Monday, September 16, 2019
What are some of the stereotypic traits typically assigned to being feminine and to being masculine?
Men and women are being stereotyped as polygamous and polyandra. Transcending from animal to human behaviour, many would rather conclude that even man are not naturally inclined to be monogamous. Like the primates, two forms are readily observable in society. Of the two types of marriage systems, polygamy (plural marriage) has been found to be the most common throughout history than its opposite form of monogamy.Polygamy has taken two forms: polyandra, in which a wife has two or more husbands; and polygyny, in which a man has two or more wives. This second form of plural marriage has been much more common, historically, than the first, and still is, although polyandry still persisted towards the early 20th century in parts of India, on the high plateau of Tibet, and in other scattered localities. Primary reason for its practice mainly falls out of necessity.Sustenance depends from a limited number of farmland and the careful balancing of population against food reserves. Each family therefore, avoids dividing its meagre tillage in ever-diminishing lots among its progeny by having the younger sons share the wife of the eldest son. Not only does this practice reduce the number of children in each generation, and keep each property permanently within the family, it has some other curious results.Polyandry, for some reason not wholly accounted for by anthropologists, reduces the fertility of wives, and produces an abnormal ratio of male to female births. Custom obliges them to treat each husband with equal favour, but it often happens that a woman of many husbands may prefer one brother to all the others. Due to contacts with dwellers outside their village, women are feeling the stigma of polyandra. More women from this system then, are beginning to revolt and are asserting their own demands for monogamy.
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