Polygamy & Womens health...

[Golden Tapir]

Your comments, please; My starting place is:

Dr. Shades:

Now, it doesn't make a single bit of difference whether the sperm which fertilizes her egg came from a monogamist or a polygamist--she can only reproduce once every 9 months, MAXIMUM. (end of quote)

Agree, but a couple of notes on the details:

Well....not EXACTLY EXACTLY.. Some particularly fertile women (couples) have a lesser preg cycle due to pre-mature births.

Also: Women's health suffers under polygamy. You see...A woman's genitals, being internal, develop a complex set of anti-bodies to assist with her health. When she is sharing a partner (or having multiple partners), she increases her exposure to diseases including chlamydia (and so do her male partners). For sexual contacts, Having sex is, like we say: When you have sex with one, you're also having sex with those your partner had sex with. That also tends to lower their reproductive rate. Thus, i believe Polygamy adversely affected women's (physical) health and/or presented mental-emotional problems-challenges INCLUDING/SUCH AS conflicts with other (nomo) family members.

Like the church is telling us NOW, monogamy is the best for our health (and it was back then also).

DW told me so, she's an RN.

[maxrep12]

Another aspect of this question could be: How did polygamy affect womens mental health?

[opmer]

There was a geriatric physician from SLC who just died who was an advocate of polygamy for older men (he was Jewish, not LDS). This doesn't quite apply directly to your argument, but there are people who believe that at certain times polygamy would be healthful for men and women.

If the women who were plural wives were all virgins at marriage and they only had intercourse with their husband, and if the husband used some hygiene down under, I'm not sure it would be unhealthful, but that is A LOT OF IFS!!

[emaughan]

Also: Women's health suffers under polygamy. You see...A woman's genitals, being internal, develop a complex set of anti-bodies to assist with her health. When she is sharing a partner (or having multiple partners), she increases her exposure to diseases including chlamydia (and so do her male partners). For sexual contacts, Having sex is, like we say: When you have sex with one, you're also having sex with those your partner had sex with. That also tends to lower their reproductive rate. Thus, i believe Polygamy adversely affected women's (physical) health and/or presented mental-emotional problems-challenges INCLUDING/SUCH AS conflicts with other (nomo) family members.

Comparing a group that only has sex within that group (which has never been studied as far as I know) - is very different to extrapolating it over to what has been studied, having multiple sexual partners outside of marriage. As for mental health in plural marriage - again not studied - one would have to look at the culture surrounding the women. A culture that was prowomen's rights and encouraged education and self improvement would probably be very good for those who choose a plural marriage. They could have family, kids and a career without nearly as much stress as a monogamous relationship; they would have more support at home. In a repressive environment, the negative effects could be amplified by plural marriage.

In either case there would be an added stress of culural bias and stigma against all those that practiced, both from the religious right and the "tolerant" liberal left. Jelousy can occure in both mongamous and plural marriages but is a more direct issue that has to be delt with daily in a plural marriage.

Again though - no studies.

[Golden Tapir]

emaughan:

They could have family, kids and a career without nearly as much stress as a monogamous relationship;... (end of quote)

they certainly DID have the first two...but women... and a career?

Are you referring to when polygamy WAS back early in church history OR to what 'might be'?

[Blink]

It would certainly be worthwhile to study the health dynamics of plural marriage, if it effected a significant number of women in the population. Unfortunately, it doesn't effect very many.

But if it did:

-- would a significant rise in yeast infections be prevelant? Would the yeast infections be less treatable?

-- would the women's cycles be syncronized if they didn't live in the same household?

-- would there be a significant reduction in desire in pre-menopausal women?

-- would menopause onset be sooner? later? show any significant changes in symptoms?

-- is there any significant increase in lesbian activity in polygamous households?

-- would there be any difference in obesity rates, hypertension, or breast cancer?

Problems with any study of polygamous women are almost all related to sampling. Too bad. It would be fascinating.

[emaughan]

they certainly DID have the first two...but women... and a career?

Are you referring to when polygamy WAS back early in church history OR to what 'might be'?

First PhDs earned by women west of the Mississippi were LDS women who practiced polygamy. My own ancestors, the wives ran Peter's business in Cache Valley while he was being chased by U.S. marshalls and when he was in prison (oral legend - have not yet found any journal entries). There has also been a tradition of the Maughan women being very kind, loving, and VERY independant in their ways!

So some historic and some of what it could/should be. What I don't like the looks of is the way current polygamist cults practice it. It seems in no way enabling or empowering of women - just the opposite. The glory of God is intelligence and yet many of these women are totally discouraged from gaining an education. As a former teacher, dad of 2 very bright girls, and being married to a woman who is smarter than I - I say that their practice is disgusting!

Plural marriage does have potential to be a very powerfull force that would give women the freedom to choose both family and career without shortchanging either one. Today instead of polygamy, families farm their kids out to be raised by strangers so that both parents can have it all - not the best model in my opinion.

[Golden Tapir]

emaugham:

First PhDs earned by women west of the Mississippi were LDS women who practiced polygamy.(end of quote)

(I hope this attention to detail doesn't annoy you)

that is an interesting claim statement;

out of curiosity...which institutions were offering these, first dates were ( ? )

I think that you (might have) meant to say "oral history" instead of ledgends for information / history that is not a myth or suspect as to its authenticity.

PhD's from (wondering out loud here) which institutions? what dates?

which of those are documented? That is interesting to me (not knowing much about grad work in that era, let alone out west.)

[dangermom]

I don't know about the PhD stuff, but there were quite a few polygamous women who left their children at home and cared for by sister-wives in order to go to medical school back East. Many of Utah's doctors were women. I have the book somewhere around here, but we're running out the door just now.

Polygamy, in many cases, made it easier for women to run a farm, raise children, and do outside work all at the same time; Utah women did a lot of writing, storekeeping, and all kinds of stuff.

[Golden Tapir]

Hmmmmm two posts to the same reason...are beginning to suggest that reasons for P might have been economic as well. Interesting, to say the least.

I don't think, however, that JS (and BY?) marrying women that already had living husbands (away on missions?) would fit that reason.

[Nighthawke]

emaugham:

First PhDs earned by women west of the Mississippi were LDS women who practiced polygamy.(end of quote)

(I hope this attention to detail doesn't annoy you)

that is an interesting claim statement;

out of curiosity...which institutions were offering these, first dates were ( ? )

I think that you (might have) meant to say "oral history" instead of ledgends for information / history that is not a myth or suspect as to its authenticity.

PhD's from (wondering out loud here) which institutions? what dates?

which of those are documented? That is interesting to me (not knowing much about grad work in that era, let alone out west.)

Do you really know so little about early LDS women, so I would guess that you're here spouting off, obviously, about something you know very little about. Figures.

Brigham Young once spoke at some length about the desirability of Fifteenth Ward commencing "various branches of business

[Nighthawke]

Here's a wee bit of reading to give you an introduction:

Dr. Martha Hughes Paul Cannon

Deseret Hospital

[Golden Tapir]

Nighthawke: the first link was broken, but I did see the info on the second....

This might be compared to women working in wartime industries; a predecessor of women's liberation... (?).

this is an interesting, if unintended turn in the thread!

I think the question still stands: where did these women go to grad and med schools?

[truth dancer]

Hi E...

Plural marriage does have potential to be a very powerfull force that would give women the freedom to choose both family and career without shortchanging either one.

WHAT?

Please tell me you are kidding!!!

OK... I personally don't see any difference between a man with multiple partners where they are called wives or whether they are called other women or mistresses or affaires or whatever. The dynamics are the same.

If a married man has five mistresses (with whom he supports and spends time) each with four do you think this arrangement is a powerful force that would give the women the freedom to choose both family and career without being shortchanged?

Do you think children benefit if the father is sharing his time with five or ten other families?

Do you think a woman has MORE freedom with her husband away visiting other famlies? I just don't understand this line of thinking at all.

A woman who is sharing her husband with, lets say five other families is basically a single parent. Ask any single parent if it is powerful and gives them freedom to raise their children on their own!

Unless a man is REALLY wealthy, he cannot support five families so women are forced to work to provide for themselves PLUS raise their children virtually on their own since the father is sharing his time with a bunch of other families.

Oh.. another thing.. What in the world is the difference between a woman having her neighbor watch her kids while she works and having a "sister wife" watch her children? Just because they share a man doesn't somehow make the woman a better babysitter!

I find it so strange that some so strongly condemn women who have their children in daycare...........but applaud women working and leaving their children if the daycare has the name of polygamy. Either way the woman who is leaving her children is leaving her children with someone else to raise.

So, take a married man, who brings other women into his life, has all sorts of children with all of them, can't afford to support them all so all the women get jobs, doesn't have the time or energy to parent all his children or support all the women, and how exactly is this a good thing exacatly? Or is it only good if they call it polygamy?

OK... I'm done for a while!!

~dancer~

[Golden Tapir]

truth Dancer: daycare

I CRINGE whenever I see that word! (online or offline)

It's the children who are being cared for, NOT 'the days'...Focus on the child!!!

otherwise: good Points/questions!

I'm amayzed this thread has been so productive, even if not 'dead on' the direction I intended! thank you all!!!

[drfatguy]

Truth Dancer,

We are going to disagree. I'll bet you didn't expect that. You state women in polygamous relationships are basically single parents. This is where we disagree. You use the dynamics of a married man with 4 mistresses as being the same as a polygamous relationship. I see it differently. If each woman knows about the other women then there's a difference already. Let's take your example to a conclusion, 5 women, one man. Not each woman would have to support her own family with a little help from the husband. If the women and the husband pooled their resources and let 2 women watch the chlidren while 3 worked with the husband, this would make for a stronger relationship and a fiscally sound union. The need for daycare would go away because the children are being watched by someone who has a stake on their future. Not only watched but disciplined and taught. Golden Tapir doesn't like it being called daycare because we are watching chlidren but, to me, it's like watching the day go away until we pick up our child. Not good for any involved. Whether the child is raised by it's mother or a sister wife, the child will recieve better care than in daycare. You may hate the thread, but the polygamous wives of the church were well educated, in some instances, and developed skills necessary to make society strong. This was the best polygamy had to offer. There are the worst, but I don't want to discuss those because it will ruin my postition.

Dr Fatguy

[Nighthawke]

Nighthawke: the first link was broken, but I did see the info on the second....

This might be compared to women working in wartime industries; a predecessor of women's liberation... (?).

this is an interesting, if unintended turn in the thread!

I think the question still stands: where did these women go to grad and med schools?

The first link works fine:

Dr. Martha Cannon's "academic prowess earned her admission to the medical school of the University of Michigan, from which she graduated as a physician at age twenty-three. Throughout her college and medical school years, Martha was a "working girl" -- she washed dishes, made beds, and worked as a secretary to support her education.

"Martha entered pharmacy school at the University of Pennsylvania where she was the only woman out of seventy-five students."

Here is more reading:

The decade of the 1870s saw the beginning of professional opportunity for women in Utah. Suffrage had introduced them into the public concerns, and when in 1872 Georgie Snow was admitted to the bar as the first qualified Utah woman lawyer she was welcomed by her male colleagues. Her training had consisted of "reading law" in her father's law office for three years, and her bar examination was a fifteen-minute impromptu interrogation conducted by an ad hoc committee while Judge McKean and the court waited to pronounce her admission. The whole examination would have been foregone, in fact, were it not for the court's fear that if she were adrnitted unexamined, a precedent would be set for the young men who followed to expect that same privilege.

Women in professional medicine followed the women lawyers during that same decade. Midwives, called and set apart by Church leaders had long been the chief medical practitioners, but finally President Young brought into consideration his awareness of the midwives' inadequacies, his distrust of the gentile male doctors practicing then, and his sense of propriety which demanded that women be attended by women doctors, with the result that he called for women to study medicine in eastern universities and then return to Zion to practice and instruct there. The experiences of Romania B. Pratt Penrose, the first Utah woman to earn her MD, and Ellis Shipp, who followed her, have a blend of the comic and the pathetic. Home after her first year in a New York medical college, Romania Pratt found herself with no money to return. Brigham Young looks to Eliza R. Snow: raise some money for her, he suggests. And the Relief Society comes through, enabling Romania to leave again her five children and complete her work in general practice as well as a specialization in eye and ear. Ellis Shipp, with whom Romania shared for a short time her room at Philadelphia Woman's Medical College, had the same sort of difficulty returning for her second year. Imagine either of these ladies (Ellis especially, since she returned to school pregnant), facing their dissection lab. One student described how it must have seemed to ladies of Victorian sensibilities:

The sight of eight stark, staring bodies, every age and color, stretched upon as many tables, was not reassuring to say the least. A stifled scream might have been heard, and there were some pale faces, and clinging to each other for support, [and] highly perfumed handkerchiefs held assiduously to the noses of the more sensitive.

Returning to Salt Lake City, both doctors not only established practices, but conducted classes in nursing and obstetrics for their sisters.

- "Under the Sunbonnets: Mormon Women with Faces" by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, BYU Studies, vol. 16 (1975-1976), Number 4 - Summer 1976, 481-482.

[Calm]

What in the world is the difference between a woman having her neighbor watch her kids while she works and having a "sister wife" watch her children?

I am the only neighbour I know who took a friend's 5 year old in fulltime so that she could go back to school (I lived in Kansas at the time, she in CA and she went to BYU to finish off her degree). I don't know of too many neighbours that would take in the 'kid next door' for 24/7 as did some of those plural wives due to the mother's health or other needs.

Most exchange students are doing it for the child's benefit, not the mother's.

[emaughan]

Golden Tapir doesn't like it being called daycare because we are watching chlidren but, to me, it's like watching the day go away until we pick up our child. Not good for any involved. Whether the child is raised by it's mother or a sister wife, the child will recieve better care than in daycare.

I've mentioned this before and I'll mention it again, having taught I saw a large difference between those children who had a parent at home and those that were farmed out to the daycare barns. There were exceptions to the rule on both sides, but the majority of the children raised by low paid strangers suffered because of (most often) the parents selfishness. Money and career are the driving force that pushes parents in this direction. I feel for the single parents that have no choice in the matter (I was raised by my mother who was also a school teacher), but what excuse do couples have? Can't be money because if we could do it on my teaching salary - anyone can do it.

Day care is bad and should only be used in the case of single parents if no family is available to help. Ironic that in our culture, hirering strangers to raise your children is totally acceptable yet plural marriage, where the children would be cared for by one or more parents all day, is morally wrong. What a twist.

[Golden Tapir]

emaughan:

Day care is bad and should only be used in the case of single parents if no family is available to help. Ironic that in our culture, hirering strangers to raise your children is totally acceptable yet plural marriage, where the children would be cared for by one or more parents all day, is morally wrong. What a twist. (end of quote)

em: Just exactly a) who told OR suggested to you that 'hiring strangers' is o.k.?

Did you believe them/that?

[emaughan]

em: Just exactly a) who told OR suggested to you that 'hiring strangers' is o.k.?

Did you believe them/that?

Cultural acceptance gt - I see quite a few folks who see nothing wrong with paying others to raise their kids. Certainly there are those that agree with me that it is not correct, but do you not feel that it is generally accepted in the U.S. - and other countries? Now if your statement is that the phrase "hiring strangers" is bad/wrong/incorrect - then how would you phrase so that it is more socially acceptable.

Wording can make a huge difference in how we precieve things - in this case I used wording that reflects how I see it. It also happens to be brutally honest wording that is spot on in most cases.

P.S. I'm very pro-children in my POV. Day care is not something that I see as being good for children. At best it is a nescessary evil that single parents may need. Otherwise I am very opposed to it because I have seen first hand what neglect from self absorbed parents is doing to the children.

[truth dancer]

Hi E...

Ironic that in our culture, hirering strangers to raise your children is totally acceptable yet plural marriage, where the children would be cared for by one or more parents all day, is morally wrong. What a twist.

Two points here... first hiring someone to take care of one's child.

If both parents must work or if there is a basically single parent due to a woman sharing her husband or being single, IMO, I would much rather pick those with whom i want to take care of my children then be stuck with a woman who may or may not be the greatest child caretaker.

I'm sorry but I truly do not see a sister wife being any better than the neighbor down the street... My experience is that if there is a mom already overworked with several of her own children she is not going to be the best caretaker of someone elses children. I would MUCH rather have those who are wanting to be a child care worker... the pay is well worth it!!

Second point... the morally wrong part...

I don't think many feel it is ok to hire a total stranger to raise one's child. I think those who utilize childcare do their best to find a loving adult who enjoys children to help in the raising of the child.

But the reason most are opposed to polygamy has been missed.

It is that fathers are virtually absent from the picture... women sharing a husband for whatever reason are left without enough support to take care of their children, so must work.

Is this not exactly the same scenario as a man with many mistresses having children and not supporting them so the women must work to care for their children.

Who the heck cares if the extra woman are called wives or mistresses or scooby doo? Children will not receive the same care.... the women will NOT receive the same support.

I don't think I'm making my point very well.

It seems to me that some praise polygamy when they fail to see that the dynamics of the lifestyle are exactly the same as if a man had several women and families on the side...

I think most people would suggest that the situation where a woman who is sharing a husband with other women and families, who could NOT support his family financially so the wife had to go to work and put the children in childcare, is not exactly great. But somehow if a man is "married" to other women and has additional families and cannot support the children so the wife has to go to work and let the other women raise the children, well then it is so great for the women... what freedom!!!

AHHHHHHHHHHHhh I don't think so!!!1

The reality is... what would be MOST healthy would be to have one mother and several fathers. The more resources, the more time everyone could have with children, the more financial support the children could have, the more opportunities for everyone!!

(Of course I'm not advocating this by any stretch of the imagination... I actually don't think this is a good idea but it would certainly be better for children than a man with multiple families... )

~dancer~

[truth dancer]

Hi Doc....

A couple of things...

You may hate the thread, but the polygamous wives of the church were well educated, in some instances, and developed skills necessary to make society strong. This was the best polygamy had to offer. There are the worst, but I don't want to discuss those because it will ruin my postition.

I don't hate anything...

I understand some women in the early days of the church were educated. I just don't see what this has to do with polygamy really. I mean the idea that some women gave their women to other women who were sharing a man, to raise one's child is NO better than a woman today, having her child in childcare so she can go to school. I just don't see a difference at all. The fact that the childcare worker happened to have a relationship with one's husband regardless of the name of the arrangement doesn't make a difference. It is still asking another woman to help with childcare. The only difference is the fact that the woman doing the childcare has a relationship with the mother's husband.

Do you think it would be a good idea if a married man developed a relationship with the childcare worker of his children, had a few children with her, tried to support her but couldn't really? (in the early days of the church..)Or is it ok if he "married" her? Then all of a sudden the women are happy, the children are fine, all is well?

I just don't see it...

~dancer~

[Guest johnny_cat]

As I said before, I am grateful for polygamy in one respect: it made my life possible. Polygamy was not easy and did not always have many benefits, but my ancestors lived as they believed they should. I honor them for that.