How did it work? Back in the day, when the Mormons had finally settled down in Utah after being run out of most of the rest of the country, hanging out far enough away from everyone else that they could finally just do their thing. How did they not run out of wives?
I know, I know, I know...jokes about Mormons and their wives were all run into the ground long ago. But seriously, a little math will soon show a big problem. There are slightly more baby boys born than girls, something like 51 to 49 percent, so do the numbers, and if one guy has like 10 wives, and another guy has like 8 wives, it doesn't take long before you run out of wives.
What happened? Isn't this kinda greedy? I'm pretty sure Jesus wasn't into greed. As a matter of fact, greed is one of the seven deadly sins.
It seems like there would have been a lot of fights and possibly crime among the dudes who weren't getting any wives. After all, any kind of gross inequity, whether it be economic or of access to vagina, breeds an unstable social order.
Could Donny Osmond have the DNA of a badass?
Intriguing possibility, but back to the point.
What did they do when they ran out of wives?
16 comments:
The older guys ran the younger guys out of town. Excommunicated them for some reason or another.
They kick out the teenage boys.
The older men would marry the younger girls. The male children weren't getting married at such a young age, they were waiting until age 25 rather than 13 or 14...by the time they were ready to start marrying, there was generally a new stock of women available.
They kick out the teenage boys.
Yeah, that's what they do in northern Arizona in the area where they are still polygamists, and in the other polygamist groups I've heard of.
Somewhere during their teenage years, the boys that meet the standards of the leader (including properly sucking up to him) get brought on board, while boys that are too independent (or not strong enough, or are the sons of guys the leader doesn't really like, or ... well, any reason really) get left on the street of some city with only the clothes they're wearing.
The poor kid either winds up fighting to survive as a street kid, or winds up in the foster care system being supported by taxpayers.
Polygamy only works out numbers-wise if there's some reason (like continual war, killing only the men - which means it's being fought somewhere else) why women significantly outnumber men.
They banned polygamy and applied for statehood.
http://thehopeorg.org/boys.html
The Mormons like to excommunicate them - making them invisible to the entire community they live in.
It's kinda like giving them the 'Cheese touch' - which you only know about if you have kids and those kids read The Wimpy Kid books. More bullying than fisticuffs.
This is an extremely common problem with polygamous societies, and the answer, as has been pointed out, is that younger men have to be dealt with in some way. In larger polygamous societies, this is generally done through war or conquest. Conquest can also have the happy result of bringing in a lot of new females which helps address the situation as well. This is one of the reasons that so many students of history are so worried about China. You can only have a situation with more boys than girls for so long before something has to give. (Yet another reason to support sexbot research.)
While it's true in most human populations baby boys slightly outnumber baby girls, historically speaking by the time children reach breeding age the ratio is usually even or slightly tilted toward girls as boys are somewhat more likely to die during childhood. The fact that this is no longer the case in modern societies is just one of the many, many ways in which our evolved predilections are royally screwing us up in the here and now.
Hey drugmonkey.....are you really as attractive as you claim to be? Do you really have such perfect skin? Because, if so let me know what part of California to find you in...I'm totally interested!
Here's the thing anonymous. The drugmonkey is probably not interested if you don't have brains enough to locate him on your own. Just guessing. (unless you are really hot)
Read - One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church, it explains it all and all the details you never wanted to know.
Um, Anonymous @ 7:53pm, this is irrelevant to the discussion.....
DM,
Many polygamous sects expel many of their male children to avoid this mathematical issue. This is still happening to this day. Once more, religion saves the lil' children!!
I think people also need to take into account Utah, pre-statehood. The wild west was just that--wild. To invent a new religion is tough stuff--ask the early Christians, etc.--those New Yorkers that adhered to a new found religion with gold tablets and hats and Native Americans-as-the-lost-tribe-o'-Israel were frowned upon and forced west. As the wild west is well, wild (ever try to ford the river in Oregon Trail? The one that killed Ezekiel?) led to an uneven amount of men and women, thus leaving more women and children out on their own, an unthinkable thing (all the single ladies?! Put a ring on them). Interestingly, Utah was the first territory in the United States that allowed women to vote, but that went out when the federal government demanded that polygamy be ended (as previously mentioned) and thus it became outlawed and moved underground until it occured to people during 1. Big Love (HBO Subscribers) 2. Warren Jeffs (regular, beyond disgusted television and interwebs viewers) or 3. Cody Brown came walking through everyones' televisions on the human circus that is TLC. And he was in some magazines. Magazines I read whilst waiting for my prescriptions, of course.
StMarc, I like your style: "This is one of the reasons that so many students of history are so worried about China. You can only have a situation with more boys than girls for so long before something has to give."
My father is currently married to a woman who is a native of China and several years ago, I had the priviledge to go to the mainland. The flight there was smooth, as flights go. However, during the flight home, it was like being trapped in an airplane with a hundred screaming infants. Because it was. I was shell-shocked and considered having my tubes tied for two years after.
Men with wives and children have a reason to stay home, to work to support their families, etc. Men without such opportunities/obligations (um, depends how you look at it) tend to become angry, and America has more than a bit of a red bullseye on its shirt, globally speaking. I suggest Hemingway's 'Men Without Women' as an excellent fiction example--plus its broken up into short stories, so its fantastic for feeling intellectual on the john.
Patricia: The "surplus of women" excuse for polygamy has been refuted over and over. Actually there were a surplus of men in Utah and in the Church during the polygamy period. A typical polygamous marriage was like the one my grandmother and grandfather entered into. She was 17 and he was 34 and already married. It was an arranged marriage, arranged by the LDS High Council. There was no surplus of women; it was not so widows could be taken care of (typically the man was much older than the woman).
Interestingly I have read minutes of the Apostles' meetings where they decry the number of unmarried men in the Church. Demographics weren't these people's strong point.
http://sisterwivesblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/polygamists-cemetery-why-are-so-many.html
I found this interesting (and very sad)..
http://sisterwivesblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/polygamists-cemetery-why-are-so-many.html
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