Monogamy vs. Polygamy in Different

Monogamy vs. Polygamy in Different Cultures

Polygamy is still a relatively taboo subject within the United States. American culture is at odds with the idea of polygamy, even as the concepts of true love and personal excess run wild within social and cultural marketing and the American psyche. The most visible group that still has polygamous sects within the United States is the Mormons. This religion, at one time, focused on polygamy as a goal in mainstream believers, but has since given that up in favor of monogamous marriage practices. Yet polygamy among Mormon sects still exists today and represents an interesting lens with which to view this concept from the American perspective.

Polygamy is relatively commonplace in Saudi Arabia, where men can take up to four wives (Aarts and Nonneman, 2005). The cultural and community implications of this practice in Saudi Arabia are far different than those within certain Mormon sects in the United States. The Saudi culture of polygamy goes back thousands of years, and religiously, like the Mormon sects, polygamy is supported through scripture (Embry, 1987). Women's value in Saudi Arabia is quite different than that of Mormon women, although there exist some similarities that can be draw between the two polygamous cultures. In this way, women are seen as the lesser value gender.

From the standpoint of a polygamous culture, women have generally a lower societal value than men. Women cannot take multiple husbands, and in Saudi Arabia as well as in many Mormon sects, the wives are to be subordinate to their husbands at the risk of social ostracization or other harsher punishments (Ahmed, 1982). In places where children have a labor value, polygamy makes sense culturally as well as logically. But in the Saudi society, modern-day polygamists are a dying breed, existing as symbols of how higher status men were previously supposed to behave (Souryal, 1987). Polygamy is far too awkward and requires too much attention from the husband for many in the Saudi middle class to adopt the practice (Rugh, 1973). This is interesting because it shows that a sense of community is centered not on the number of wives and the family structure per se, but on the inclusion of the individual in their every day life and the practicality of their routines and their daily existence. Community, in Saudi Arabia, is affected by polygamy, and it is beginning to appear as though Saudi community ties are being established on the individual level, and come from defining an individual's value to society and not their family's worth or potential for child creation (Al Rasheed, 1997). Women also do not possess the same rights as men in this country, and therefore have to be subordinate to males.