The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century

by Louise Perry

Before I start sounding too quixotic, I should make one thing clear: lifelong monogamy is not our natural state. Only about 15 per cent of societies in the anthropological record have been monogamous.46 Monogamy has to be enforced through laws and customs, and, even within societies in which it is deeply embedded, plenty of people are defiant. To date, monogamy has been dominant in only two types of society: small-scale groups beset by serious environmental privation and some of the most complex civilisations to have ever existed, including our own.47 Almost all others have been polygynous, permitting high-status men to take multiple wives. But while the monogamous marriage model may be relatively unusual, it is also spectacularly successful. When monogamy is imposed on a society, it tends to become richer. It has lower rates of both child abuse and domestic violence, since conflict between co-wives tends to generate both. Birth rates and crime rates both fall, which encourages economic development, and wealthy men, denied the opportunity to devote their resources to acquiring more wives, instead invest elsewhere: in property, businesses, employees, and other productive endeavours.