I'm not against polygamy or polyandry, but I don't see a trend in the near term.
On the other hand, we've long had a tradition of traditional married couples where the man keeps a mistress on the side, usually in secret (though secrets don't tend to last very long).
Pedantic, perhaps, but while its generally acceptable to use "polygamy" to mean "polygyny" when you aren't discussing "polyandry" (because virtually all real-world polygamy is polygyny), if you are explicitly discussing both forms, its should be "polygyny and polyandry", "polygamy" includes both.
> On the other hand, we've long had a tradition of traditional married couples where the man keeps a mistress on the side, usually in secret (though secrets don't tend to last very long).
Its really weird to call monogamous marriages "traditional" when comparing them to the polygynous marriages, since while the latter have fallen out of favor progressively in the last several centuries, they have quite a long tradition pretty much everywhere.
That said, its actually in many places a long tradition for kept mistresses, particularly of powerful men, to be fairly open.
Bu they don't: the authors of the "Media Release", who are writing for the general public using language as familiar as possible, use the term "polygamy", but never in quotes from the authors of the study -- which always use "polygyny". The study itself always uses "polygyny" (and, at least at one point, more specifically "non-sororal polygyny"); the only times "polygamy" (or related forms like "polygamous") appear in the paper itself are in discussions of what other others studies found, one mention discussing forms of pair-bonding as "monogamous and polygamous", and in titles of works cited.
Particularly of note in poverty stricken communities and the African American community which also happen to have many social problems. Its an interesting theory worth looking more into IMO.
Its perhaps more visible, but is it really becoming more common? Where are the statistics showing this?
59% of African American mothers with two or more children have children by different fathers (http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/8338-many-us-women-have-chi...).
It is not polygamy/andry, it is an act of desperation on the women's side to have any kind of economic support. When the social net is thin or unexistent - even if it means risking to have another kid. Add to the fact that poor people are the most restricted with their access to contraception and abortion. And you have a self perpetuating mess instead of social fabric.
It is the other way around - remove the jobs from a community, men turn to crime - initiate "War on drugs" - and you have a positive loopback mechanism. That is multi generational.
...That doesn't seem to me to be a proper control population.
I love examples of good intentions going bad.
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-race-affects-whether-...
To speculate, IMO its in large part due to physical differences between races - the small petite Asian frames being advantageous for Asian women and disadvantageous for Asian men, and the large Black frames being advantageous for Black men, and disadvantageous for Black women. Societal views definitely play a role too. It would be interesting to compare across different societies.
While sometimes people refer to "serial polygamy", and there are some contexts where its actually reasonable to view that as a kind of polygamy, here, where the focus is on formal, recognized marriage structures and whether men have the opportunity to enter into them, it isn't the kind of polygamy that is at issue, both:
(1) because its not a formal, recognized marriage structure, and (2) because even if it were, it would be polyandrous, and the paper is comparing polygyny (not "polygamy" more generally) to monogamy, so this would be driving past monogamy on to the opposite side, if it were relevant at all.