The return of polygamy Recently I was present when at a Talk about relaxing event a dispute whether the new maintenance law is good or bad for women. Some discussion participants complained that many fear women who had worked for years as housewives, children and husband, now about their financial security would have. Whereupon others defended the new rules, including a member of parliament, which described how female politicians from all parties have jointly discussed the issue and finally endorsed the new policy. She said something like, "It is now starting for the first women become worse, but we had just the interests of second and third wives in the eye."
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In that moment I realized what I'm going as an idea for some time already pregnant, but I had not previously been formulated as follows: We are witnessing a return of polygamy. The sociological talk of "serial monogamy" is not true at all. "Serial" is monogamy, which is the exclusive community of a couple, namely a maximum in terms of sex - there is still unity in any case: Who's asleep with one may not (more) with the other. But in view of the totality of the relationship, it does quite often, that whenever there are children. So it's now required explicitly that the relationship of the children with both parents be maintained even after the divorce. But it is completely absurd to assume that a father could maintain an intense and good relationship with his children, without at the same time a (whatever type) relationship with their mother have.
How can we organize this complicated relationship patterns? On this issue today fail many love relationships between women and men. A friend of mine, for example, just separated from her boyfriend, with whom she was three years ago a couple. The unresolved relationship with his ex and even young children had been a constant point of contention. My friend had the impression that only the needs of the "first family" to be organized around - from the vacation dates on the question of which city you live, to planning the Christmas holidays. Final handed it to her then when her friend suggested that she could still move into a flat in the same house where lived his ex-wife and children. That would be the simplest organization, he found. The moment she decided that the life of a second wife but probably is not for them.
Maybe it's time to admit that the so-called "serial monogamy" is not monogamy at all. Monogamy is in fact, says the dictionary definition, "the lifelong (sic) exclusive community between two reproductive Individuals ". In this sense, our culture is obviously not a long time monogamous. This country will" have monogamous "understood as" in a particular period of life with one person having sex. "The question of who goes with whom to bed, but in this context irrelevant fairly. As long as there are no children, resulting in this respect in general, no major problems, at least not that adults do not usually agree among each other could.
The main problem is clearly with regard to the children and the question of how stable . parental relationships on one side and multiple sexual relations on the other hand, can be reconciled, or specifically: Who is with who feel as intensely connected, where is the emotional center of life, where the responsibilities and liabilities.
"reproductive communities" can not "serial" organize. In any event, not when a company lays claim to lifelong responsible parenthood by both Father and Mother. There were other ways of course. Matriarchal societies, for example, are often organized so that they separate paternity and sexuality: the role of the social father, ie, the reliable, lifelong, committed male caregiver of a child, takes the brother of the woman, while changing the sexual partners of mothers can. Men are not the fathers of the children who bring their (changing) sexual partners to the world but they are the fathers of their nieces and nephews, the children of their sisters, with whom they have indeed already a lifetime family relationship.
goes into this direction of a cultural divide between biological and social fatherhood development in this country just not. The "biological" paternity - as the recent appreciation of genetic paternity tests in legal proceedings - in relation to social fatherhood even more important. Especially the men There seems to have a great interest. But if you want this, one must also address the consequences Such conditions make: When is fathers and mothers have the right to alternate, serial love affairs, including it may entail more children, then the de facto polygamy.
that is not openly discussed, but discussed under the obfuscating term "serial monogamy" is (which is in terms of reproduction after all similarly absurd as the proverbial black mold) is, of course, that we are complex family structures, which the intimate relationship between two people also dismissed as "nucleus", this country officially reject. Even at school we have finally learned that the transition from the evil polygamy of wild nature to the good peoples of the civilized societies monogamy is progress in human history was.
is currently the subject also particularly sensitive, because the old, patriarchal, but polygamy is believed more with the supposedly backward Muslims, as among "us" enlightened people. It is of course completely absurd to believe that the ancient Arabs had married her many women all at once. Of course, they did so that usually "serial", so pretty in turn. And even then it will have been substantially so that the "first woman" especially when it came to the camp against their younger, sexually attractive successors exchanged, but was already the mother of the children born just continue to family belonged. That the Prophet Mohammed spent some time the slogan, four women had to be final, also had no sexual moral, but economic reasons: it was, then as now, the issue of economic security for women and children by the law of maintenance.
One thing has become different today, and that is the equality of the sexes. There are no more, as in patriarchal times, only men are allowed to have over time more women, but women may now have more men. This makes the problem but not necessarily easier. Even so, many "second man" should prepare the family mess already with a man of his other parent become life-partner problems. After all, the men, unlike women, here on the time factor speculate: When the women that is at some point with the mother are final, while the men bear witness to old age more children. Therefore, the new law of maintenance is also gender issues most unjust: a "first man" who has waived because of the children on career opportunities can be relatively certain that the well-paid mother of his children at some point is no other children in the world, which (and their fathers) to them may alimony. The "first women" because it is much worse. You have until the end of life fear for their maintenance claims, as the high-earning fathers of their children will always have the opportunity again to have children with other women.
As for the economic side of the problem, a solution is in sight: the financial independence of all adult individuals. Once all the men and women are protected in employment and individual economically, then the issue regarding the maintenance of law and more important. That this path is now taken only half-heartedly - so in part because the economic importance of domestic and family work still is not factored in with all the clarity - is true, but not symbolic, but merely a craft problem of politics. Conceivable, then a solution, and by and large we are there already on the road.
However, I believe that the problem of today's unacknowledged polygamous relationship structures is not solved. My girlfriend for example, who saw no other solution but to separate from the man she loves in fact, has no economic problem. That her boyfriend his income with his children and their mother announced she finds nothing wrong. As an economically independent woman, it may well be her care. Your problem is rather that it their relationship in this constellation is not possible to continue the dream of a monogamous love relationship dream. She had to realize that they can with this man, even though she loves him, found no intimate family matters (and in this internal space itself become a mother), without these "monogamous" area as it were "disturbed" by the equally justify claims of other women and Children who are well connected by intimate relations with this man already.
My point with this article is also to show that problems of this kind are not only individual problems, but address the logical result of the way we think about families and love relationships and . Think Earlier, in monogamous and patriarchal times, the heartache of women was due in an individual misconduct of the men in question. Although polygamy was sexual, especially among men (but probably also in women) have always spread wide. But when a husband with his secretary went to bed or seduced the wife of the postman, then this led to no moral consequences for called by the Company and obligations. Monogamy was just that the first actual, legally sanctioned relationship (marriage) was one of the only. Accordingly, the "public opinion", the neighbors, the mothers, the journalists and so on, also agreed: Who "is strange" - either as a married man or a married elsewhere - is bad, guilty, has no claim to represent.
That has changed. We want the rights of all parties heard and respected. But this means that today do from the "multiple relationships" arising heartache of women (and probably many men) is not with individual misconduct. But with conflicting, mutually exclusive claims of the company: It is just simply not one relationships both intimate and exclusive lead, as responsible for the children from previous relationships and reliably be there. The dream of the intimate, exclusive relationship between two people, monogamy appears therefore to dream only when we either omitted children all (and only those without children as a potential love partners and partners into consideration), or when actually the original monogamy definition of "lifelong exclusive reproductive community" returns. And it is no coincidence that there are both current strong trends in society.
If we do not want, but if we want a society in which children continue to be born, but the adults are free, their sexual partners and partners over time to change, then we will probably have to tackle the issue of "modern polygamy. How can family relationship structures work, in which feel more women and men who are in complicated structures mutually bound by (former and current) sexual relations and by a complex web of social or biological mother and fathers together, and deal humanely with each other?
In the accompanying article then explains the" political consultant "Gertrud Hoehler, that is already long road to the mission, women einzubleuen the rules of the political establishment, why Andrea Ypsilanti with their plans to become prime minister of Hesse, simply had to fail: "She has not learned its lesson." 
However, the conditions in which to imagine men the children having quite tricky: just under half are clear for traditional tasks - work they go themselves and are the "family breadwinner, the woman takes care of the children. Not even one in four for women and men representing an egalitarian gender roles. That this setting is highly problematic in times in which women must necessarily be employed, because the intra-family maintenance law is being abolished, and where the employment is not necessarily so, that guarantee a man alone the financial support the family in the long run can is the one and known. And that at this quite backward looking bias, the women are in debt because there are still many women who look to the men this financial provider role, is also true gift. 
