For humans, monogamy is not biologically ordained. According to evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss of the University of Texas at Austin, humans are in general innately inclined toward nonmonogamy. But, Buss argues, promiscuity is not a universal phenomenon; lifelong relationships can and do work for many people.
Instead, biological indicators suggest a mating system where both sexes form a long-term pairbond with a single partner (Møller, 2003). And while polygyny was likely present in the human past, as it is across contemporary human societies, the weight of evidence seems to support social monogamy.
Balance of evidence indicates we are biologically inclined towards monogamy. Science has yet to definitively pronounce on whether humans are naturally monogamous (lifelong male-female breeding pair) or polygamous (single male breeding with more than one female).
“The human mating system is extremely flexible,” Bernard Chapais of the University of Montreal wrote in a recent review in Evolutionary Anthropology. Only 17 percent of human cultures are strictly monogamous.
According to the New York Times, a 2011 paper showed that early humans, or hominids, began shifting towards monogamy about 3.5 million years ago—though the species never evolved to be 100% monogamous (remember that earlier statistic).
Early humans seem to have recognised the dangers of inbreeding at least 34,000 years ago, and developed surprisingly sophisticated social and mating networks to avoid it, new research has found.
In essence, men are only socially monogamous rather than genetically monogamous.
But new research is clarifying matters. We now know that the first hominins, which emerged more than seven million years ago, might have been monogamous. Humans stayed (mostly) monogamous for good reason: it helped them evolve into the big-brained world conquerors they are today.
Monogamy is not simply unrealistic; it is unnatural. You do not find it often in the animal kingdom, and where you do it is generally born of an evolutionary necessity. The necessity of monogamy among humankind has evaporated.
If we mean realistic for the species of humans, then the answer clearly is yes. In various cultures around the world people are able to engage in lifelong monogamous relationships.
Monogamy in humans is beneficial because it increases the chances of raising offspring, but it is actually very rare in mammals – less than 10 per cent of mammal species are monogamous, compared with 90 per cent of bird species. Even in primates, where it is more common, only about a quarter of species are monogamous.
More recent field research on a large Canadian sample also found that those in open or polyamorous relationships were just as happy as those in monogamous relationships. The Rubel and Bogaert review reports that most non-monogamous people are just as or more sexually satisfied than monogamists.
Could we mate with other animals today? Probably not. Ethical considerations preclude definitive research on the subject, but it's safe to say that human DNA has become so different from that of other animals that interbreeding would likely be impossible.
For humans, monogamy is not biologically ordained. According to evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss of the University of Texas at Austin, humans are in general innately inclined toward nonmonogamy. But, Buss argues, promiscuity is not a universal phenomenon; lifelong relationships can and do work for many people.
Although the Old Testament describes numerous examples of polygamy among devotees to God, most Christian groups have historically rejected the practice of polygamy and have upheld monogamy alone as normative.
Summary: In cultures that permit men to take multiple wives, the intra-sexual competition that occurs causes greater levels of crime, violence, poverty and gender inequality than in societies that institutionalize and practice monogamous marriage.
Monogamy is the concept of having only one partner at a time (sexual and/or romantic). While this is a personal preference and isn't inherently toxic, the idea of toxic monogamy has been defined as monogamous principles of power and control that have been interpreted and practised in unhealthy ways.
Evolution dictates that genes have the final say. And if there is one thing genes want, it is to spread as far and wide as possible. That is why monogamy is rare among mammals. Females have to wait for a long gestation period to have a child, where as males could go and inseminate many other females in that time.
Probably the biggest factor in why it is hard to remain monogamous is that there are several drives built into us that contribute to reproduction, but they do not work in unison.
Recent discoveries have led biologists to talk about the three varieties of monogamy: social monogamy, sexual monogamy, and genetic monogamy. The distinction between these three are important to the modern understanding of monogamy.
Polygyny offers husbands the benefit of allowing them to have more children, may provide them with a larger number of productive workers (where workers are family), and allows them to establish politically useful ties with a greater number of kin groups.
Only about 2% of the global population lives in polygamous households, and in the vast majority of countries, that share is under 0.5%.
A popular misconception about polyamorous people is that they can't cheat. A polyamorous person can cheat on their partners by ignoring agreed-upon boundaries about dating others, like not telling their partners when they have sex with new people.
Analysis suggests that roughly one in 3,600 people studied were born to closely related parents. Genomic analysis has provided a new way of investigating a tricky topic: the prevalence of extreme inbreeding in humans. Cultural and religious taboos around inbreeding make its frequency difficult to assess.
Since we are all humans and all share a common ancestor somewhere down the line, we all have some degree of inbreeding.