Marketing Scoops: monogamy

Photo-Illustration by TIME (Source Image: Tris—Sketchify Korea via Canva.com)

Monogamy literally means “one marriage” in Greek, and implies mating for life: one love, one sexual partner forever. Yet most people today think of it as committing to one person at a time. You can have many loves and many sexual partners over the course of a lifespan, as long as you are faithful to each person along the way, otherwise known as serial monogamy. Along with this focused attention on just one person comes the assumption that both parties understand what is outside the bounds of monogamy…….Continue reading….

By Myisha Battle

Source: TIME

Critics:

Monogamy exists in many societies around the world, resulting in extensive scientific research which tries to understand how these marriage systems might have evolved. In any species, there are three main aspects that combine to promote a monogamous mating system: paternal care, resource access, and mate choice; however, in humans, the main theoretical sources of monogamy are paternal care and extreme ecological stresses.

Paternal care should be particularly important in humans due to the extra nutritional requirement of having larger brains and the lengthier developmental period. Therefore, the evolution of monogamy could be a reflection of this increased need for bi-parental care. Similarly, monogamy should evolve in areas of ecological stress because male reproductive success should be higher if their resources are focused on ensuring offspring survival rather than searching for other mates.

Due to the extreme sociality and increased intelligence of humans, Homo sapiens have solved many problems that generally lead to monogamy, such as those mentioned above. For example, monogamy is certainly correlated with paternal care, as shown by Marlowe, but not caused by it because humans diminish the need for bi-parental care through the aid of siblings and other family members in rearing the offspring.

Furthermore, human intelligence and material culture allows for better adaptation to different and rougher ecological areas, thus reducing the causation and even correlation of monogamous marriage and extreme climates. However, some scientists argue that monogamy evolved by reducing within-group conflict, thus giving certain groups a competitive advantage against less monogamous groups.

Paleoanthropology and genetic studies offer two perspectives on when monogamy evolved in the human species: paleoanthropologists offer tentative evidence that monogamy may have started very early in human history whereas genetic studies suggest that monogamy might have increased much more recently, less than 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. Paleoanthropological estimates of the time frame for the evolution of monogamy are primarily based on the level of sexual dimorphism seen in the fossil record because, in general, the reduced male-male competition seen in monogamous mating results in reduced sexual dimorphism.

According to Renoet al., the sexual dimorphism of Australopithecus afarensis, a human ancestor from approximately 3.9–3.0 million years ago, was within the modern human range, based on dental and postcranial morphology. Although careful not to say that this indicates monogamous mating in early hominids, the authors do say that reduced levels of sexual dimorphism in A. afarensis “do not imply that monogamy is any less probable than polygyny”.

However, Gordon, Green and Richmond claim that in examining postcranial remains, A. afarensis is more sexually dimorphic than modern humans and chimpanzees with levels closer to those of orangutans and gorillas. Furthermore, Homo habilis, living approximately 2.3 mya, is the most sexually dimorphic early hominid. Plavcan and van Schaik conclude their examination of this controversy by stating that, overall, sexual dimorphism in australopithecines is not indicative of any behavioral implications or mating systems.

Currently the oldest ethnic group in Africa, the continent where Homo sapiens species emerged, is the San people of Southern Africa. Most San are monogamous, but if a hunter is able to obtain enough food, he can afford to have a second wife as well. The monogamy practiced by this ethnic group is the serial monogamy. Despite the human ability to avoid sexual and genetic monogamy, social monogamy still forms under many different conditions, but most of those conditions are consequences of cultural processes.

These cultural processes may have nothing to do with relative reproductive success. For example, anthropologist Jack Goody’s comparative study utilizing the Ethnographic Atlas demonstrated that monogamy is part of a cultural complex found in the broad swath of Eurasian societies from Japan to Ireland that practice social monogamy, sexual monogamy and dowry (i.e. “diverging devolution”, that allow property to be inherited by children of both sexes).

Goody demonstrates a statistical correlation between this cultural complex and the development of intensive plough agriculture in those areas. Drawing on the work of Ester Boserup, Goody notes that the sexual division of labour varies in intensive plough agriculture and extensive shifting horticulture. In plough agriculture farming is largely men’s work and is associated with private property; marriage tends to be monogamous to keep the property within the nuclear family.

Close family (endogamy) are the preferred marriage partners to keep property within the group. A molecular genetic study of global human genetic diversity argued that sexual polygyny was typical of human reproductive patterns until the shift to sedentary farming communities approximately 10,000 to 5,000 years ago in Europe and Asia, and more recently in Africa and the Americas.

A further study drawing on the Ethnographic Atlas showed a statistical correlation between increasing size of the society, the belief in “high gods” to support human morality, and monogamy. A survey of other cross-cultural samples has confirmed that the absence of the plough was the only predictor of polygamy, although other factors such as high male mortality in warfare (in non-state societies) and pathogen stress (in state societies) had some impact.

Betzig postulated that culture/society can also be a source of social monogamy by enforcing it through rules and laws set by third-party actors, usually in order to protect the wealth or power of the elite. For example, Augustus Caesar encouraged marriage and reproduction to force the aristocracy to divide their wealth and power among multiple heirs, but the aristocrats kept their socially monogamous, legitimate children to a minimum to ensure their legacy while having many extra-pair copulations.

Similarly—according to Betzig—the Christian Church enforced monogamy because wealth passed to the closest living, legitimate male relative, often resulting in the wealthy oldest brother being without a male heir.^[65] Thus, the wealth and power of the family would pass to the “celibate” younger brother of the church. In both of these instances, the rule-making elite used cultural processes to ensure greater reproductive fitness for themselves and their offspring, leading to a larger genetic influence in future generations.

According to B. S. Low, culture would appear to have a much larger impact on monogamy in humans than the biological forces that are important for non-human animals. Serial monogamy has always been closely linked to divorce practices. Whenever procedures for obtaining divorce have been simple and easy, serial monogamy has been found. As divorce has continued to become more accessible, more individuals have availed themselves of it, and many go on to remarry.

Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, further suggests that Western culture’s inundation of choice has devalued relationships based on lifetime commitments and singularity of choice. It has been suggested, however, that high mortality rates in centuries past accomplished much the same result as divorce, enabling remarriage (of one spouse) and thus serial monogamy.

Ecological and social complexities in human monogamy Archived

Seven Forms of Non-Monogamy”.

Functions and Limitations of Alaskan Eskimo Wife Trading”.

Are We Monogamous? A Review of the Evolution of Pair-Bonding in Humans and Its Contemporary Variation Cross-Culturally”.

A Survey of Non‑Classical Polyandry”.