Research Suggests Polygamous Men Live Longer 483
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."
Serial vs. Simultaneous (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah (Score:5, Insightful)
Men who are comfortable having multiple wives have no problems telling the in-laws to stuff it.
Re:I would have thought the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
They nag each other instead of nagging you?
Hugh Hefner (Score:5, Insightful)
A quick check shows Hugh Hefner at 82, that's proof enough for me.
Now if I could just convince my wife...
Re:I will live forever! (Score:4, Insightful)
Polygamous cultures (Score:5, Insightful)
often practice warfare to an unusual degree. High numbers of young male deaths leads to a surplus of marriageable women -- including widows. Polygamy allows the fertility rate to compensate, among other things.
It follows that while the cost of war is borne most by the dead, any potential benefits must be shared disproportionately more by the survivors.
By a similar logic, I'd bet that the countries in question have a much higher mortality rate for young men from all causes, and that survivors into old age posses, disproportionately, social fitness. In other words the poor die young and the rich live longer. This may also be exacerbated when you look at certain small and exceptional countries, such as Brunei.
In any case, there is only so far clever juxtaposition of gross numbers can get you. To really understand data, you have to disaggregate it, which is probably not possible in the datasets they have. Overall male life expectancy is a better measure of male health, not the survival rates of those who have already reached advanced age. That's practically asking to have your data confounded.
Ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
Correlation is not causation. There may just be something in common with longer lifespans and polygamy, like hormones, lifestyle, attitude... hundreds of things.
Re:I would have thought the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
And what about the women? (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely, it's sampling bias. (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider the following: every culture that practices polygamy (actually polygyny, multiple wives, as opposed to polyandry, which would be multiple husbands) has to do something about the extra males. Each and every society like this, without exception, has been AMAZINGLY misogynistic - and that's continued today in the modern Muslim and Fundamentalist LDS "polygamist" cultures.
When you have a surplus of males, your option is pretty much either (a) kick them out into the world (what the FLDS do) or (b) get them killed off in warring, tribal or otherwise (which is what much of Africa and Middle Eastern muslim societies do).
If you get to be old in such cultures, you're wealthy. In fact, wealth is more an indicator of your life expectancy, in any culture.
However, now compare those cultures across the board. If you're in Europe or in America/Canada or another westernized nation, it's relatively easy to get past 60 - after all, you have the free health care systems and welfare setups to rely on.
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. In the FLDS, tracking down their "lost boys" usually winds up giving you an example of kids who have the world yanked from under them and wind up becoming drug addicts and worse because they've been taught from day one that the "outside world" was out to kill them anyways for being FLDS.
What you have there isn't a real phenomenon. "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc [wikipedia.org]" is a classic mistake that is made by this fatally flawed "study."
Re:Related to an old joke (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I think you ust hit the mail on the head (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with polygomy isn't really a problem with women. If you are raised in that society there is nothing about a polygomous relationship that is inherently negative or abusive. The real problem is the men.
Imagine if every family held to about the same ratio of 1 husband to 4 wives. You now have 3 men who will never be able to find a wife, never be able to start a family. Beleive it or not, evolution had kind of made men extremely averse to this situation. Men get desperate, they do stupid things, and not just hooking up with ugly women. They take inordinate risks to gain prestige, they debase themselve to gain acceptence of people higher on the social ladder, they gamble their life and their money in the hopes of 'earning' a wife.
There's even been talk of this being the cause of many suicide bombings. People to low in the heirarchy know they will never have children and life looses some of it's meaning; to the point where the promise of wives in the afterlife is strong enough that it drives you to kill yourself.
Re:I think you ust hit the mail on the head (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:It's not the number of women (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd rather have an uppity American woman in my bed than some sexually repressed semi-slave from one of these psychotically misogynistic cultures. I want a companion, not a slave.
"Girls with guns! Crucial realm!" --The Dirty Pair
Re:Ernest Borgnine says different (Score:2, Insightful)
Only on Slashdot would this be modded "insightful".
Slashdot corollary (Score:2, Insightful)
Better get ours while we still can -- we're doomed.
Re:I would have thought the opposite (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it's not beneficial for large numbers of single men, who necessarily have no wife at all (for each man with two wives, there is one with none, since the sex ratio in humans is very close to 1:1). There is also some evidence that having large numbers of single men contributes to violence (this should come as no surprise). Hence, polygamy probably contributes to violence.
Furthermore, while from a strictly materialistic point of view, polygamy is beneficial to women (since richer men tend to have more wives and can support them better on average), I don't think there's a lot of evidence that these women are "better off" from a liberal Western point of view. They are probably not going to be well educated or in the work force, for example.
Re:You have a big problem here. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Quite the reverse: they "controlled" the study by only studying men who had exceeded 60 years of age.
That biases your study sample. Kill the poor off young, and you won't see many poor men living only to 62-63 years.
You could draw all kinds of conclusions from this (Score:2, Insightful)
"...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."
Nations that mostly practice polygamy are also mostly desert cultures. So you could also word those findings as "...men aged over 60 from 140 countries that have alot of sand lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly non-sandy nations."
Re:I think you ust hit the mail on the head (Score:3, Insightful)
No, this is just bigotry trying to discount any evidence
that contradicts the bigotry.
The idea that women would defend any social order is not
particularly strange. How do you think these systems stay
in place to begin with? Whether or not you would personally
like it is another matter.
There are plenty of femi-nazis that will gladly demonize the
choices of mundane monogomist housewives. Why should a house-
hold with multiple housewives be any different?
The US tried to give women in Utah sufferage in the hope that
those women would vote down polygamy. When they didn't, their
voting rights were yanked right back away from them.
Re:More likely, it's sampling bias. (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you trying to imply that the polygamy is causing misogynistic tendencies? Because I think it's the other way around.
No, it's the other way around like you say - only a society which sees women as mere property could evolve to have polygyny without equal rights to polyandry, and NO society has ever evolved both. Every "polygamist" society has treated women as mere property.
Re:I would have thought the opposite (Score:5, Insightful)
You want a source on the fact that there are roughly equal numbers of men and women? Where are you from, Alpha Centauri? (BTW, at birth, worldwide, the human sex ratio is about 105 boys to 100 girls. It's slightly lower, about 101:100, during the sexually active years. All this does is increase the number of single men, making polygamy even less attractive.)
Your point about sexual orientation is immaterial. If polygamy is widespread enough to leave large numbers of men single, the fact that some small percentage of them will be gay is not going to change this fact.
Your point about no interest in marriage is irrelevant. What matters is whether men can find a mate, not whether they can actually marry. Even without marriage, if 25% of the men have no available mate, they have no choice in the matter.
Interesting blog article about this issue. [isteve.com]
Re:I will live forever! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I think you ust hit the mail on the head (Score:3, Insightful)
I meant I was agreeing with parent post, and that the quote was supporting it. I have no idea what you're talking about or what it had to do with what I said.
I'm sure those young girls who are murdered by the state because they were raped are submitting to this "by agreement".
Before you start going islamophobic on my ass, I should point out that I'm an Atheist of Irish Catholic descent, so direct your bile elsewhere. I thought it was an interesting quote of commentary from inside a polygamist culture, and is hardly an endorsement of Islam's attitude to women, if you actually read it.
Re:I would have thought the opposite (Score:1, Insightful)
As another polyamorous man (with one girlfriend of 4 years, and another of 1.5 years; both of them have other boyfriends/partners as well), I'll state that it hasn't even been a short-term increase in stress. It's been, basically, pretty happy.
The key is just in picking people who are not drama-prone. We are all the sort of people who are accommodating, don't pick fights, and we all take responsibility for our own shit.
When I see people talking about nagging wives, how difficult women are, how wives shorten your lifespan etc. -- it makes me sad. You guys are dating/marrying the wrong people... or maybe you are the problem, not them.
All it takes to make relationships (singular or plural) function well is personal responsibility and honest communication. It ain't rocket science.
Re:More likely, it's sampling bias. (Score:1, Insightful)
Canadians spend about the same amount of time waiting for "free" healthcare as Australians, Britons and French do....approximately the time it takes to drive to the clinic and read half a dog eared magazine in the waiting room.
The Europeans pay less tax to get their "free" healthcare system as you do to buy aircraft carriers and prop up GW's buddies failing merchant banks.
The US health care "system" is a disgrace.
Re:More wives would be a curse in the west (Score:4, Insightful)
Dude, your wife sounds mean.
Re:I think you ust hit the mail on the head (Score:3, Insightful)
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. ...it almost sounds as if he didn't want to go to heaven?
More likely, accepting the "used" widow would lessen the chance of his being "assigned" a nice, pliant, nubile 14-year-old sex slave by the FLDS "elders."