Will Polyandry be Legalized?

As much as you may wish to establish equality in your polyandry, living in a society that only recognizes monogamy as a legitimate marital practice will present obstacles in your relationship.

The awkward stares of disgust in public, mysongynistic and misandristic rhetoric from everyone socially conditioned by society and religion (which may include family and friends) is only one aspect of what you can expect when choosing to live life with multiple partners. Legal matters is unavoidable since polyandry, as a polygamous custom, is illegal in all 50 states under the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862. How you handle this can determine the longevity of your union.

Now you can move to the countries where polyandry is legal, but we know realistically the chances of people dismantling their entire lives to migrate to another country. So, everyone stays here in conformity, choosing one partner as their husband to claim.

When faced with the statement, "only your spouse may enter with the patient", if this wasn't discussed or properly prepared for prior to the wife's medical emergency, the husbands are now in a position to choose who will say "im her husband" and be granted access to be at her bedside.

Even though no ones opinion is more important than another and you've mastered your distribution of your time and affection. No matter the lengths you've gone to ensure that there is equality amongst your husbands, this situation has the potentially to arouse feelings of inadequacy in any person.

In that instant they are forced to choose... "Who would she like to be there more? I i want to go but i know he wants to go too, maybe I'll go this time and he goes next time; but what if he wants to go first? Does it matter who goes first? Is the man she had first more important and therefore is her "true" husband by default?

Usually the one who does the least amount of thinking, speaks first and goes. Which gives a sense of relief for the other husband so he no longer has to choose but slight sadness as now the situation has watered those seeds planted by the naysayers. These feelings can be buried but will be watered everytime a situation arises where he's not recognized as her husband.

The best way to prevent this is to have this discussion early and incorporate contractual agreements to ensure the validity of, terms and conditions of each relationship.

As of june 29, 2020, The Somerville City Council of Massachusetts, unanimously approved an ordinance that allowed groups of three or more adults to form domestic partnerships. They expanded its notion of family to include people who are maintaining consenting relationships with multiple partners.

“I don’t think it’s the place of the government to tell people what is or is not a family,” Mr. Davis, who is a lawyer, said at a meeting last week. “Defining families is something that historically we’ve gotten quite wrong as a society, and we ought not to continue to try and undertake to do so.”

The issue arose recently because of the COVID-19 pandemic, as Somerville residents who aren’t married came to councilors concerned about not having the ability to visit sick partners in the hospital and the city doesn't have a domestic partnership ordinance, Councilor Lance Davis told the Boston Globe.

Under its new domestic partnership ordinance, the city of Somerville now grants polyamorous groups the rights held by spouses in marriage, such as the right to confer health insurance benefits or make hospital visits.

“People have been living in families that include more than two adults forever,” Mr. Scott said. “Here in Somerville, families sometimes look like one man and one woman, but sometimes it looks like two people everyone on the block thinks are sisters because they’ve lived together forever, or sometimes it’s an aunt and an uncle, or an aunt and two uncles, raising two kids.”

So the potentiality of the US legalizing poyandry is not as slim as we thought just as gay marriage being legalized was also unheard of at one time.  

WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF POLYANDRY? :3. ASSOCIATED

The last form of polyandry is a combination of polyandry and polygyny, as women are married to several men simultaneously and the same men are married to several women. It is found in some tribes of native Americans as well as villages in northern Nigeria and the northern cameroons.

Other Classifications: Equal polygamy, Polygynandry


The LELE of the Kasai-ASSOCIATED POLYANDRY with partible paternity

Unity within the village is very important, and
the sort of polyandry they practice supports that.

Polygyny is a widely accepted and high status form of marriage for the Lele. Polyandry occurs when the village acquires a hohombe, or a village wife. She will have come from another village, either by force, seduced, taken as a refugee, or betrothed from infancy, and is treated with much honor by the people in her
new village.

A village wife is married to several men in the village who may or may not have other wives already. The position is very prestigious for a woman, as is evidenced in her honeymoon period.

A village wife is treated with much honor and enjoys her honeymoon which lasts for a period of 6 months or longer. She does not cook, draw water, cut firewood or carry out any tasks expected of the other women. As she is also allowed to accompany her husbands on hunting escapades, whereas that is not normally allowed. And since she didn't cook, she would eat the food and delicacies sent to her husbands from their mother's and/or the other wives.

She would sleep with a different man in her hut every two nights, and may have relations with any village member during the day.

When the honeymoon period ends, the
village wife is allotted a certain number of husbands, sometimes as many as five. She lives with these men, cooks and has relations with them. Within time, she may eliminate husbands from her household until she has just two or three.

A child of the village-wife is called mwanababola, meaning "child of the village" because he or she belongs to all the men (partible paternity). And they share responsibility for paying any future dowries.

As noted before, the non-fraternal polyandry practiced by the Lele is of high status, as is the village wife (although other women in the society, outside of the union, are of fairly low status). The status of men within the union seem to be equal during the honeymoon period,
when they all have equal access to the village wife.

Also, after the village wife has chosen the final two or three husbands to live in a polyandrous state with, there is no mention of any sort of hierarchical system among those men.

Probably the most important thing to note about this system of polyandry is the function it serves. Although the form is very different from other African forms, as well as Indian forms, they all serve a similar purpose: forming alliances.

WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF POLYANDRY? : 2. SUCCESSIONAL

Unlike fraternal polyandry, where a woman will receive a number of husbands simultaneously, a woman will acquire one husband after another in sequence.

This form is flexible. These men may or may not be related. And it may or may not incorporate a hierarchical system, where one husband is considered primary and may be allotted certain rights or privileges not awarded to secondary husbands. Such as, biologically fathering a child.

In this particular system, the secondary husbands have the power to succeed the primary if he were to become severely ill or be away from the home for a long period of time or is otherwise rendered incapable of fulfilling his husbandly duties.

Successional polyandry can likewise be egalitarian, where all husbands are equal in status and receive the same rights and privileges. In this system, each husband will have a wedding ceremony and share paternity of whatever children she may bare.

Other Classifications: Secondary
Examples:

The Irigwe Tribe- Non-fraternal Successional

Irigwe Tribesmen during a ritualistic dance.1959

The Irigwe of Nigeria are one specific instance of a society that practices polyandry in the form of primary and secondary marriages. The parents of the couple typically arrange the primary marriage while the bride- and groom-to-be are young children.

The secondary marriages are initiated by the couples themselves, are relatively inexpensive, and nearly always function to produce offspring. The woman plays a large role in her own secondary marriage arrangements as she is expected to accept several engagements from different suitors, but her father ultimately must approve before she is able to accept.

A woman's control over her secondary marriages exists not only before she is married, but also after she bears her first child. She is able to decide which engagements she would like to honor and which she would not. While there is no specific mention of women's status among the lrigwe, the amount of control one has over her own future may indicate that women have relatively high status in the marital union. " ... while men are not ranked in these unions, wives hold a special status in some societies." Although the Irigwe were of rather low socioeconomic status, the unions within the society seem to be highly regarded.

The Shoshone Native Indian Tribe-Fraternal Successional Levirate

For the Shoshoni, the levirate required, as it typically does, that when widowed, a woman marry her deceased husband's brother. It also required that if a woman takes a second husband while her first husband is still alive, the second husband must be a brother of the first.

The levirate requirements, then, allowed for an easy transition when the first husband passed away, and encouraged fraternal polyandry within the society.

Shoshone Indian family in traditional dress.1895

Brothers in the union were of equal status, both were called "father" by their children, and biological paternity was not of any relevance. also reports of Shoshoni polyandry that it seemed "not to have been uncommon ... and carried no social stigma" . A function of fraternal polyandry among the Shoshoni was that while one husband was away from the home hunting, another was present at home with the wife. The Pawnee seemed to have used fraternal polyandry in a similar manner.

The Pawnee Native Indian Tribe-Fraternal Heirarchal Successional

The Pawnee practiced fraternal polyandry. A younger brother was taught to think of his older brother's wife as his own wife, and usually was invited to live with the couple once he became a young man. The secondary husband was allowed sexual access to the wife at the discretion of the primary husband, possibly after the younger brother demonstrated his bravery and prowess on the warpath. The younger brother usually stayed with his older brother's family for a few years until he married a wife of his own, thus it was common for polyandrous marriages among the Pawnee to be impermanent.

His primary role in his older brother's household was to provide protection for the wife when his brother was absent for any length of time. He was also to guard her sexuality to ensure that she was not having extramarital affairs. Such an offense could result in the woman being killed .

There was definite stratification among the brothers within the union; the older brother possessed more power and control than the younger brother, however, the status of the wife in the union was lower than that of either brother. Fairly high instances of warfare as well as necessity for long hunting trips, both requiring the primary husband to be away from the house for long periods of time, were factors that contributed to the occurrence of polyandry among the Pawnee.

WHAT ARE THE TYPES OF POLYANDRY? : 1. FRATERNAL

There are three main types of ways in which polyandry can be practiced: Fraternal, Successional and Associated.

Fraternal polyandry is when one woman is married to two or more brothers who hold equal responsibilities in the household. The marriage of all of the brothers is usually performed in one ceremony or agreement, and the entire family is seen by the community as a single family unit.

Other Classifications: Classical, Formal, Adelphic.

Examples of 𝗙𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗡𝗔𝗟 𝗣𝗢𝗟𝗬𝗔𝗡𝗗𝗥𝗬 𝗶𝗻 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝗶𝗮

One example is Rajo Verma, who lives in a small Dehradun village with her baby son and her five husbands. Rajo stands by this tradition. All her husbands are brothers..Rajo said that she was always asked to accept all of her husbands as the practice has been continuing in her community for generations. She also mentioned that her mother had beenmarried to three brothers. Rajo mentioned the names of her husbands, Sant Ram (28), Bajju (32), Gopal (26), Guddu (21), and Dinesh (19). She is intimate with all five of them and does not differentiate among them. Guddu Verma, her first and official husband, agreed with her and said that jealousy has never been an issue and that they live like one big happy family. 

Sunita Devi, a resident of Sangla Valley in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh is a part of yet another unusual family. She is wife to two brothers, Ranjit Singh, and Chander Prakash.Even though their marriage isn’t considered legal, it is a happy union of the three. Sunita says that she is ‘lucky to have the affection of two husbands.’ She reveals that husbands in a polyandry handle domestic duties like cooking and helping with childcare, while the women are in charge of the monetary resources.