Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

Family Values 477are always jealous and one often murders the other. As always, kinshipmitigates enmity, and among Tibetan farmers two or more brotherssometimes marry a woman simultaneously in the hope of puttingtogether a family that can survive in the bleak territory. The juniorbrother, though, aspires to have a wife of his own.Marriage arrangements are usually described from the man's point ofview, not because the desires of women are irrelevant but because powerfulmen have usually gotten their way. Men are bigger and strongerbecause they have been selected to fight one another, and they can formpowerful clans because in traditional societies sons stay near their familiesand daughters move away. The most florid polygynists are alwaysdespots, men who could kill without fear of retribution. (According tothe Guinness Book of World Records, the man with the most recordedchildren in history—888—was an emperor of Morocco with the evocativename Moulay Ismail The Bloodthirsty.) The hyperpolygynist not onlymust fend off the hundreds of men he has deprived of wives, but mustoppress his harem. Marriages always have at least a bit of reciprocity, andin most polygynous societies a man may forgo additional wives becauseof their emotional and financial demands. A despot can keep themimprisoned and terrified.But oddly enough, in a freer society polygyny is not necessarily badfor women. On financial and ultimately on evolutionary grounds, awoman may prefer to share a wealthy husband than to have the undividedattention of a pauper, and may even prefer it on emotionalgrounds. Laura Betzig summed up the reason: Would you rather be thethird wife of John F. Kennedy or the first wife of Bozo the Clown? Cowivesoften get along, sharing expertise and child-care duties, thoughjealousies among the subfamilies often erupt, much as in stepfamiliesbut with more factions and adult players. If marriage were genuinely afree market, then in a polygamous society men's greater demand for alimited supply of partners and their inflexible sexual jealousy would givethe advantage to women. Laws enforcing monogamy would work towomen's disadvantage. The economist Steven Landsburg explains themarket principle, using labor instead of money in his example:Today, when my wife and I argue about who should do the dishes, westart from positions of roughly equal strength. If polygamy were legal, mywife could hint that she's thought about leaving me to many Alan andCindy down the block—and I might end up with dishpan hands.