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Updated: April 30, 2025
35. =Polygyny.= a better term than polygamy was the inevitable result of the patriarchal system. Man made the law and the law recognized no restraint upon his sexual and parental instincts. Improvements in living added to the resources of the family and made it possible to maintain large households of wives, children, and slaves.
In the first place, as we have already seen, polygyny is essentially an institution of barbarism. It arose largely through the practice of wife capture and the keeping of female slaves. While often adjusted to the requirements of barbarous societies, it seems in no way adjusted to a high civilization. Polygyny, indeed, must necessarily rest upon the subjection and degradation of women.
Polygyny, indeed, is closely related with the institution of slavery and is practically coextensive with it. In the ancient world it existed among the Hebrews and among practically all of the peoples of the Orient, and also sporadically among our own Teutonic ancestors.
Finally, religion came to sanction polygyny. The religious sanction of polygyny cannot be looked upon as one of its original causes, but when once established it reacted powerfully to reenforce and maintain the institution.
Where the device of adoption was not resorted to, therefore, in case of barrenness or the birth exclusively of female children, nothing was more natural than that polygyny should be resorted to in order to insure the family succession. In the patriarchal family also a high valuation was necessarily set upon children, because the larger the family grew the stronger it was.
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