Polygamy not new but its meaning no longer same, by Stephanie Shaakaa

What once stood as a system of communal survival, built on cooperation and collective responsibility, now trembles under the weight of secrecy, betrayal, and broken trust. Our forefathers practised polygamy with a kind of order that baffled logic, multiple wives, one compound, children everywhere, and yet, somehow, harmony found a way. But today, that same institution is cracking at the seams, not because it is outdated, but because its essence has been replaced by ego, deception, and silence.

Read Also: The Power in a Name: How Nigeria works, by Stephanie Shaakaa

This is not a sentimental journey into the past. It is an interrogation of how something so deeply embedded in our cultural and religious fabric evolved into a weapon of emotional warfare. In the new age, polygamy is no longer a structure, it is often a surprise.

When Fatima my friend waved goodbye to her husband at the airport, she hugged both him and the woman accompanying him, his new wife of many months. This farewell, tender and understated, quietly shattered the stereotype of marriage as a two-person contract. We often frame polygamy as a relic or an aberration, but such moments hint at something deeper. Polygamy isn’t just marriage multiplied, it confronts the heart of what makes human connections durable, dynamic, and undeniably intricate.

From ancient empires to modern families, polygamy has served many purposes. Securing lineage, forging tribal alliances, redistributing resources. In societies as diverse as biblical Judea, traditional West Africa, and ancient China, the norm was plural marriages for pragmatic ends. As societies urbanized and mortality fell, monogamy became legally enshrined but polygamy never truly vanished. It adapted, receded, but never retreated entirely from human experience.

In the 21st century, we see polygamy re-emerging not necessarily through formal polygynous households, but in polyamorous communities, co-parenting cobbles, and digital matchmaking platforms. The heart isn’t limited to binary partnerships, and neither is commitment. While the law clings to monogamy, reality increasingly drifts toward multiplicity.

Yet polygamy is not a silver bullet. For many women, it signifies unequal power, emotional overload, and perpetual comparison. Where income disparities exist, polygamy can reinforce patriarchal privileges. Moreover, when children from different mothers share resources, questions of inheritance, guardianship, and social equity become painfully salient.

Now contrast this with modern polyamory where consent, equality, and open communication are central. Some families share parental duties across multiple homes. Some couples have spendthrift days with one spouse, quiet evenings with another. These arrangements speak to a generation seeking relationship fluidity that reflects their broader values.

Globally, the legal response varies. While countries like Iran, Ghana, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia allow men multiple wives, many Western nations penalize it even amongst equally consenting adults. The human rights lens complicates this.

How do you balance religious freedom and gender equality? When polygamy is legal in one country and criminal in another, whose values win?

The truth is, polygamy forces us to confront the tension between tradition and autonomy. It surfaces questions of emotional labor, fairness, consent, and cultural identity. When it works, it isn’t because more people equal more love,  it’s because the relationships are held together by intention, transparency, and respect.

We find echoes of this in silent rooms, in sister-wives who share laughter and grief, in spouses who would not have chosen the lonely road. We find it in the poly pod communities of Berlin or New York, where love is plural and non-hierarchical.

So what does this mean for us? Not that polygamy should replace monogamy. But that polyamorous arrangements whether legal or not emphasize the importance of consent, structure, and shared values in any relationship model. They remind us that love is a continuum, not a checkbox.

Polygamy has never been just about adding partners. It’s about distributing love, responsibility, risk all in ways that challenge simple definitions. If we ignore it, we close our eyes to how relationship norms evolve, collide, and sometimes merge.

What does multiplicity teach us about emotional resilience?

How do children thrive in unconventional households?

And what legal protections could ensure equality and safety?

Marriage is a human experiment, and polygamy is one of its oldest iterations. Its revival formal or informal could illuminate new truths about commitment. Even if we never live like that, understanding it matters. Because in the quiet spaces of shared homes, in the linked lives of varied relationships, we glimpse the future of intimacy,one not defined by tradition, but by trust, consent, and an ever-evolving understanding of love.

In our forefathers’ time, polygamy was not just tolerated it was a carefully structured social institution. It had a place, a rhythm, a set of expectations known and accepted by all. Wives understood their roles, boundaries were respected, and seniority was sacred. A first wife was not just a matriarch she was a stabilizing force, a spiritual anchor that is, if she was emotionally intelligent enough, she was even the one to choose the next wife. Rivalry existed, but it rarely spiraled into dysfunction. Their coexistence was often built on the rock of necessity, communal living, and shared burdens in a largely agrarian world where more hands meant more wealth and survival.

But today, that arrangement sits uneasily within the framework of modernity. Polygamy, though still practiced, carries a different weight,no longer cloaked in communal necessity but often cloaked in secrecy, pride, or ego. The emotional cost has skyrocketed. Our mothers tolerated co-wives because their reality had no room for individualism or escape. But modern women, armed with education, financial independence, feminism and emotional intelligence,are less willing to be complicit in systems that threaten their mental health or dignity. The hierarchy among wives, once clearly defined, is now more ambiguous, fueling suspicion and competition instead of structure and solidarity.

Where our grandmothers saw duty, many women today see betrayal. And where our grandfathers built homesteads that reflected rank and ritual, today’s polygamous homes are more likely to be fragmented battlegrounds of passive aggression or digital cold wars played out on muted WhatsApp statuses.

Our mothers made peace with polygamy because they had no escape, modern women wrestle with it because they have options .What once was an institution of structure is now an architecture of rivalry. In the old days, co-wives shared a compound, today, they share a husband in silence and suspicion.You dare not put them in the same compound.

Polygamy then was community, now, it’s competition dressed in culture. Love triangles in our forefathers’ time were managed with rules, today, they’re managed with therapy. Where polygamy once meant more hands on deck, it now often means more hearts on edge. In our grandmothers’ world, polygamy was choreographed, in ours, it’s improvised. Respect once kept co-wives in harmony now, resentment keep them apart.

In the past, wealth was measured in land, livestock, and family size. Polygamy was a sign of affluence. In today’s economy, it is increasingly unsustainable.

How do religion and law regulate or tolerate polygamy today compared to before?

The city lifestyle does not accommodate the communal living model that once made polygamy manageable.

Digital platforms have introduced a new kind of surveillance, jealousy, and drama into polygamous households.

Evolving gender consciousness is challenging the very foundation of polygamy as a male-centered tradition.

A story from a grandmother vs. a modern young wife who just discovered her husband secretly took another wife.

‘My husband brought his second wife home after asking me to help prepare the guest room,’ an elderly mother once told me, her voice steady, her pride intact. “He said it was God’s will, and I accepted. She became my co-wife, and soon, my companion in toil.”

 Their relationship was not perfect, but it was transparent, structured, and bound by communal expectations. Fast forward to today. A young, educated wife scrolls through Facebook and sees wedding photos of her husband and a stranger. Her stomach turns. There was no conversation, no warning,  just betrayal masquerading as tradition. In one generation, polygamy shifted from a known arrangement to a silent ambush. What was once discussed over family meetings is now discovered through hashtags and heartbreak.

Polygamy may have survived the centuries, but it has not survived unchanged.What our foremothers endured with dignity, many modern women now resist with silent rage or explosive exits. The compound that once echoed with communal laughter now brims with quiet wars and invisible heartbreaks. And yet, the truth remains. Polygamy is not evil it is the people who now practice it without honour, transparency, or empathy that have made it monstrous.

If the past was built on shared understanding, the future must demand shared consent. For in a world where love now asks for loyalty, and intimacy begs for emotional equity, we must ask ourselves. Is it polygamy we are rejecting or the betrayal dressed in its name?

Let that question echo. Let it burn through generations. And may it finally demand that even tradition must evolve or be buried by the weight of the wounds it no longer heals.

Vanguard News

The post Polygamy not new but its meaning no longer same, by Stephanie Shaakaa appeared first on Vanguard News.