Research Suggests Polygamous Men Live Longer

Calopteryx writes "Want to live a little longer? Get a second wife. A study reported in New Scientist suggests that men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones. After accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy to varying degrees lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations."

Comments

There's a LOT to control for

[jfengel]

The most obvious explanation is that only the "fittest" men get to have multiple wives in the first place. They'll tend to be richer, and rich men live longer. They said they accounted for socioeconomic differences, but might it also be that physically fit men lived longer and attracted more wives?

I'm sure they tried to control for that and a host of other factors, but I'd really need to see the original paper to understand their work.

Re:I think you ust hit the mail on the head

[hairyfeet]

Well,I actually watched a show on a family from the Mormon sect that still practices multiple wives,and the women were even happier about it than the men. You see it was like this,the wife that didn't want to be tied to the housework was able to get an education and become a paralegal,while the other three who were quite happy to be stay at home moms raised the young ones and took care of the house. All four said it was so wonderful how if one of them was sick,or just feeling wore down and needed a break,the others would give her a weekend "mini-vacation" and would take up the slack.

They did everything from breast feeding to carpooling together and by dividing the workload they were able to raise their 6 kids with nobody getting over stressed. They even had a "loving schedule" which allowed them to swap days between each other depending on who was feeling amorous or not in the mood. They were quite the model of efficiency,but of course with 4 wives and soon to be 7 kids you'd pretty much have to be. So despite the idea that it is a "mans paradise" women can be quite happy with the arrangement if they all get along.

What stuck the show in my mind was that the 3 wives were the ones who actually brought in the fourth. The husband wasn't actually keen on the idea at first. Two of them had a high school girlfriend who lost her husband(cancer I believe) and they invited her to stay with them and helped her to grieve. After awhile the 3 got together and said basically "Why don't we keep her?" and hooked her up with their husband. At the time of the show she was 7 months pregnant with their seventh child,which was her first. Seemed like a nice way to live to me. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

Wives need wives

[theCat]

Any reliable wife will tell you that what she needs most on any given day is a wife. We compensate for monogamy by hiring wives for our wives; house cleaners, babysitters, daycare, diaper service, food delivery. Also, by living (well in the US) in a throw-away technical society we have striped away the need to make or repair clothes (sewing), prepare complex meals (eating out), corresponding (email, phone) and many other things that women "had" to do or felt needed to be done in a proper society.

My wife and I, married almost 14 years and with two kids, have discussed "getting" (not sure how to put it) a second wife. She's not opposed to it, understands it completely, but we haven't had a chance to try it yet. Since we live sustainably and don't take advantage of the many means to rent a wife, we don't really have much choice except to look for help. If you are going to use a woman that way, then you should support her, I feel. Renting is just a way to use something and throw it away, in the end. And paying for services that a woman could do herself is expensive the realm of the rich.

I don't know how having two wives would make me live longer as such, never gave it any thought, but it would reduce how much I worry about our family economy if I had two wives working as sisters to hold everything together, get back to simpler ways of doing things by hand and without technology. Homeschooling, food preparation and gardening are suddenly easier. My wife works so hard... she needs a wife.

[PS: Some will chorus "then help her do her work you smuck!" To which I reply "Ah, but I'm the one building the house." You see, when you really adopt the idea of do-it-yerself you bite off this enormous load of work that nobody even thinks about any more.]

Re:I think you ust hit the mail on the head

[Moryath]

This is what we would call either a "major exception" or one hell of a deception.

FLDS polygamy is "iron-fist male" rule, by every honest account that's come out of it. Even the idea of a woman in such a society becoming a paralegal is ridiculous.

Of course, I can 100% believe the brainwashed women "brought in" the 4th - because in the FLDS, it's that fourth wife gets the family into heaven. Only men with 4 or more wives get into heaven, and wives can only get in if their husband brings them along. I can also certainly believe the husband wasn't so keen on bringing in a widow - after all, if he'd waited a couple more years, he'd probably have been assigned a nice cute 14-year-old by the "church elders."

Re:I think you ust hit the mail on the head

[Panaflex]

I think a main reason homeschooling is so attractive to many people is because this gives them the ability to do exactly this: raise their kids with a restricted information set so the kids will be much less likely to make choices the parents don't like.

Aren't ALL children raised this way? I mean - I haven't seen many books called "Johnny goes to Dahlmer's for dinner."

The fact is that many - if not most parents try to put off exposure to violence, sexualization, and dirty language as long as possible. With the sludge-pool of modern communication (internet, TV, radio, press) and the spineless education system we have built - I have a great admiration for those who choose homeschooling.

I worry about homeschoolers that never introduce these things to their kids, though. It's one thing to decide when and where to expose them to the world - it's an entirely different (and wrong) approach to hide them from the world. At some point they need to be able to deal with these issues - they're part of human nature and have been for millennia.

Re:I would have thought the opposite

[Gospodin]

What the hell does that say for monogamous society?

I suspect not much, and the reason why is the key bit in the article, which is "controlling for socioeconomic factors..." The problem here is that, in the modern world, there just aren't any polygamous societies that are wealthy, liberal democracies. I'm not being judgmental about it - that's just the way it is. So the "controlling" part is likely to be pretty extreme.

Are we looking at the tiny percentage in polygamous societies that do have a Western-style living standard? Because it's all those other (poorer) single men who are probably going to be killing each other off, not the rich few at the top. So no big surprise there.

Or are we looking at the society as a whole, but extrapolating life expectancy at living standard X out to what it "would be" under living standard Y? I would be extremely dubious of any such extrapolation.

Finally, just because polygamy "contributes" to violence - and I think it does - it certainly isn't the only thing that contributes. There are most likely factors that contribute significantly more. My claim is not really all that strong - I'm mostly just answering the fellow who asserted that polygamy is "beneficial for all those involved". I'm pretty convinced that it isn't.