What if humans had multiple families?

Question

I read an article about a man who's grown-son had been killed. He lamented how it takes "dozens of years to create a family" but that it could be gone so suddenly. What would things be like if human society adopts a system where each person (male and female) had 2 partners - and by extension, was able to raise 2 families (splitting time between the two, either say, on a weekly basis, or biweekly, whatever)? Therefore, a man could have a first family (the one he started first, chronologically) and a second family. The wife of each of those families would also be able to have another family (ie, this particular husband could be her 'first' or second' husband). [Mathematically, what type of network does this form, where each element x (male) can be attached to 0, 1 or 2 elements y (female) , and vice versa?] I'm not concerned about legal or moral issues. I'm wondering how this could be an improvement to overall social health and stability, both at the individual and societal level

Answer 1

That would suck horribly. Dude... come on. It should be about love. One guy, one girl to start a family. Not two guys with one girl, vice-versa. Basically, you're doing two things.

1) ******* up the whole POINT of creating children

and 2) Increasing the human population by VERY MUCH.

And another thing, "It's not about counting the years, it's about making the years count." This guy needs to shut the **** up about his son being lost. He's talking like it's a ******* tree! People are important, yes. But you should not complain because he/she died... it's innevitable(sp?) for someone to die... you die eventually.... so... don't complain when someone else does it.

Answer 2

yes, it does seem like an interesting problem mathematically. It reminds me of Heinlein who in his science fiction writing proposed the concept of choosing from a variety of different types of marital contracts. some of the choices were time-limited, for example.

I noticed that you said you are not concerned about legal or moral issues. If that is the case, there is nothing new about the idea of multiple mating partners because people have had multiple partners in the past, and women have had children from different fathers, and men have had children with different mothers. But it is still an interesting idea to think about and piece apart. :)

If someone were to model this problem, I can think of two general approaches to do this:

One would be defining a system rigidly and mathematically and proving something interesting about the system.

The other way would be to model the problem with computer simulation.

I think it is important to note that you said that each element CAN be attached, in other words, it is not forced to be one way or another. I would interpret this as either an individual choice or an agreement based on some contract between multiple individuals. I say contract in the sense that in the simulation, agents would be bound to the contract.  But if I were using the mathematical approach, I would start simple, and require 2 partners.

Another twist on this would be the idea of cheating. Even if the contract allows for n partners for element x, it is always theoretically possible for him(or her) to cheat, or connect to n+1 partners, or more!

Another recommendation would be that you use x to refer to female, and y to refer to male. But only because the male has the y chromosome. It is a pet peeve perhaps, just an amusing suggestion :).

Then there is the issue of what types of things would be interesting to know about?

What would be the effect epidemiologically?

What would be the effect in terms of population growth rates?

What would be the effect in socioeconomic terms?

Basic demographic studies.

Come to think of it, there is probably already a wealth of data waiting to be analyzed.

So that would be a third way to study the problem: using actual real-life data.

I would guess that sharing a household would decrease the marginal cost of homeownership, whether the people sharing the household are related or complete strangers.

I think that the population growth rate would be a counterintuitive effect, actually lowering overall fertility rates. This is because rich people have lower fertility rates. And if people are coming together to save economically speaking, they will also be choosing to lower their fertility rate. However, a demographic study based on data may be misleading because people who choose to have multiple partners may be doing so for economic purposes. In other words, if they were forced to be monogomous, they would be even poorer and have even more children.

There would also be more difficult to quantify benefits, such as the benefit of parent-child time. If there are more parents in the household, it stands to reason that the amount of time with which the children are interacting with at least one parent will be higher.

Best of luck in getting more answers to your valid question :)!

Answer 3

Well, first, it's not as though 80% of parents lose ALL their kids.

It would be logistically hard to coordinate, and have tremendous emotional wear and tear.

It's an interesting idea, but it's a really hard to pull-off solution to a non-existent problem.

Stability?

Think about all the stuff about people's actual lives, and all the details involved.

It's not legally or morally, but logistically and emotionally that you've got the biggest obstacles.

Answer 4

actually, you can only look at this question in a religious and legal aspect. because it is ONLY RELIGION AND LAW  that prevent this from happening.  different societies with different laws or religions often have multiple wives, or families headed by females. and why stop at just 2 spouses each? why not 6? 0r however many you want? In actual practice, regardless of what law and religion accept, many males and females have offspring with several partners making for some very unusual family groups.