The case for polyamory Not every polycule is born of narcissism

It might appear, then, that while non-monogamy is not a radical contemporary invention, today’s style of non-monogamy — in which both men and women are free to seek additional partners — makes us a potential outlier in human culture. But while Murdock did record four societies as practising polyandry, the marriage of one woman to multiple men, he missed almost all of the 28 polyandrous societies in the Tibetan plateau alone, and the further 53 beyond it. And where polyandry is found, so too is polygyny, indicating that these groups have liberal sexual norms for both sexes, much like polyamorists today.

There are plenty of reasons why a pre-industrial society would encourage non-monogamy — and narcissistic individualism is not one of them. For the Irigwe of Nigeria, for instance, a mixture of polygyny and polyandry may have served to create alliances between different lineages and tribal groups. Women have primary husbands but are free to seek out secondary or tertiary ones. Soon after she leaves, her first husband will show up to try and get her back, at which point custom dictates that he is offered beer by his wife-taker. “It is considered bad manners for a prior spouse to sulk…but he never misses a chance to criticise the quality of the beer.” Given the overlap between non-monogamy and alternative lifestyles, it is conceivable that polyamorous couples today might still be insulting each other’s homemade beer.

Non-monogamy is a useful solution to other practical issues. Among the Inuit, men would marry their wives to their younger brothers to protect them from being kidnapped while they were off on long hunting trips. Fraternal polyandry also emerged in Tibet, where sets of brothers were married to the same woman to avoid land being divided between multiple couples. The European solution to this same problem was primogeniture.

Being poly can also be a survival tactic in harsh climates. Take the belief in partible paternity — the idea that multiple men can be the father of a single child — once common across lowland South America, such as in the Ache of Paraguay or the Bari of Venezuela. In these societies, a woman would marry one man, but on the birth of her child would name all her lovers. It then fell to all of them to provide additional support, often through gifts of fish and game. By betting on multiple fathers, mothers ensured their children were more likely to survive into adulthood.

On the whole, men tend to be more relaxed about female infidelity in societies where women contribute a high proportion of wealth to the household, and where fathers aren’t expected to do much childcare. In these sexually permissive cultures, a husband also tends to move in with his wife’s family rather than vice versa, which allows women to retain some sexual freedom, as they are protected from controlling husbands and in-laws. This is perhaps most apparent among the Canela of Brazil, who celebrate extramarital festival days during which women have sex with men who are not their husbands. If a girl is lucky enough not to fall pregnant in her young adulthood, which would cause her to give up some of her freedom, she becomes mẽ nkrekre-re — “an uncatchable one” — comparable, as one Canela man put it, to a greased pig in a pig-catching game. Similarly, for the Himba of Namibia, men and women get married yet have additional boyfriends and girlfriends, with nearly half of all children fathered by someone other than their mother’s husband. The men are not being cuckolded and are well aware who the actual father is, yet they invest in their biological and non-biological children equally.

Should we call the Himba, the Irigwe, the Canela and 80% of the world’s non-monogamous pre-industrial cultures narcissists? So why do we accuse people of it today? Because in truth, the accusation conceals a complaint about the behaviour of women. Monogamous societies have always tolerated, even admired, infidelity by men — and yet we consider it “unnatural”, undesirable and selfish for women to do the same.

These examples may seem to have little relevance to our modern lives. Bride kidnapping is no longer, nor do we use polyamory to make peace between warring tribal groups. Yet these societies, while different, can help us understand two things about our own culture. First, that non-monogamy is not an aberrant behaviour and is entirely consistent with our evolved psychology. And second, that as humans try to rear children, pass on wealth or find love, they will engineer tremendously variable social arrangements to satisfy these impulses.

Perhaps the revival of polyamory is a sign of female liberation. Like the Himba, women today contribute greatly to family wealth. And like the Canela, a woman is no longer required to move into her husband’s home. Then and now, a woman’s independence may be a strong determinant of whether or not non-monogamy emerges. In this sense, maybe Tyler Harper was right when he wrote in The Atlantic that non-monogamy is currently a freedom that only the elite can enjoy. High earning women — who aren’t completely reliant on their significant other — can afford independence, flexibility and sexual freedoms.

Or perhaps contemporary polyamorists are seeking to create support networks in a difficult economic environment. Nine-to-five employment, increasingly expensive childcare and the loss of large networks of nearby family that were once a hallmark of human societies has made having children incredibly challenging. You would think this might lead to an emphasis on monogamy, as intensive parenting requires high investment and commitment. But we should remember the South American groups whose belief in partible paternity meant that multiple lovers helped to raise a single child. “Kitchen table polyamory”, in which all partners and their children have amiable dinners together, could be the modern-day equivalent.

Of course, there will be many ways in which contemporary non-monogamy differs from pre-industrial cultures. The rising number of childless individuals clearly changes the risks and incentives in seeking out additional romantic partners. And we are yet to discover what dating apps — offering seemingly unlimited choice in the largely anonymous context of urban life — does to the psychology of commitment. But to dismiss non-monogamy as a perversion of capitalistic individualism would be to misconstrue the patchwork of reasons that explain its emergence.

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Olympia Campbell has a PhD in evolutionary anthropology from UCL.

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