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

I would have thought the opposite

[loftwyr]

I would have thought having multiple sets of in-laws would shorten your life expectancy through frustration alone...

Re:I would have thought the opposite

[jgarra23]

Not only that, how does going from ONE nagging wife to TWO nagging wives make for longevity??

Re:I would have thought the opposite

[Rival]

Not only that, how does going from ONE nagging wife to TWO nagging wives make for longevity??

Maybe it just *seems* like his life is longer?

"Sit on a hot stove for a minute and it feels like an hour; sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it feels like a minute. Live with two wives and it makes sitting on a hot stove look pretty good." (with apologies to Albert Einstein)

Re:I would have thought the opposite

[jriding]

knowing that if she naggs to much or decides to cut off the sex, you will walk down the hall to the other wife tends, to make this a non issue.
Women compete naturally against each other.. here is an example.

She is being such a b*tch today.. you should come stay with me, I would never be like that. Flip sides repeat.

Hell look at Hugh Hefner.

Related to an old joke

[base3]

Q. "Why do married men die before their wives?" A. "Because they want to"

Re:Related to an old joke

[Mr2cents]

(except Hans Reiser)

Nah

[XanC]

Men who are comfortable having multiple wives have no problems telling the in-laws to stuff it.

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.

I just asked my wife about this

[jandrese]

She guaranteed me that sleeping with other women would have the opposite effect on my longevity.

I think you ust hit the mail on the head

[bihoy]

I suspect that people who are happy with their lives in general will live longer.

There are studies that show that married people live longer than those who are not.

There are studies that claim that happily married people live longer than those who are not happy in their marriage.

What makes men happy?

Being a guy I know I am happier when I get more opportunity for some "good" lovin' from my woman.

Do you see where I'm going with this? It's all about what makes you happy (imho).

Now then, the next question is: What makes women happy?

Figure that out and your onto something.

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

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

[smellsofbikes]

It could be a nice way to live, or it could be really awful. It entirely depends on the circumstances.
In fact, it's very much like prostitution (not very surprisingly.)
If a woman *wants* to be in a polygamous relationship, well, why should we stop her? The government has no business legislating morality.
If a woman doesn't want to, well, she shouldn't have to, and nobody's making her get married (we presume, maybe optimistically.) So that's fine, too.
But here's the problem: what do you, as The State, do, when a group of people are raising their children and educating them that the way they live is the Right Way -- when that Right Way may seem harmful to people who aren't in that culture?
Hence the arguments over deaf people who don't want their children who can hear, to learn speech, because it would cut them off from the deaf sign language community (I've heard people argue this.) Or cultures or groups who cut off womens' genitals, or The Family, who encouraged their (often very young) female members to go sleep with wealthy men to get them to join the church.

There's a line to be drawn. Obviously, we all draw a line at voluntary vs. coercive behavior. But the much trickier problem is where we draw the line when it comes to educating children so they'll grow up making choices that seem, to them, to be voluntary, but seem to outsiders to be coerced.

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. I also think that's precisely why the FLDS got raided: because The State decided they were raising their children in an environment designed to make the children accept what The State viewed as systematic abuse.

And what about the women?

[VoidCrow]

Getting a decent shag out of a man is hard enough without having to share him with other women.

Re:Question

[hypergreatthing]

I have only one question: what is the list of polygamous nations?

And the follow up, are they looking for more engineers?

You've completely missed it

[blueZ3]

Now then, the next question is: What makes women happy?

Figure that out and your onto something.

More like "figure that out, and she'll change her mind"

Just kidding, honey! Honest.

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.]

You have a big problem here.

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Read the summary of the study's conclusion again. What the study claims to demonstrate isn't that polygamists live longer than other men in their own society; what it demonstrates is that in societies where a minority of the men have multiple wives, the mean longevity of all men is longer.

Note the following two things that follow from this:

1. It hasn't been demonstrated that the extra mean longevity in the population as a whole is due to the extra longevity of the polygamists. Nobody's gonna be surprised if more research shows that is the case, but let's not get ahead of ourselves
2. Far more importantly, if it is indeed the case that the small number of polygamists truly does push up the average life expectancy of the whole community, this means that the men who don't have multiple wives aren't pulling it down.

The second point I just made is at odds with what you're telling us here:

On the flipside, look at the polygamist societies - in Middle Eastern/African muslim societies, those who aren't going to reach 60 (read: the poor) usually kill themselves off FAR faster in various tribal conflicts and wars.

For this to be consistent with the results of the study, the negative effect of such early deaths on average longevity must be smaller than the positive effect that the polygamists have on the same statistic. Which suggests you're totally overblowing this by reasoning on the basis of stereotypes.

Re:I will live forever!

[JPLemme]

Being faithful to one partner could be a sign of respect for that person. It could be a sacrifice willingly made to get the benefits of a partner's full attention and devotion. It could be a practical way to insure that a stable and pleasant home life stays stable and pleasant. It could be a demonstration to your kids that in order to have somebody sacrifice for you, you must first sacrifice for them. It might be a way to prevent getting cuckolded or raising another man's child (what's good for the goose...). Or you might just love the person so much that hurting them isn't worth a few hours of pleasure.

There are a lot of reasons to be faithful to one person. You need to stop letting the Christian church define everything for you.

Duty Roster

[zazenation]

I can't resist the challenge of classifying the duties of 13 wives:

Wife#1 - Head Wife , as in lead wife, the matriarch of the harem. For head wife, see #7

Wife#2 - Sports equipment maintenance: cleans balls, buffs club heads, wipes shafts, etc. For similar duties see wife #7

Wife#3 - Food servicing: food prep for friends, beer fetcher, pizza gofer, etc.

Wife#3 - Personal comfort: Fanning, AC/heat control, recliner inclination monitor, foot massage, etc.

Wife#4 - Communications: answering phone with excuses as to why husband can't answer, getting the door, etc.

Wife#5 - Media control: Monitoring location of all TV and video remote controls, summarizing viewing habits of husband and printing list of shows for him, etc.

Wife#6 - Cleaning: Washing, ironing, vacuuming, etc.

Wife#7 - Head Wife - oh yeah!

Wife#s8,9,10 - Bedtime playmates, multiple partners to alleviate boredom.

Wife#11 - Backup wife for positions 1-10

Wife#12 - Secondary (redundant) backup wife.

Wife#13 - I have no idea why he would need a 13th wife! What a self-centered A-hole!