The Marriage Institution

83:6.1Mo­nog­amy is monopoly; it is good for those who at­tain this de­sir­able state, but it tends to work a bi­o­logic hard­ship on those who are not so for­tu­nate. But quite re­gard­less of the ef­fect on the in­di­vid­ual, mo­nog­amy is de­cid­edly best for the chil­dren.

83:6.2The ear­li­est mo­nog­amy was due to force of cir­cum­stances, pov­erty. Mo­nog­amy is cul­tural and so­ci­etal, ar­ti­fi­cial and un­nat­u­ral, that is, un­nat­u­ral to evo­lu­tion­ary man. It was wholly nat­u­ral to the purer Nod­ites and Adamites and has been of great cul­tural value to all ad­vanced races.

83:6.3The Chaldean tribes rec­og­nized the right of a wife to im­pose a pre­mar­i­tal pledge upon her spouse not to take a sec­ond wife or con­cu­bine; both the Greeks and the Ro­mans fa­vored monog­a­mous mar­riage. An­ces­tor wor­ship has al­ways fos­tered mo­nog­amy, as has the Chris­tian er­ror of re­gard­ing mar­riage as a sacra­ment. Even the el­e­va­tion of the stan­dard of liv­ing has con­sis­tently mil­i­tated against plu­ral wives. By the time of Mi­chael’s ad­vent on Uran­tia prac­ti­cally all of the civ­i­lized world had at­tained the level of the­o­ret­i­cal mo­nog­amy. But this pas­sive mo­nog­amy did not mean that man­kind had be­come ha­bit­u­ated to the prac­tice of real pair mar­riage.

83:6.4While pur­su­ing the monogamic goal of the ideal pair mar­riage, which is, af­ter all, some­thing of a mo­nop­o­lis­tic sex as­so­ci­a­tion, so­ci­ety must not over­look the un­en­vi­able sit­u­a­tion of those un­for­tu­nate men and women who fail to find a place in this new and im­proved so­cial or­der, even when hav­ing done their best to co-op­er­ate with, and en­ter into, its re­quire­ments. Fail­ure to gain mates in the so­cial arena of com­pe­ti­tion may be due to in­sur­mount­able dif­fi­cul­ties or mul­ti­tudi­nous re­stric­tions which the cur­rent mores have im­posed. Truly, mo­nog­amy is ideal for those who are in, but it must in­evitably work great hard­ship on those who are left out in the cold of soli­tary ex­is­tence.

83:6.5Al­ways have the un­for­tu­nate few had to suf­fer that the ma­jor­ity might ad­vance un­der the de­vel­op­ing mores of evolv­ing civ­i­liza­tion; but al­ways should the fa­vored ma­jor­ity look with kind­ness and con­sid­er­a­tion on their less for­tu­nate fel­lows who must pay the price of fail­ure to at­tain mem­ber­ship in the ranks of those ideal sex part­ner­ships which af­ford the sat­is­fac­tion of all bi­o­logic urges un­der the sanc­tion of the high­est mores of ad­vanc­ing so­cial evo­lu­tion.

83:6.6Mo­nog­amy al­ways has been, now is, and for­ever will be the ide­al­is­tic goal of hu­man sex evo­lu­tion. This ideal of true pair mar­riage en­tails self-de­nial, and there­fore does it so of­ten fail just be­cause one or both of the con­tract­ing par­ties are de­fi­cient in that acme of all hu­man virtues, rugged self-con­trol.

83:6.7Mo­nog­amy is the yard­stick which mea­sures the ad­vance of so­cial civ­i­liza­tion as dis­tin­guished from purely bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion. Mo­nog­amy is not nec­es­sar­ily bi­o­logic or nat­u­ral, but it is in­dis­pens­able to the im­me­di­ate main­te­nance and fur­ther de­vel­op­ment of so­cial civ­i­liza­tion. It con­tributes to a del­i­cacy of sen­ti­ment, a re­fine­ment of moral char­ac­ter, and a spir­i­tual growth which are ut­terly im­pos­si­ble in polygamy. A woman never can be­come an ideal mother when she is all the while com­pelled to en­gage in ri­valry for her hus­band’s af­fec­tions.

83:6.8Pair mar­riage fa­vors and fos­ters that in­ti­mate un­der­stand­ing and ef­fec­tive co-op­er­a­tion which is best for pa­ren­tal hap­pi­ness, child wel­fare, and so­cial ef­fi­ciency. Mar­riage, which be­gan in crude co­er­cion, is grad­u­ally evolv­ing into a mag­nif­i­cent in­sti­tu­tion of self-cul­ture, self-con­trol, self-ex­pres­sion, and self-per­pet­u­a­tion.