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Comment by bayleo | Hacker News Reader

The usual argument is evolutionary; i.e. men have a biological incentive to embrace monogamy to help prevent the chances of being cuckolded while women do not. I'm not supporting it, as it is an equally untestable hypothesis, just mentioning it for the sake of the discussion.

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Strictly in terms of different cultures, more cultures have polygamy than strict monogamy. If the advantage was evolutionary, you would not find so many cultures that have a degree on polygamy.

Polyandry on the other hand, is extremely rare which makes complete sense when factoring in the effort required for a woman to raise her children.

http://eclectic.ss.uci.edu/~drwhite/worldcul/Codebook4EthnoA...

  # of cultures - Maritial Composition:
  36 - Missing Data
  186 - Independent nuclear, monogamous
  453 - Independent nuclear, occasional polygyny
  69 - Preferentially sororal, cowives in same dwelling
  18 - Preferentially sororal, cowives in separate dwellings
  344 - Non-sororal, cowives in separate dwellings
  157 - Non-sororal, cowives in same dwelling
  4 - Independent polyandrous families

I should have used the word "marriage" instead of "monogamy".

I don't think it follows that polyandry is less advantageous for a woman than polygamy -- more men equals more resources. I think the reason is that most societies are patriarchal rather than matriarchal and this has traditionally led to men being the greater holder of wealth, and the disparity between the rich and poor being what it is, 1/100th of a rich man is worth more than even 100 poor men. That still doesn't mean that a woman wouldn't choose to have 100 men if she cannot have a portion of a rich man, but in a patriarchal society, those women would likely become prostitutes -- the (to men perhaps) more socially acceptable form of polyandry? This might even be preferable to the woman, since I could see multiple men in the same household potentially being much more rife with conflict. I wouldn't be surprised if societies tend to try to suppress polygamy at equal or even greater rates than they do prostition.

Basically I don't think polyandry is rare at all, it's just in the form of uncounted prostitution. I'd lay odds that you'd see more (monogamous) polyandry in societies that are more (very) matriarchal and/or the distribution of wealth is flat, both being rather uncommon.

That's not an argument, it's a say-so explanation. Similarly, men have biological incentive to impregnate anything that moves without commitment, while women have biological incentive to find resource-committed males, as they have a biological 9-month commitment they're allotted by nature.

If this were true, we would expect men to try to entice women into marriage and women to hold out and continue to play the field.

At least anecdotally, I see the exact opposite.

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