-
        covered, it is much easier to get an attractive male
        into bed with you for the night than to keep him around
        in the morning.
        
            There is, however, a practical alternative.  This
        is to abandon the principles monogamy and return to the
        greater freedom of polygamy, where females can choose
        the most attractive males without regard to forming a
        permanent bond.  This, of course, is the essence of
        "single motherhood."
        
            The rise of single motherhood is basically the
        expression of female discontent with monogamy.  Rising
        female economic success makes it more practical and
        social scientists have long noted that marriage becomes
        more unstable as females become more economically inde-
        pendent.  This undoubtedly accounts for the rising rate
        of divorce and single motherhood among affluent Amer-
        icans.
        
            But the emergence of almost universal single
        motherhood among the black underclass cannot be
        explained by rising economic success - except, of
        course, to the degree that female independence has been
        encouraged and subsidized by the welfare system.  Black
        women are not opting for single motherhood simply as a
        way of making money.  What the availability of welfare
        does, however, is enable them to dispense with the
        courtship rituals of monogamy and choose the most
        desirable men available to them, regardless of the
        man's willingness or ability to provide domestic
        support.  It is this dynamic of liberated female sexual
        choice - and not just the greater economic support
        offered by welfare - that is driving black single
        motherhood today.
        
            The essence of single motherhood, then, is status-
        jumping.  By dispensing with the need to make a single
        choice, a woman can mate with a man who is far more
        desirable than any she could hope to retain under the
        artificial restraints of monogamy.  The same dynamic is
        even more obvious among single mothers of the upper and
        middle classes.  When asked to justify their choice,
        these women refer with surprising regularity to the
        unavailability of movie stars or other idealized males
        in deciding to "go it alone."  ("I know so many women
        who were waiting for that Alan Alda type to come
        along," one unwed mother recently told Newsweek. "And
        they were waiting and waiting.")  Yet when these women
        impregnate themselves with otherwise unattainable men -
        or even go to sperm banks to artificially inseminate
        themselves with accomplished doctors and lawyers,
        talented musicians, or Nobel-prize winning scientists -
        what are they practicing but a contemporary form of
        high-tech polygamy?
        
            The rebellions against monogamy, then, is being led
        by men dissatisfied because they cannot have more women
        and women dissatisfied with the available men.  (As an
        aging divorcee,  Murphy Brown, despite her attrac-
        tiveness, had a very limited pool of mating pos-
        sibilities.)  Yet each of these rebellions is driven by
        the most powerful human sexual dynamic - the desire of
        every living creature to produce offspring with the
        most desirable possible mates.  Monogamy limits those
        desires.
        
            Where does homosexuality play in all this?
            At its core, homosexuality is driven by a different
        dynamic.  In every society, there is a small nucleus of
        men and women who feel uncomfortable with the male and
        female sexual roles.  For whatever reasons -biological,
        psychological, or a combination of both -they find it
        difficult or impossible play the reproductive role
        dictated by their bodies and to mate with the opposite
        sex.  This does not necessarily con-stitute a challenge
        to monogamy.  Homosexuals and people with homosexual
        tendencies have often played important social roles.
        Priests, prophets, witch-doctors, artists,
        entertainers, cultural leaders - all have often been
        overtly or covertly homosexual or tinged with an
        undercurrent of ambiguous sexuality.
        
            All this forms no great social problem so long as
        homosexuality remains largely covert and marginal.  The
        difficulty comes when it breaks out of the underground
        and becomes a mainstream alternative, particularly to
        the point of recruitment among the young.  (Socrates,
        remember, was condemned to death for luring the youth
        of Athens into homosexuality.)  Once again, simple
        arithmetic begins to assert itself.
        
            When male homosexuality becomes widespread, it
        creates a dearth of eligible young men.  This was a
        particularly visible in urban environments.  The
        growing populations of male homosexuals in New York and
        other cities during the 1980s when created a widely
        reported the "man shortage" among young women.  In the
        end, this large homosexual population seems to have
        induced an equally large lesbian population.
        
            Are all these individuals really biologically
        determined to homosexuality?  It seems doubtful.
        Rather, what is be happening is that homosexuality is
        becoming an acceptable form of protest for both men and
        women who do not like the choices offered to them by
        monogamy.
        
            Once again, the problem is most pronounced with
        low-status people.  For example, although there are
        undoubtedly some very attractive lesbian women, even a
        casual survey of the population reveals a very high
        incidence of members whose mating opportunities are
        obviously limited under monogamy.  Moreover, the men
        who are available to them are themselves likely to be
        bitter and resentful over their choice of mates - in
        other words they "hate women."  One need only read the
        melancholy chronicles of Andrea Dworkin's experiences
        among a string of sadistic, self-loathing men to
        realize why this unfortunately unattractive (severely
        overweight) woman has become the nation's leading
        exponents of lesbianism.  The professed ideology of
        both these groups is that they "hate" the other sex.
        Yet it would be much more correct to say that they hate
        the poor of the opposite sex to which monogamy has con-
        fined them.  (I sometimes think the high point of
        America's commitment to monogamy came around 1955, the
        year that Paddy Chayevsky's low-budget "Marty" was a
        surprise box-office success and winner of the Academy
        Award.  The story told of two "dogs" who, after
        numerous personal rejections, discover each other at a
        Saturday night dance hall.  The message of the movie,
        as articulated so often during that era, was that "For
        every girl there's a boy and for every boy there's a
        girl.")
        
            Despite its disruptive nature, homosexuality as a
        rebellion has little permanent impact until older
        biological urges begin to assert themselves and
        homosexuals want to have children.  For men, there are
        few options.  Apart from a few highly publicized cases,
        there are few homosexual men raising families.  But for
        women, once again, we are back to single motherhood.
        Numerous lesbian couples are now having children and
        lesbians themselves have organized the most sophisti-
        cated sperm banks.  How these children will react ten
        or fifteen years down the road to the realization that
        they are the children of anonymous sperm donors is
        anybody's guess.  But it seems likely they will have
        difficulty forming monogamous unions themselves and
        their resentments will only add to the bonfire of dis-
        satisfactions already lapping against monogamous
        society.
        
            To sum up, then, let us give everyone his and her
        due and   admit that no system of monogamy can ever
        bring complete happiness to everyone.  Given the
        variability among individuals and given the universal
        desire among human beings to be paired with desirable
        mating partners, there will always be a sizable pool of
        dissatisfaction under monogamy.   The real questions
        are:  1) how deep is this pool of dissatisfaction
        likely to become? and 2) how far can society allow it
        to grow before these private dissensions begin to rend
        the social fabric?  In short, what can we expect
        society to look like if the monogamous ideal is aban-
        doned?
        
            It isn't necessary to look very far.  Western and
        Oriental cultures form a monogamous axis that spans the
        northern hemisphere (Orientals are far more monogamous
        than Westerners are), but a large part of the remaining
        world practices polygamy.  Particularly in the tropics,
        where shifting agriculture is widely practiced, and
        among Middle Eastern cultures, where it survives from
        earlier economic arrangements, the practice is
        widespread.
        
            Polygamy is tolerated by the Koran - although it
        should be recognized that, like the principle of "an
        eye for an eye," the Islamic law that allows a man six
        wives is a restriction from an earlier practice.   The
        Koran requires that a man support all his wives
        equally, which generally restricts the practice to
        wealthy males.  The sultan's harem is the exception,
        not the rule.  In most Moslem countries, polygamous
        marriages are restricted to the upper classes and form
        no more than 4-5 percent of all marriages.
        
            In sub-Saharan Africa, on the other hand, polygamy
        is far closer to the norm and is often the cultural
        ideal.  In parts of West Africa, more than 20 percent
        of the marriages are polygamous.  Marriage itself is
        rendered far more fragile by the practice of
        matrilinearity - tracing ancestry only through the
        mother's line.  In West Africa, a man may sire many
        children (Chief M.K.O. Abiola, of Nigeria's Yoruba
        tribe, a self-made billionaire and chairman of ITT
        Nigeria, has 26 wives), but the paternal claim he can
        lay upon any of these children is far more tenuous than
        it would be in Oriental or Western societies.  In West
        Africa, women can take their children and leave a mar-
        riage at any time, making the institution extremely
        unstable.  By the time most people have reached age 40,
        they have had several marriages.  In these tribal
        societies, Christianity and Islam - which teach marital
        fidelity and permanent unions - are regarded as prog-
        ressive social movements.
        
            What qualities do we find in societies that
        tolerate polygamy?  First, men generally have greater
        difficulty obtaining wives.  The shortage usually leads
        to the institution of the "bride price," where a young
        man must pay a sizable sum of money to the bride's
        family in order to obtain a wife.  (The "dowry," in
        which a sum is attached to an eligible daughter to make
        her more attractive, is purely a product of monogamy.)
        This makes wives difficult to obtain for men who come
        from less well-to-do families.
        
            The numerical imbalance between eligible males and
        females also forces older men to court younger women.
        Girls in their teens are often betrothed to men ten and
        fifteen years their senior.  In some South Seas
        societies, infant females are betrothed to grown men.
        These strained couplings make marriage itself a distant
        and unrewarding relationship, far different from the
        "peer marriages" of Western and Oriental cultures.
        
            Finally, polygamy tends to produce a high level of
        male violence.  Cities are clogged with "bachelor
        herds" of unattached, low-status males engaged in
        intense sexual competition.  Because these men are not
        assured any reasonable chance of mating by the social
        contract, they are essentially impossible to
        incorporate into the larger work of society.  Instead,
        they form themselves into violent gangs or become the
        foot soldiers of extremist political groups.  In
        Pakistan, the recent news has been that the country is
        being overrun by these violent gangs, which have become
        the competing "parties" in the country's turbulent
        political system.  The head of one of these factions
        was recently accused of raping dozens of airline stew-
        ardesses.
        
            Yet even in a society where polygamy is openly
        sanctioned, child-rearing is still built around the
        formation of husband-and-wife households - even if
        these households may contain several wives.  Only among
        the American underclass has polygamy degenerated into a
        purely "polymorphous" variety, where courtship is
        foregone and family formation has become a forgotten
        ritual.
        
            In a recent issue of The Public Interest, Elijah
        Anderson, professor of social science at the University
        of Pennsylvania, described an on-going acquaintance
        with a 21-year-old black youth whom he called "John
        Turner."  Anderson described the social milieu of
        Turner's neighborhood as follows:
        
           [In] Philadelphia, . . the young men of many indi-
           vidual streets organize informally bounded areas
           into territories. They then guard the territories,
           defending them against the intrusions and whims of
           outsiders. . . Local male groups claim responsi-
           bility over the women in the area, especially if
           they are young. These women are seen as their pos-
           sessions, at times to be argued over and even fought
           over.  When a young man from outside the neigh-
           borhood attempts "to go with" or date a young woman
           from the neighborhood, he must usually answer to the
           boys' group, negotiating for their permission first.
           . .
            At twenty-one years of age, John was the father of
           four children out of wedlock.  He had two sons who
           were born a few months apart by different women, one
           daughter by the mother of one of the sons, and
           another son by a third woman.  ["The Story of John
           Turner," The Public Interest, Summer, 1992.]
        
            This mating pattern is not uncommon in nature.  It
        has recently been observed in dolphins and of course
        bears a strong resemblance to the structure of the
        chimpanzee tribe.
        
            Yet what works for these species is no longer
        plausible for human beings.  Once again, we have eaten
        from the tree of knowledge.  We have too much intimate
        knowledge of the details of sexual connection and
        paternity to be satisfied with this vague collectivism.
        
            Thus, when "John Turner" tries to put some order
        into his life by creating a bond between two of his
        sons, the following results occur:
        
           Well, see, this girl, the girl who's the mother of
           my one son, Teddy.  See, I drove my girlfriend's car
           by her house with my other son with me.  I parked
           the car down the street from her house and every-
           thing.  So I took John, Jr., up to the house to see
           his brother, and we talk for awhile.  But when I got
           ready to leave, she and her girlfriend followed me
           to the car.  I got in the car and put John in.  Then
           she threw a brick through the window.  [Ibid.]
        
            The unavoidable consequence of polymorphous
        polygamy among humans is a tangle of competing jeal-
        ousies and conflicting loyalties that make ordinary
        life all but impossible.  The central institution at
        the axis of human society - the nuclear family - no
        longer exists.
        
            Unfortunately, while such a mating system guar-
        antees  child abuse (usually involving a "boyfriend"),
        internal turmoil, and rampant violence, it is also
        extremely reproductive.  While their social life has
        degenerated into extreme chaos, underclass American
        blacks are nonetheless reproducing faster than any
        other population in the world.  This follows a well-
        known biological principle that when populations come
        under stress, they attempt to save themselves by
        reproducing faster, with sexual maturity usually
        accelerated to a younger age.
        
            Unfortunately, the culture of polygamy is also
        self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating.  If men feel
        there is nothing more to fatherhood than "making
        babies," then women will feel free to seek most
        attractive men, without making any effort to bind them
        to the tasks of child-rearing.  As a cultural pair, the
        footloose male and the single mother, if not held back
        by the force of social convention, can easily  become
        the predominant type.  The result is a free-for-all in
        which human society as we know it will become very dif-
        ficult, if not impossible.
        
            This, then, is the essence of "family values."
        Family values are basically the belief that monogamy is
        the most peaceful and progressive way of organizing a
        human society.  Dislike and distaste for anything that
        challenges the monogamous contract - easy divorce,
        widespread pornography, casual philandering, legalized
        prostitution, or blatant homosexuality - are not just
        narrow or prudish concerns.  They come from an
        intelligent recognition that the monogamous contract is
        a fragile institution that can easily come unravel if
        dissatisfactions become too widespread.
        
            What is likely to happen if we abandon these
        values?  People will go on reproducing, you can be sure
        of that.  But families won't be formed ("litters" would
        be a more appropriate term).  And the human beings that
        are produced in these litters will not be quite the
        same either.  If marriage is a compromise between men
        and women, then the breakdown of monogamy can only let
        loose the natural egocentrisms of each.
        
            It is probably not too alarmist to note that
        societies which have been unable to establish monogamy
        have also been unable to create working democracies or
        modern market economies, either.  Any society that
        domesticate too few men cannot have a stable social
        order.  At bottom, there is no social contract.  A
        society that does not offer its members an equal chance
        at reproducing offers them very little and can expect
        little in return.  Those males who are disadvantaged by
        polygamy - the bachelor herd - become a disruptive
        force that can overwhelm the entire system,
        establishing a reign of lawlessness and violence.
        People who incapable of monogamy are probably incapable
        of many other things as well.
        
            As a basically limiting human compact, monogamous
        marriage is bound to produce its peculiar discontents.
        As with any compromise, each individual can then argue
        - based on present or previous deprivation, real or
        imagined, or some personal disadvantage, or even just
        plain whim - that he or she should not be bound by the
        rules.
        
            Yet it should also be clear that, beyond the per-
        sonal dissatisfactions we all may feel, each of us also
        retains a permanent, private stake in sustaining a
        system that creates a peaceful social order and offers
        to everyone a reasonable chance of achieving personal
        happiness.  If monogamy makes its complex demands on
        human beings, it also offers its own unique and
        complex rewards.
        
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