Quotes About Polygyny

Another version of the same formula applied to many Tiwi marriages. In this highly polygynous culture, old men took most of the young wives, so more than 90 percent of men's first marriages were to widows much older than themselves, sometimes as old as sixty. The old wives might have been past child-bearing age and physically unattractive, but young men delighted in the marriages because they were then fed.

For most men, most of the time, monogamy is a safe compromise between the wild bonanza of polygyny (achievable only by an elite few) and the reproductive death of complete mating failure.

Why are men so much more prone to becoming suicide terrorists? Why is suicide terrorism so much more prevalent in polygynous cultures that create a greater pool of mateless males?

Despite what her father had said about the client's good character, she felt squeamish about polygyny, which was still practiced by many Muslims and a smaller number of elite Hindus. In truth, there was surely polygyny in her own parents' family histories. Parsis hadn't made it a crime until 1865.

As a rule, throughout the animal kingdom, the more polygynous the mating system, the greater the differences between the sexes in terms of mortality. Polygynous mating selects for males who take risks—risks in competing with other males, risks in securing the resources desired by females, and risks in exposing themselves to dangers while pursuing and courting females.