Did you know that most relationships before marriage could be likened to Polyandry, in the sense that some girls date and keep many boyfriends, though unofficially?

What a man can do, a woman can do better, goes a popular saying. And Polyandry (the marriage of a woman to two or more men at the same time) whose term derives from the Greek word polys, meaning “many,” and anēr, andros, “man" is one practical example of that saying. When the husbands in a polyandrous marriage are brothers or are said to be brothers, the institution is called adelphic, or fraternal, polyandry.

Polyandrous cultures have devised several methods through which to designate the ancestry of the children of such marriages. In fraternal polyandry, the children are often said to be descended from the eldest brother alone, while in other cases fatherhood is established through a ceremony or the children are said to have descended from all the husbands equally.

A related form of marital union, sometimes called secondary marriage, obtains when a married woman cohabits with a man other than her husband without having terminated the marriage by annulment or divorce. Polyandry must be distinguished from privileged sexual access to a married woman, a practice that was fairly common in traditional cultures and was often associated with customs of kinship, hospitality, or fertility rites.

Polyandry is, in fact, a rare phenomenon, if not as rare as once thought, and understanding of the variables that define the term is evolving. The two best-known areas in which polyandry was studied and continued to be practiced into the 21st century are the Plateau of Tibet (a region shared by India, Nepal, and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China) and the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific.

In a report published in 2012, however, anthropologists Kathrine Starkweather and Raymond Hames identified 53 additional nonclassical societies throughout the world (including North America and South America) that also practice polyandry, whether formal (i.e., recognized by marriage and co-residence) or informal (when two or more men are considered the co-fathers of offspring and are invested in the care of both mother and child or children).

Polyandry is generally considered to be a response to peculiar localized conditions, among them sex (gender) ratios, adult male mortality, male absenteeism, social stratification, and the group’s economic basis. Virtually all societies in which the practice of polyandry is accepted are based on hunting and gathering or on agriculturalism.

Here are five known countries with tribes that practice polyandry as listed below:

1] NIGERIA — Although largely uncommon in Nigeria, there are tribes in Nigeria that also allows polyandry. Among the Irigwe of Northern Nigeria, women have traditionally acquired numerous spouses called “co-husbands”. The Irigwe people of Nigeria practiced a woman having co-husbands until their council voted to outlaw it in 1968. Until then, women moved from house to house, taking on multiple spouses, and the children’s paternity was assigned to the husband whose house the woman lived in at the time.

2] INDIA — India as a country has more than one tribe practicing polyandry. Polyandry is prevalent in parts of North India by Paharis in the Jaunsarbawar region while in Kinnaur, Himachal a minority of the people justify and practice Polyandry. As descendants of the Pachi Pandavas (five brothers who were husbands to a woman named Draupadi, daughter of King Panchala), they believe they have to carry on the tradition. Asides them, the Toda tribe of Nilgris, Najanad Vellala of Travancore and some Nair caste Sytems in South India also practice polyandry. A survey of 753 Tibetan families by Tibet University in 1988 found that 13% practiced polyandry.

3] KENYA — In August 2013, Kenyan witness polyandry when two men decided to be husbands to a woman they both love. It is noteworthy that Kenyan laws don’t explicitly forbid Polyandry and legal action can’t be taken against people who practice it. There have also been reported cases of polyandry among the Massai people of Kenyan.

4] CHINA — The practice of fraternal polyandry is common among the people Tibet in the Nepal parts of China and India. It is based on the belief that a child can have more than one father and usually when two or more brothers marry one woman, they all have equal sexual access to her. The practice is encouraged if the family is poor and can’t divide their properties amongst the offsprings of separate fathers. So they keep their small farmlands and properties big by getting married to the same woman.

5] SOUTH AMERICA — Polyandry also existed among tribes in South America as the Bororo practiced polyandry while up to 70 percent of Amazonian cultures may have believed in the principle of multiple paternity. The Tupi-Kawahib also practice fraternal polyandry.

Source: Britannica & The Guardian Nigeria 

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