And there are many more societies with “non-classical polyandry” in which women have multiple partners simultaneously or over time, with very little or no social censure. Ethnographic evidence of such informal polyandry has been reported in a total of 53 societies (and primatologist and anthropologist Meredith Small, in a survey of 133 societies, said there was not a single one without female infidelity). By 2000, Sarah Hrdy asked, “Why is polyandry so rare in humans?” and immediately amended her question by posing another: “Or is it?” Hrdy observed that “informal polyandry”—women having
...more
