I had been sitting on two new entries to my blog because the more I read them and explored their implications, the more I wondered just how true they were. I finally posted them as one sole article just before this one, and now I want to play devil’s advocate, at least to some degree.
In the last post, I noted that from the point of view of geneticists, humans were a monogamous species. As I pondered the matter further, I began to wonder how that conclusion was reached. There is no doubt that males and females seek out life partners. But to what extent do they seek out only one? To what extent do they actually intend to obey their promise to “forsake all others?”
We are so used to the ideal of monogamy in modern society that we forget that other types of marriages and relationships existed in the past, and still exist. Polyandry and polygyny have existed in different societies for various reasons. Sometimes a man had many wives due to societal status or simply wealth. In other cases, some men had two wives simply because there weren’t enough men to go around. In some American Indian cultures, a man might share his wife – if she consented – with one of his friends who happened to still be unmarried. One is tempted to wonder what China’s one-child policy may bring about given the much lower number of women available for marriage due to parents heavily favouring the birth of male children and taking measures to make this happen.
Even when monogamy imposed itself, the object was often not merely the union of two people, but rather two families. In some cases, political alliances were formed between two crowns through the marriage of a king’s daughter to the king or king-in-waiting of another realm. Love had nothing to do with it. That was left for adulterous relationships, which were officially frowned upon, but often tolerated. A different version of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Today, things are no less complicated. Yes, many strictly monogamous relationships endure for decades. Other people opt for serial monogamy, that is, one monogamous relationship after another. Then there are those who refuse to choose between two (or more) lovers and choose polyamory or ménages à trois.
I’ve wondered where “swingers” fit in all this. The members of these couples allow each other to have sex with others, but the marital commitment to each other is still strong. Therefore, are they monogamous and non-possessive or non-monogamous yet seriously committed? Or both?
It’s true that not everyone enters into non-conventional relationships. However, how much of that is due to societal pressure to conform and how much of that is due to human nature? It would be easy to say that monogamy does not reflect human nature given the many people who find it too constricting. At the same time, monogamy has become an integral part of almost all cultures today. Could this have happened if there wasn’t at least a little bit of human nature to help things out?
It gets more complicated when you check out the actual definition and use of the word monogamy. There are at least three types which should interest us here:
Social monogamy is what we could call two people living together, married or not, and includes having sex with each other, as well as sharing resources. No sexual exclusivity is implied, though we might expect it.
Sexual monogamy is what we call two people who have sex with each other and no one else. They may or may not live together.
Genetic monogamy is when two people have children only with each other, regardless of how many other people they may have sex with.
Remember that question I had about swingers? It turns out they could easily fit both the first and third definitions. The polyamorous could fit the third, and perhaps the first depending on how openly they live their lifestyle. Those who are in open marriages might fit the third or not.
So, are human beings monogamous? It depends on how you define monogamy.
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