Charles Synyard (@CharlesSynyard)

1/2 “When asked how her students react to the prospect of polygyny, she said, ‘I can see from their facial expressions that they’re really pissed off about it. Part of this is because there is a perception that men are unfaithful… But once I explain to them the demographics and get them to imagine being 40, alone, not married and wanting a family, they begin to make the shift. They become more open to it.‘” (145) Read Plural Marriage for Our Times: A Reinvented Option? Second Edition (2012), by Philip L. Kilbride and Douglas R. Page. Kilbride was a Professor of Anthropology at Bryn Mawr, Page a journalist. While a first edition without Page appeared in 1994, this second edition is evidently a completely different book. Kilbride died only months after the second edition came out; you can read his obituary here: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/timesherald/name/philip-kilbride-obituary?id=20150009 Is it a book White polygyny advocates need peruse? Short answer no, you can SKIP. Very much a product of respectable academia, though often poorly edited, this is less a love letter to the beauty and goodness of polygyny than a look into how it could be tweaked to be just one more family option in today’s world, for the greater good of the Liberal World Order. This is very much a product of its time, when same-sex marriage was soon to be triumphant, and leftists and rightists alike wondered what the next frontier of “rights” touching on sex would be. There are some good passages, which I will highlight in this first post, but even where there is no sinister purpose, Plural Marriage for Our Times tries to cover everything in about 200 pages, and can read like a digest or briefing of other authorities where it tries to be a complete survey of contemporary family life and dysfunction. The impact of divorce and what to do about it is a major topic, with both authors having been touched by it, Kilbride as a divorced man who later remarried, and Page as a son of parents who divorced when he was grown. Kilbride is to be commended for being up front with what he wants: while his ex and second wife were both good about letting his children build a strong relationship, “under a different cultural framework, it might have been permissible for him not to divorce, foregoing the economic penalities and, more importantly, the emotional turmoil of those who do,” (xii). In other words, he‘s not just a neutral scholar of family life, he‘d like to have had two wives himself! While there is much here, in chaper after chapter, on the benefits of (at least) two parents for children vs. being raised by just one, the book has surprisingly little in the way of former children’s views. I have seen many raised in plural families recount how they loved growing up with so many siblings, but he rarely gets around to presenting ex-kids’ testimonials, which is some important evidence to bring in. One of the best parts is two pages offering what sociobiology has to say about polygyny and why it makes sense for humans (53-54). Being an anthropologist, Kilbride only briefly mentions the harder end of the social sciences, seemingly so as to not leave anything out. Although Kilbride and Page support polyandry, too, they acknowledge, in 99.5% of cultures women marry one man each, so even cross-culturally this is a very strong norm. Polygyny has ”clear advantages“ for powerful men, and while first wives often resist their husband taking younger co-wives, they do so less with sororal polygyny, a good means of having an advantageous male help in further passing on her genes. On the next page, they also note the boon polygyny is for women who might otherwise get paired with suboptimal men and have to “settle”. Aside from these truths about mating being quite a turn-on, Kilbride and Page could have easily proceeded from here to what the implications are for ethics. While some may find these reflections on male and female reproductive strategies hardly above zoology, as I see it, it is a short trip from what our behaviors reveal about the goods we are implicitly seeking, to what marriage is for, and so on to the duties of spouses who take vows to love each other and seek each other’s good as if it was his or her own. As I have written about before, it seems clear that a well-married wife loves her man in the most unreserved way when she welcomes him taking additional wives, herself remaining faithful to him, while the husband’s love for his women is undiminished so long as he fully provides for all his brides and progeny. Additionally, with reductions in childhood mortality and the greater availability of government or private aid for needy mothers, female jealousy is increasingly unwarranted, as a man bestowing attention on other women is unlikely to harm a first wife’s own brood. But the authors aren’t interested in staking out such an “essentialist”, valid for all times and all places position, and hasten to add that biology isn’t all-defining. Fair, but it is a wonder that they throw in growing acceptance of “same-gender” as evidence. As I said, this book is very much a period production, and in 2012 academics could still get away with ignoring the demographic implications. But the birth dearth, already documented then, has grown so much worse, and become a national populist talking point; had Kilbride lived on he could hardly have ignored it in a third edition, or ignored that LGBT barrenness is a proof that biology IS destiny. He makes a better point on celibacy; it is a curious fact that in Catholic populations, there were far more nuns and priests when Catholics “bred like rabbits”, but now their birth rate is far lower even when fewer leave the marriage market for a celibate vocation. Sometimes the authors even miss the deeper implications of the findings they cite. A favorite observation on fundamentalist Latter-day Saint polygyny: “Irwin Altman and Joseph Ginat note that, for the wives, ‘the home is an important place to express themselves… for husbands, the home is a place to visit… a site to house their family and a place to which they make little emotional commitment and… exert little control.’” (107) Beneath is a rare “testimonial“ of the positive experiences children of plural families carry with them to adulthood. The practice in fundamentalist Mormon polygyny of all the wives living apart with their children, in homes the husband visits on a schedule, keeping them all separate, is very unappealing to me, and never made any sense. Why do they do it? I get the jealousy, but go to the extent of multiplying houses? This passage made crystal clear what is going on: these are men acting on the instincts that move the itinerant “rambling man” to bed with lovers on a circuit, but done as a form of marriage! Some men feel a strong compulsion to live that free, easygoing life. Cf., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xum2fRCcB0 What is more, many women, maybe with a measure of self-deception but deeper awareness of what they’re getting into, welcome such men to their homes. This form of plural marriage is a way to turn those instincts to building responsible, lifelong, fruitful love. But the authors seem to completely miss this demonstration of how well polygyny fits human nature, and can help men and women to each meet their seemingly conflicting goals in surprising ways. After a nicely sympathetic look at FLDS polygyny, and a cringeworthy look at the “polyamory” community that was already becoming prominent at the time, Kilbride and Page spend an excessive amount of time, twenty pages, looking at the African-American family crisis, much of which he wastes on woke acknowledgments of past wrongs done to American Blacks that readers already know about. Crediting the legacy of slavery with Black dysfunction is specious, given the decay in that race’s family life since the civil rights movement, but Kilbride might have had to put that in to please the target audience, and his employer (again, Bryn Mawr of all places—imagine making a career as the male professor preaching polygyny to elite college girls!) even had he not believed in it. But there are some insightful parts we can learn from, too. With so many Black men incarcerated, and (as with other races) more women graduating from college than men, there is an acute shortage of eligible men in their community. Hilarious quotes from a professor who has addressed Black women seeking eligible men. They are so rare that “You have [black] guys who wouldn’t be a good catch but one [black] woman is doing his homework, another is lending him her car, another is cooking for him and yet another is doing his laundry.” ”You can’t look for a Barack Obama. Even if his wife were to pass away or they would divorce, that kind of man would get snatched up immediately. They’re not going to be on the market for long.” (138) The professor advises Black women to be open to interracial dating but, amusingly and likely thankfully, the authors note there are roadblocks both ways: Whites and others are seldom attracted to Blacks women (them being loud and obnoxious is called a stereotype), while Black women identify White men as being racist (which probably translates into, in a relationship, they’re likely to put a White man down and make him feel inferior). Which makes openness to plural marriage all the more important. The funny but compelling quote that heads this post is also from this chapter. It is instructive that Kilbride and Page survey several racially conscious Black movements that are pro-polygyny, including the Black Hebrew Israelites you are always hearing of. Searching for polygyny material on YouTube shows the movement is alive and strong. While the good man shortage is more acute with them, it is sad Whites are just now catching up. The only organization for Whites Kilbride and Page mention is Principle Voices, an FLDS-aligned group that is now defunct. One omission in the text, a strange one given how racially sensitive the authors are in a woke way, is never mentioning how fundamentalist Latter-day Saints are often quite racially aware, given their interpretation of the Book of Mormon’s presentation of the Lamanites (a proto-Amerindian people that‘s always falling back into sin) and their rejection of the mainstream LDS Church’s acceptance of Blacks into their temple priesthood. Were the authors writing today, they’d have a harder time ignoring the arguments about plural marriage among racially conscious Whites. But there is a major problem—as I will show next, Kilbride and Page are not simply moved by the rightness of polygyny, and aiming to have the Western world make way for plural families. They want to help solve modern family crises without bucking the principles that got us here, and are not shy about favoring dramatically changing polygyny to make it jive with the liberal, egalitarian, and feminist zeitgeist. This pic of a fundamentalist Mormon man and his wives, by a National Geographic photographer, was actually used as a scare image on a website critical of California’s Proposition 3 of last year, which put language claiming marriage is a fundamental right in the state’s constitution. https://learnaboutprop3.com It is not at all clear what the expansive claim means, never a good thing when written law is supposed to be the highest authority. But isn’t it ridiculous that opponents wanted to scare voters by saying it might lead to marriages like THIS? As we’ll see, Kilbride and Page see a lot of issues with FLDS polygyny, and offer suggestions of how the law should regulate this institution that frightens moderns so. #PhilipLKilbride #PhilipKilbride #DoulgasRPage #DouglasPage #PluralMarriageForOurTimes #pluralmarriage #polygyny #polygamy #feminism #feminist #egalitarianism #egalitarian #marriage #divorce #family #anthropology #books