POLYGAMY

A family is an institution where everyone is supposed to belong to one another, helping to save each other from shame, embarrassment, and failure. This was made difficult by the fact that two or more women were kept in the same household by a man whose society and culture made polygamy a part of the life and a normal thing in these parts of the world.

Women naturally are more jealous compared to men. Keeping more females together as wives for one man is a dangerous gamble for the man. He will have a disorganized home where conflict is a daily occurrence.

As a man, he will not bother about the conflict and what its outcome might be, because he will reign over the ladies and their children and will calm the situation down.

Women, being who they are, will calm down or stop the quarrel, each trying not to be blamed for starting a conflict. The real war is fought silently.

In many parts of the world, men may marry as many wives as they can afford to ''care for'' or ''have'', which would be the right phrase. Women are respected and they have the right to climb to higher positions in the social ladder. Yet they are denied the right to make a choice of their own when it comes to whom they are going to share the rest of their lives with as a family.

The western culture discourages polygamy and this is ideal for a more peaceful society, even if not completely peaceful. No society is perfect, we keep learning from each other, taking what works and avoiding what doesn't.

This is just my personal opinion and experience as a child raised in a polygamous home. As a kid, you don't worry much about the conflicts because you thought it will settle with time, but the anger and envy between the ladies goes on forever causing instability and distrust between the siblings.

This distrust follows the children into adulthood in their encounters with one another, and even in other communities where they might find themselves.

Charity they say begins at home. If you already learned hatred and how to choose your mother's side instead of sharing justly, you are bound to be partial in your dealings with others, even in the outside world.

Don't get me wrong, there may be some exceptional cases, but everyone judges from the closest case at hand. Of course, some families may work better than others. It all depends on the husband. The ladies also play very crucial role in this case.

I think Africa would have resisted colonization and slavery if this system of hatred in the families had never existed due to polygamy.

Kids are closer to their mothers. There are more cases of single mothers as most fathers care less about the family and the young ones.

African culture is one where women play a greater part in bringing up their children than the male partners. For instance, during the war, some fathers often leave the children to the mother to care for while they go out in search of food or join the military with the hope that the poor ladies will take care of them, no matter their number. The kids, in most cases, start with 2 kids in rare cases when the lady is still a newly married woman to more often 5 and more kids.

Women tell stories of how they were left on their own to care for all their kids, six to eight children during war time. For some of them, their husbands went to war or were forced to join the military during war time, and never made it back home.

Families are sometimes forced to go separate ways because they feel there is no good reason to leave together. The tradition in Africa sometimes permits men to marry up to 10, but they may also have concubines outside their homes.

These are women used as the culture of the land permits. Although in some cases they are been taken as wives, but their offspring have no legal right to the man's properties.

Most polygamous families are extremely large. It depends on the man and his position to determine the number of wives he can afford and how many children each woman could bear, but they start with 3 wives and up, each having from 5 to 8 children per wife.

Among these ladies, in a peaceful household, the first wife is regarded with great respect, and sometimes referred to as the mother of the household. This will always depend on her character, influence and, of course, on her treatment of the rest of the ladies, for her to earn such respect.

They are also seen as mean. She may also be disregarded due to her mean or ill treatment of the rest. This could be well understood if you see things from her perspective. She was the one enjoying all of the privileges and now she has to put up with and share with other ladies.

I do not encourage polygamy in any way, because this is a tradition that completely undermines the family ties and future well being. It completely tears the whole family apart. Africans believe that the first wives are always evil planners against the rest of the of the family members. It's always believed that she will only favor her own kids over the other women's kids.

In a culture where superstition is a part of life, people believe that they use traditional medicines (or diabolic means) to subdue the other wives. In this case it's called spell binding, on the women and their offspring. This spell might be in the form of a curse to them wishing them never to be any good, or never to grow to adulthood, or nothing good will come their way, etc.

Although these are a kind of psychological programming, not everybody accepts this as possible. There have been some cases where the son of one of the ladies woke up in the morning with some part of his hair and pajamas missing.

Some may argue that polygamy is an old African tradition, therefore the culture of old permitted it. Polygamy came about because of the lack of a labor force or a helping hand for the man who needed more help in the family to do his farm work. Also, polygamy promotes population, as the Africans believe that many children are a status symbol. Economically polygamy was the only way in  the past that families could survive the hardship posed by famine. They also believed it helped the woman, who might not have found a suitor, to marry, thereby making it the only safe institution so parents can be sure that their daughter finds a husband.

It’s generally believed that the institution of polygamy is ruining the population and creating even harder times for the woman it was supposed to protect.

The fact remains that as long as the man is alive, things always seem alright from the outside. People with little or no knowledge of these families may be envious when seeing the number of wives and children from such a huge family. There may be even more envy if the man is the educated type who happens to be respected as a person of good position in the society, especially if this man is connected with government.

Africans respect their fathers, no matter his position, so the man has the authority to settle any case by calling everybody to bring order to the events of physical conflicts or disputes between the ladies. He makes sure conflicts are settled and always make others aware that he is in control.

Emotions are always high when it comes to settling disputes in the family of many wives. The man should be impartial, whatever may be the case. But women will always find faults in his judgment by claiming that they are being marginalized for whatever reason that is not of their own making.

Things get out of hand in the event that the husband dies. Only in a very few cases does the family remain together after the death of the man. All the ladies seem to go their separate ways. Even if they remain in the compound, the battle is now a full fight since there's nobody to control them.

The most dangerous time is when the will of the man is read to the ladies. The family size always makes it difficult to share the man's wealth and assets. The women wait anxiously for the will to be read, as they will soon know the winners and losers. In African tradition, the first son of the family is given the first priority, except in rare cases where he's either sick, dead or in exile due to a possible disagreement with the father or the entire family.

Now in a very few cases, the reason why some men tend to marry more wives is because they want a male child who will succeed them. If one wife cannot produced a son, it’s sometimes regarded as ill luck. For instance, where the first and second wife did not bring forth a son for the man. He may decide to marry a third. IF this third wife gives him the first son, what do you think will happen in such a family? It’s envy and jealousy coupled with hatred.

These other wives will all come against her in every way. They will want to subdue her by all means.

Only after the colonial era in Africa appeared has polygamy begun to be perceived as a taboo. This was one of the practices imported along with the colonists that took over some regions of Africa. Some people are saying that there was also an economic reason why this happened. There were many issues of property ownership that conflicted a lot with the European colonial interests. At first, polygamy was very popular in the west part of Africa. As Islam began to disperse in this region, the prevalence of polygamy began a reduction due to the restrictions that appeared. The number of wives in Polygamy is a very common practice that is found all over Africa, but it is most popular in the West African countries.

This practice is very common among the animist and Muslim communities. In Senegal, for example, almost 40% of the marriages feature more than one woman. In the Arab nations, the percentages are higher. There is also some polygamous population found in Israel, where around 30% of families are part of multiple marriages.