Why Monogamy?

By Tom W. Bell

In the last Extropy I described love as a contractual relation.$^{1}$ As something of a footnote, I’d now like to follow up with a word about monogamy.

Nothing in ‘Love as a Contractual Relation’ limits love contracts to only two parties. Three or more people could conceivably enter into a love relation — consider polygamy (marriages between multiple husbands or wives). Less than two people can love, too. When an individual sacrifices immediate pleasures for future gains, his present self and his potential self enter into a contractual relation of sorts. What love relation could be more intimate? Self-love is love, too.

Nevertheless, I wrote ‘Love as a Contractual Relation’ with monogamy in mind. My own experiments in love have focused on love relations between only two parties. Keeping love to two limits the number of variables — keeps the data tidy! Experimental elegance was not, however, my main motivation for preferring monogamy. Something else, something stronger and deeper, draws me to only one lover at a time.

$^{1}$ Tom W. Bell, ‘Love as a Contractual Relation,’ Extropy 3 (Spring 1989): 9-13.

I share this trait with most other humans; monogamy is the commonest sort of bond in present human society. Though about 75% of the world’s cultures allow polygamy,$^{1}$ it remains the exception rather than the rule even in those societies.$^{2}$ Why is monogamy so popular?

Biological Reasons for Monogamy

I’ve sought a justification for monogamy in the animal kingdom at large, but it seems to be an almost uniquely human trait. Disneyesque fantasies aside, only 3% of non-human mammals practice monogamy. It’s seen in even fewer of the fishes, and virtually none of the other animals. So monogamy

$^{1}$ Among polygamous societies, the vast majority practice polygyny (multiple wives). Less than 1% favor polyandry (multiple husbands). Perhaps this is because men have a stronger genetic drive toward promiscuity, for the reasons outlined below. Lloyd Saxton, The Individual, Marriage, and the Family (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1980), 235.

$^{2}$ Chris Catton and James Gray, Sex In Nature (Beckenman, England: Croom Helm Limited, 1985), 219.

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Isn’t the relation of choice for most living things.

The birds, however, present an interesting exception. Over ninety percent of them take only one mate at a time. Birds are special among animals, however, because they have such high energy needs. Small hummingbirds consume two times their body weight of sweet nectar daily. Even relatively sedate songbirds eat a third of their weight in food each day. This makes raising baby birds tough. After feeding themselves, bird parents must warm, defend, and feed their chicks as well.

Luckily for female birds, male birds can help with all of these tasks. They can build the nest, brood the eggs, bring food, and frighten away predators. Thus a male bird serves his genes most efficiently by taking only one mate at a time and helping her to raise their offspring. Male birds have therefore evolved to do just that. Few other male animals can help their children as much, so males of other species have been naturally selected for promiscuity.$^{1}$ Perhaps the females of non-monogamous species would have it otherwise, but it takes two to tango. These considerations reveal a universal biological principle: monogamy covaries with the advantages it offers to the genes of both male and female of a species.

Does this principle apply to Homo Sapiens? Is monogamy to the advantage of our genes? It certainly was at one time. Though humans don’t crave energy as much as birds do, the human infant’s long gestation period and helpless childhood does make parenthood a heavy burden. Like birds, human males can help their

mates with childraising a great deal, too. Perhaps, then, humans have been naturally selected to prefer monogamy. It has probably served our genes long and well.

While our genetic heritage may explain our preferring monogamy, however, it doesn’t justify it. We have freed ourselves of the constraints that may have once made monogamy necessary for successful parenthood. Technology has rendered both food and shelter relatively cheap. Unlike a female bird, a female human can now provide for her children without a man’s help. The same is true of single fathers, as well. So while we may have been naturally selected to prefer monogamy, our intelligence has rendered our genetic programming obsolete.$^{2}$

¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?

Still, it may be argued, we cannot ignore our genetic programming. Like it or not, it affects us. When we choose what sort of life to live, we must consider what we can feel comfortable with. If only monogamy satisfies our deep-seated drives, then we may as well ignore the rational arguments for polygamy and settle into comfortable couplings.

This is only true, however, to the extent that we are willing to sacrifice

$^{2}$I refer, of course, to humans in the modern industrial world. In poorer cultures, successful parenthood may yet require the cooperation of two parents.

$^{1}$Ibid., 181.

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our rationality for our pleasure. One might take a heroic approach to love, eschewing easy comforts for logical possibilities. Though this approach may sound odd to those who pursue love solely for pleasure’s sake, it isn’t inconceivable that the love of rationality could lead one to prefer rational love.

¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿? Alone above all other animals, we have the power to rise above our inborn drives ¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?¿?

More importantly, however, the argument that we should accept our genetic programming assumes that we are powerless to change it. But we humans need not be slaves to our genes. Alone among all other animals, we have the power to rise above our inborn drives, to place our individual interests above those of our genes. Through force of will, conditioning, and (eventually) genetic engineering, we can effectively negate our “monogamy genes”, if such there be.

With this in mind, let’s take a fresh look at monogamy. Suppose that you can overcome any genetic predisposition for monogamy. Or suppose that you’re a mutant of sorts — you lack the “monogamy gene.” Have you still got any reason to prefer monogamy?

Practical Reasons for Monogamy

Well, there are still a couple of practical reasons in favor of monogamy. Firstly, you have to keep in mind that blatant polygamy can make life among monogamists somewhat difficult. So one

might stick to monogamy simply to enjoy the “benefits” of conformity (more aptly: to avoid the hardships of individualism). I sincerely hope that this argument doesn’t carry too much weight among Extropy’s readers! In any case, this consideration counts for less and less in our increasingly pluralistic culture.

Another practical consideration to keep in mind: sexually transmitted diseases. We shouldn’t treat this advantage of of monogamy too lightly — AIDS makes it a life-or-death issue. Nevertheless, careful lovers can work around the dangers of STD’s, and medical technology will someday eliminate them altogether.

Psychological Reasons for Monogamy

If Freud and his many followers are right, we may have psychological reasons to prefer monogamy over other forms of romantic relationships. As he would have it, we look for our parents in our lovers. To oversimplify (for how else can one represent the tangles of human psychology?), we seek to reenact with our current lovers the relationships we observed between our parents, symbolically becoming our mothers’ fathers, or our fathers’ mothers. Given that most of us have come from monogamous households, monogamy most fully satisfies our psychological needs.

Of course, this argument makes the psychological reasons for monogamy entirely contingent on one’s upbringing. If you come from a non-monogamous household, then monogamy would not offer you the most psychologically satisfying sort of love relation. Once

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polygamy gained a foothold in a society, then, monogamy would fall from favor.

More importantly, this argument faces the same objections that confronted the genetic argument for monogamy: our comfort with a particular form of relationship doesn’t necessarily justify it. Rather than forever reliving the dramas of our childhoods, we may be better off freeing ourselves from our pasts. What would we see if we could look at our lovers with the clear eyes of an adult, instead of through the dim eyes of subconscious children? We might see that we’d lost one of our major reasons for favoring monogamy.

Information-Theoretic Reasons for Monogamy

In ‘Sexual Information’$^{1}$ I suggested that we enjoy sex so much because it satisfies our lust for information. Perhaps the same holds true of monogamy. People are complex. It takes a long time and a lot of work to come to an understanding of those you love. Even once you get to that point, however, you can’t rest easy. People change, and successful relationships must change along with them. Relating to someone fully is a lot like speaking a language fluently: you have to master the basics, keep up to date on its changes, and practice constantly. If we want to enjoy the full richness of a romantic relationship, then, we may have to restrict ourselves to only one romantic partner at a time, just as most of us speak only one language fluently.

Just as have the previous ones, however, this justification of monogamy

faces several objections. For one thing, we must note that some people speak many languages fluently. Why can’t some people therefore enjoy several fully developed relationships, as well? This objection depends heavily on the analogy between relationships and languages, however, and it seems likely that people are more complex than languages. (Consider, as proof, that the power of speech is a subset on one’s entire personality.) While a super-romantic capable of deeply understanding several lovers isn’t beyond the realm of imagination, in actuality few people have the capacity to understand themselves, much less any one else.

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Why can’t one have a single romantic love and several sexual partners?

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Much to my disconcert, my own (presumably) monogamous love has offered another objection to the information-theoretic justification of monogamy: it assumes that love and sex cannot be separated. But why can’t one have a single romantic love and several sexual partners? While your relationship with the former may demand a great deal of time and effort, your sexual flings would require more stamina than understanding. In all honesty, I can’t think of a good retort to this beyond the observation that in practice not many romantic relationships allow such sexual freedom (do they, hon?).

Finally, to take a futuristic view of relationships, we must note that this

$^{1}$Tom W. Bell, ‘Sexual Information’, Extropy 3 (Spring, 1989): 22-26.

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