Group marriage is a form of marriage in which more than one man and more than one woman form a family unit, and all members of the marriage share parental responsibility for any children arising from the marriage. Group marriage is sometimes called polygynandry, from a combination of the words polygyny and polyandry.
Group marriage is judged by some experts to be rare in traditional societies. Others find this judgement to be unwarranted, since the modern understanding of such societies is less than perfect. Many traditional societies have been nearly or totally destroyed by colonization and other forces. Among the cultures listed in George Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas , only the Caingang people of Brazil practice group marriage as a socially accepted form of marriage, and even among them, it is not the predominant form of marriage.
Group marriage occasionally occurred in communal societies founded in the 19th and 20th centuries. An exceptionally long-lived example was the Oneida Community founded by the Congregationalist minister John Humphrey Noyes in 1848. Noyes taught that he and his followers had undergone sanctification; that is, it was impossible for them to sin, and that for the sanctified, marriage (along with private property) was abolished as an expression of jealousy and exclusiveness. The Oneida commune practiced sexual communalism and shared parental responsibilities, and in effect functioned as a large group marriage until sometime in the period 1879-1881. Kerista Commune practiced group marriage in San Francisco from 1971 to 1991.
According to Todd Compton's work, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (ISBN 156085085X), Joseph Smith, Jr.—founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement—practiced polyandry in addition to polygyny.
Group marriage has been a theme in some works of science fiction, such as Robert Heinlein's novel Stranger in a Strange Land. It is difficult to estimate the number of people who actually practice group marriage in modern societies, as this form of marriage is not officially recognized in any jurisdiction, and illegal in many; however, it seems likely that its practice is limited to relatively small numbers of people. Interest in, and practice of, polyamory is well-known in some corners of science fiction fandom.
See also
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