Anthropology

Polygamy is a Latin word which means a marriage form where any person has more than one spouse at a time. This is an opposition to monogamy, which means having just one spouse at a time. In case of a man who has more than one wife that relationship is called polygamy and where a woman has more than one husband at a time that relationship is called polyandry. A group marriage is one where a marriage has multiple numbers of wives and husbands.

Why chose this topic
The topic of polygamy even though being a sensitive issue is important on purely a human level.  The reason why this topic has been chosen is because of the greater variety of insights on this topic by different people or different scholars. Though, people are still trying to figure out whether polygamy is good or bad. Polygamy is having more than one spouse and in mankind it is being practiced for thousands of years.

History
Polygamy basically is a very ancient problem which is to be found in many of the societies. The Bible had never condemned polygamy. The Old Testament and the rabbinic had whereas done writings on the legality to polygamy. This Old Testament contains some injunctions about how the property of the man is to be distributed among his sons which are from different wives. A ban on polygamy is that a man cannot marry a wifes sister to make that as a rival wife. Polygamy had been practiced till the sixteenth century. The ancient Israelites had been in great number in the past having more than one wife at a time. The examples of this are King Solomon (peace is upon him) who had seven hundred wives. Jacob (Yacub, peace be upon him) had four wives and David (Dawood) had ninety nine. There were no societal rules before about how many wives a man can have or how these women are to be treated, but there was some advice given by the Jewish men regarding these matters and they had stated that a man should not have more than four wives. There were no statements against polygamy from Jesus. Polygamy had started being accepted and practiced in the seventeenth century. In the United States the Mormons has allowed practice for polygamy.  The rumors that this church had been having polygamy practices even led to persecution. But even then the Mormons continued the practice of polygamy even despite the existence of the laws because they had believed that this practice had been protected by the religious freedom in the Bill of Rights.

Past insights on polygamy
In the past polygamy was considered a problem like it is today. For thousands of years there has been a constant debate between polygamy and monogamy. Both of these sides had been assuming that polygamy is what men like the most. Talking about reality, polygamy is something that victimizes none but only men. This is something anyone would have never thought about as polygamy is considered to be something good for men (Sailer, 2002). The people who are against the polygamy practice argue that the feelings of creating gender equality are clearly impossible in polygamy. The husband needs to organize all his wives like a unit that is to be a military unit with himself being the commanding general to all wives. The husband is the one who has to deal with greater problems in polygamy. He is responsible for the happiness of all the wives, but he rarely succeeds in doing so. He is always a very happy and nervous person. He rarely makes any effort in bringing all the wives together as he fears that conflicts might occur and because of this he isnt able to give all his wives equal and considerable time.  

Current insights on polygamy
The new insights on polygamy or the current view on polygamy has changed quite a little. The Father Eugene Hillman has reconsidered polygamy in his insightful book. In the New Testament it has been nowhere mentioned about any commandment that the marriage needs to be monogamous and nor is their any commandment of forbidding polygamy. The Father Hillman has stated that in order to conform to the Roman-Greco culture the church in Rome banned polygamy. Other people may also be affected by polygamy. Many of the men cant get a wife because some men are just marrying more than 150 wives. Having a second wife for one man, in the normal course means that the other man will get no wife. Presently in this modern time the Rabbinic Judaism has outlawed polygamy essentially. The Karaite Jews do not stick to the Torah Rabbinic interpretations polygamy almost is non existent today. The todays view of polygamy is all about the desire of a man to marry all women and then have children with them. (Rauch, 2006). Today in America, the most and the main constituents for the polygamous marriages are the Mormons. Till today there are no polygamous societies that can be called true liberal democracy. Societies slowly move away from the hierarchies and thus leave polygamy behind and do not consider it significantly. Monogamy is something that can provide everyone a shot at marriage whereas polygamy reduces the chances of many men from getting married. In the polygamous societies the crime rates are higher too. In a polygamous world the males cannot take marriage for granted as they grow up and thus the consequences can turn out to be ugly.
           
In the present times for some modern societies it remains a very viable solution. There is a severe gender crisis in the United States in the black community. Most of the young black men are dying at the age of 21 and homicide is said to be the reason for the deaths of men between 20 to 35 years of age (Song, 2007). Many of the young black men just surrender to the inner city youth problems and many of the black women are left unmarried. Many of the black mothers too become single mothers around the age of 20 and need someone to support them. This eventually leads to many of the black women in affairs with other men who are married and their wives have no idea that they are sharing their husbands with some other women.

Polygamy as mentioned is having more than one spouse and it has greater problems. It is a problem which is quite famous in some cultures and newer insights are given to it presently. It should be banned because of its disadvantages. The wives of a polygamous man are never content and happy with their husbands as their husband cant give them enough time (Lankford, 2008). The kids too are greatly affected by this as they don not have enough time to spend with their dads. Moreover, it is very difficult to have more than one wife in a house. A great deal of social resentment occurs.