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Updated: April 30, 2025
Marriage, like the family itself, is variable, and an indefinite number of forms may be found among various peoples. We shall notice, however, only the three leading forms, polyandry, polygyny, and monogamy, and attempt to show the natural conditions which favor each.
Post, a German student of comparative jurisprudence, for example, summed up the theory by saying that "monogamous marriage originally emerged everywhere from pure communism in women, through the intermediate stages of limited communism in women, polyandry, and polygyny."
But as regards ancestor-worship in general, it would be incorrect; since polygamy or polygyny, and polyandry may coexist with ruder forms of ancestor-worship. The Western-Aryan societies, in the epoch studied by M. de Coulanges, were practically monogamic. The ancient Japanese society was polygynous; and polygyny persisted, after the establishment of the domestic cult.
Polygyny brutalized men, degraded women, and destroyed that affection and comradeship between parents and their offspring that are the proper heritage of children. Wherever it has survived as a system, polygyny has hindered progress, and wherever it exists in the midst of monogamy it tends to break down civilization.
Much of the polygyny, and polyandry also, which prevails among us to-day is an altogether artificial and unnatural form of polygamy.
It is said, indeed, that for five hundred and twenty years after Rome was founded there was not a single divorce in Rome. While this may be an exaggeration, it is historically certain that divorce was so rare in early Rome as to be practically unknown. In case of a failure of sons to be born there was no taking of a second wife, as among the Hebrews. Polygyny was unknown in early Rome.
In modern times polygyny still exists among all the Mohammedan peoples and to a greater or less degree among all semicivilized peoples. It exists in China in the form of concubinage.
Moreover, religion continued the patriarchal family in many cases long after pastoral industry had ceased to be the chief economic form. So too with the forms of marriage. While polygyny has been claimed to be due entirely to economic causes, we have seen that these so-called economic causes have only been the opportunities for the polygynous instincts of man to assert themselves.
That polygyny is still a burning question in the United States of the twentieth century is merely good evidence that we are not very far removed yet from barbarism. MONOGAMY, as we have already seen, has been the prevalent form of marriage in all ages and in all countries.
Monogamy not only favors the preservation of the lives of the children, but also favors the preservation of the lives of the parents, because it is only under monogamy that we find aged parents cared for by their children to any extent. Under polygyny the wife who has grown old is discarded for a young wife, and usually ends her days in bitterness.
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