ABSTRACT: A three-part closed questionnaire was distributed to a convenience sampling of 202 men and women, high school students, and older respondents in a Bedouin-Arab town in the Negev, Israel. Those in monogamous families had more positive attitudes toward polygamy than those from polygamous families. The same was true of men versus women, and youth versus older respondents. Perceived reasons for polygamous family structures likewise varied by age and gender. Previous exposure to or experience with the practice may be significant to perceived attitudes and reasons.

. . .

Polygamous Marriage

Polygamy is defined as a marital relationship involving multiple wives (see Kottak [1978] as cited in [3]). It consists of three types, only the first of which is subject of the present article: (a) polygyny (the more common practice world wide, in which one husband is married to two or more wives; hereafter referred to as polygamy), (b) polyandry (one wife married to two or more husbands), and (c) polygynandry (a group marriage scenario in which two or more wives are simultaneously married to two or more husbands) [4]. Polygamous marriages occur world-wide—in the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Asia, and in some communities in Europe and North America [5-6]. Prevalence rates vary markedly among practicing societies. For example, in sub-Saharan countries, the percentage is estimated between 17 and 30 percent; in Arab countries, from 2 to 12 percent [7]. In addition, rates appear to be increasing in some societies and decreasing in others [8–9].

. . .

The Impact of Polygamy on Family Members' Functioning

Polygamous families are associated with a community's higher rates of gender inequality [26]. Research on women's mental health has found polygamous families are stressful [27] and can produce low self-esteem, depression, and psychological distress [10, 28-31]. Evidence exists of a high proportion of polygamous women in a sample of psychiatric Kuwaiti outpatients compared with the general population [30]; in Yoruba, mental distress was more common among polygamous than monogamous women [32]. Al-Issa [33] cited polygamy as one culturally specific family stress associated with mental illness among Algerian women. Women in polygamous marriages are less likely than in monogamous marriages to discuss family size or birth control with their husbands [34]. Competition between co-wives for the husband's social and economic support and jealousy are all common [35-37].

Not surprisingly, implications exist for children of polygamous families. Because of competition for a father's scarce emotional and financial resources, children of one co-wife may consider those of a second co-wife less as siblings and more as sources of conflict and rivalry [35]. In addition, children in polygamous families may have a more negative self-concept [38]. Al-Krenawi & Lightman [13] examined differences between Bedouin-Arab children from monogamous and polygamous families and found children from monogamous families to have higher academic achievement and fewer behavioral and psychosocial difficulties than those in polygamous families. Lower academic achievement among children of polygamous families is corroborated by Cherian's [39] examination of children in South Africa. Another study on polygamous families concluded that girls' psychological adaptation may be better than boys' [36]. Also, Eapen, Al Gazali, Ben Othman and Abou Saleh [40] found polygamy to be a factor leading to psychological distress and behavioral problems among children in the United Arab Emirates.

. . .

Reasons for Polygamy

Two-factor variance analyses were run to determine the influence of gender and age on reasons for polygamy. Table 3 shows that statistically significant differences for younger and older participants existed for each response. Older participants were more likely to believe that polygamy is encouraged when a wife has a mental illness, is barren (infertile), is older than her husband, or is in a dispute with him. Older participants were also more likely to believe that polygamy was encouraged when the husband has children who are mentally or physically sick, has only daughters, or when exchange marriages (where two men marry one another's sister) are practiced.

. . .

Discussion

Previous research has associated the influence of modern mores with a traditional society's preference for monogamous marriages over the conventional practice of polygamy [25]. The forces of modernization have greatly affected the Bedouin- Arab according to this study. Social life has been transformed over the course of the past 30 years from nomadism to settlement, from traditional values to lives that are increasingly exposed to modern, and from an economic base of herding livestock to one that is more diversified [11, 42]. Likewise, the Bedouin- Arabs in Israel live in a modern country in which polygamy is illegal and is widely considered unacceptable [35]. Thus, it is possible to expect that the influence of the surrounding society might reduce the frequency of polygamy and change attitudes toward it. Moreover, as a consequences of living and interacting with Jewish people, we expected changes of attitudes toward polygamy among men in particular, because many work in mainstream Israeli society an the popular media. The findings, however, reveal that, on every posed variable, more women than men had negative attitudes.