Polygamous Families in Contemporary Society

by Irwin Altman, Joseph Ginat, Sterling M. McMurrin (Foreword)

In this intriguing book, social psychologist Irwin Altman and anthropologist Joseph Ginat examine husband-wife and wife-wife relationships in contemporary Mormon polygamous families. The authors describe how husbands and wives in plural families cope with their complex lifestyle in various facets of everyday life, including courtship, weddings, honeymoons, adjustments to a new life, living arrangements, and the husband's rotation among wives. Other topics include budget and resource management, psychological attachments to homes, and the social-emotional relationships among family members. This pioneering, comprehensive analysis of life in modern day Mormon polygamous families uses first-hand interviews and observations to describe this unusual family lifestyle. It adds to our understanding of close relationships and complements knowledge on other modern relationship forms, such as single-parent families, blended families, and cohabitating partners. This is important reading for researchers in social psychology, anthropology, and religious studies. Lay readers will also find the subject matter to be fascinating.

532 pages, Hardcover

First published July 26, 1996

Reviews

[Mercurybard]

This is an anthropological text--completely with indexes full of methods used and statistics--make no mistake, but it is a fairly unbiased look at various aspects of a unique and growing culture in America. 26 families (including 4 divorced women who were in plural marriages that fell apart), covering a broad range of ages and social status were interviewed, and it's hard not to find favorites as you read through the ancedotes. The book explores everything from men's attachment to their homes (not great...usually because they are limited to an office or just a couple of drawers in the wives' bureaus) to who gets to name the babies (usually it's a dyadic process, though the men have veto power) to how wife-wife relationships and how conflicts are diffused.

The authors had both previously studied other polygynous cultures around the world, but those were "primitive" societies. You can tell they were fascinated to find polygyny in their own backyards, so to speak.