Excerpts from Marital Structure and Economic Systems (1979) by Gary Lee
“In more than three-fourths of the world's cultures, adult males are permitted and usually encouraged to take two or more wives – in other words, to contract polygynous marriages. This does not mean, of course, that a statistical majority of all marriages in the world or in any given social system are polygynous. It does mean that polygyny is the normatively endorsed form of marriage in most cultures. Those cultures in which polygyny is not preferred tend to be exclusively monogamous and have no provisions for any form of multiple marriage. Of the 1,170 societies which comprise the Ethnographic Atlas (Murdock, 1967), women are permitted to take multiple husbands (polyandry) in only six, and group marriage (cenogamy) is not normative in any known culture, although it occurs sporadically in several.” [701]
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