In this chapter we turn to yet another domain of contemporary Mormon polygynous life: the feelings of intimacy and love between a husband and each wife as they seek to establish a unique dyadic bond with one another. We also discuss the ways in which a husband and each wife relate emotionally to one another as members of an idealized communal plural family.

It is, of course, impossible to separate emotional relationships between husbands and wives from other aspects of their lives. Emotions are intertwined with living arrangements, budget and resources, celebrations, and all of the topics discussed in this volume. At the same time, participants often talked generally about their feelings of jealousy, frustration, loneliness, anger, love, warmth, and affection for one another, above and beyond specific activities or life domains. Mindful of the complexities of their relationships, we pose the following questions: What principles guide each husband–wife couple in a plural family toward a viable and unique dyadic relationship? What communal principles do plural family members follow to ensure the well-being of each husband–wife couple? And what are the consequences of failing to follow these principles?

These issues are first examined in a few polygynous cultures around the world. The discussion then moves on to the complex and controversial matter of “love and romance” and social-emotional relationships in 19th-century and contemporary Mormon polygynous marriages.

Social-emotional relationships in other cultures

Anthropological reports generally focus on relationships between a husband and wives, or between wives, in regard to household management; resources of land, agriculture, and animals; the treatment of children; and other similar issues.

The chapters in this section are a prelude to our study of the day-to-day life of contemporary Mormon plural families. They provide the historical and religious contexts in which contemporary plural families are embedded. The more than 160-year history of the Mormon religion, the rise and fall of the practice of polygyny in the 19th century, and its revival in the fundamentalist movement of the 20th century are ever present in the minds of today's practitioners of plural marriage. Thus the relationships between husbands and wives and between wives in present-day Mormon plural families cannot be fully understood without some knowledge of the historical events underlying their beliefs and practices.

Chapter 2 summarizes the early years of Mormon history and religion, especially the emergence of polygyny as a theological doctrine, the eventual settlement of the Mormons in Utah after years of migration, and the practice of polygyny up until 1890, when the LDS Church renounced the practice as a result of enormous legislative pressure from the U.S. government and the desire of the Mormons to achieve statehood.

Chapter 3 tells the story of the revival and growth of modern fundamentalism in the 20th century up to the present, in spite of arrests, raids, and prosecution by civil authorities, and overt opposition and renunciation by the main LDS Church.

The four chapters in this section examine central aspects of plural family life. Chapters 16 and 17 address social-emotional relationships between a husband and each wife and between wives, respectively. Chapter 16 examines mechanisms by which each husband–wife pair in a plural family achieves a unique and distinctive relationship from other couples in the family and the implications of failing to do so. It also describes how wives communally facilitate or detract from each others' relationship with their common husband. Chapter 17 focuses on relationships between wives in regard to managing homes, childrearing, and general interpersonal relationships.

Chapter 18 turns to the question of plural family structure, including the patriarchal role of husbands/fathers, the role of wives/mothers, and the means by which they achieve family unity. These issues are explored in case studies of a stable and well-established family, an “experimenting” and growing family, and a composite of disrupted families. Chapter 19 considers family structure as reflected in relationships between husbands and wives and their children, names for newborn children, and the terms children use to refer to their birth mothers and other wives.

This volume is the work of research scientists of uncommon talents and experience. Irwin Altman, the senior author, is a social-environmental psychologist of international reputation, the author and editor of numerous books and specialized research papers, and the recipient of many scholarly honors. Joseph Ginat, an anthropologist, has published extensively and is well known for his work on Israeli-Arab family, political, and cultural relations. Together they have produced a remarkable volume of research that is at once objective and sympathetic. They have achieved an understanding of their subject while observing it from the outside and at the same time experiencing it almost intimately from the inside. The degree of confidence and trust established with the men and women whom they studied – at times yielding surprising disclosures – is a testament to the honesty and integrity of the authors as well as the humanity of their participants.

Much that has been written about Mormonism and the Mormon people has been seriously flawed by the bias of its authors. If not apologetic or propagandistic, it has been pejorative or judgmental. For more than a century from the Mormon beginnings in the 1830s, attempts to treat the Mormons, their history, beliefs, and practices, dispassionately and without prejudice were few and far between. This was especially true of Mormon polygamy, which was practiced secretly in the early years but flourished openly after 1852 until its official church prohibition in 1890 and 1904.

This appendix presents some facts and figures about the families who participated in our project, including the number of wives in plural families, age of marriage of husbands and wives, sororal marriages (sisters married to the same husband), number of children in families, divorce rates, and men's and women's occupations. We also present comparative data for 19th-century Mormon plural families.

These seemingly straightforward demographic topics are more difficult to study than meets the eye – and for different reasons for the pioneer and contemporary eras of Mormon polygyny. For example, we found no published demographic analyses of present-day groups. Elders of the groups with whom we worked said that detailed demographic records are not maintained. Furthermore, our sample of families is quite small and is not randomly selected or representative of the total population of families in fundamentalist groups. What we present, therefore, is based on a combination of estimates by contemporary scholars and observers, our discussions with fundamentalist leaders, and information from the families with whom we worked. The complete facts are also not available for 19th-century Mormons. Records of marriages, births, and divorces were not always kept or were incomplete during the pioneer era, especially because of attempts to maintain secrecy about plural marriages. Once the Mormons settled in Utah in 1847, and prior to the Manifesto of 1890, good records were maintained. Before and after that period, however, the data are less comprehensive.

A home is more than a place to eat, sleep, store personal things, and engage in the practical affairs of day-to-day life. A home is also where a marriage relationship is played out, children are cared for and taught, and people reveal, through their decorations and lifestyle, who they are and what they believe in. Thus a home is a place in which people display their values, idiosyncrasies, and personalities. In Western societies a home is also a person's or family's “castle” – a place over which they have dominion and control. The home is also ideally a place where people can have solitude, security, peace, and serenity or where they can interact with family, friends, and neighbors, as they desire.

The present chapter analyzes these psychological and social aspects of homes for wives in polygynous families. Specifically, it is concerned with wives' feelings about their homes, their home decor, and the extent to which homes reflect their individuality, dyadic relationships with their husband, and links to their co-wives and the communal plural family. Another topic of interest is the extent to which wives control and manage homes as personal “territories” and also use them to achieve solitude. The overall intent is to determine the degree and nature of “place attachment” to homes among wives in present-day plural families. Chapter 12 addresses the same issues for husbands in Mormon fundamentalist families.

In Western cultures the honeymoon is a transition between a couple's wedding and the time they settle into everyday married life. The modern honeymoon is usually a dyadic event that enables the bride and groom to be alone with one another, away from family and friends and often in a special place. In many cases the honeymoon site is kept secret by the couple, and they often steal away after the wedding ceremony to embark on their private trip. In the contemporary Western stereotype, the husband and wife engage in seemingly endless sexual and interpersonal intimacies and are free from everyday responsibilities. It is a phase of marriage, albeit brief, during which the two direct all of their energies to one another and to the uniqueness of their relationship. The modern honeymoon is the ultimate dyadic experience, to use the term of our analysis.

Although contemporary Mormon fundamentalists generally follow Western cultural traditions, honeymoons vary across and within families. However, the special challenge for the fundamentalist couple is how to achieve a unique dyadic relationship on the honeymoon, and simultaneously maintain dyadic and family communal relationships with other wives. In other words, is the honeymoon a strictly dyadic event, with the couple completely cut off from other members of a plural family?

Ideally, in a polygynous Mormon family a husband and each wife spend some time alone with one another and with their children, doing what any monogamous couple does – eating, talking, solving family problems, interacting with children, sleeping together, having sexual relationships, watching television, or engaging in some type of recreation. But how do they manage this essentially dyadic process in the context of a communal life involving several husband–wife–children units? Put another way, how does a husband “rotate” among wives and children so as to acknowledge the uniqueness of each dyad in a plural family and simultaneously preserve the family's communal unity?

Rotation patterns in polygynous cultures vary widely with regard to a number of dyadic and communal issues. To begin with, who visits whom – does the husband go to the wives, or do they go to him? Is “fairness” regarding the time a husband spends with different wives a consideration in rotation patterns? Who decides when and for how long a husband and wife spend time together – the husband, the wives, everyone? What type of “rotation systems” do plural families use – a rigid one in which a husband spends fixed times with each wife; a completely open system with no regular pattern of rotation; or a flexible system with some systematic rotation pattern but also with some flexibility and variation?

The present chapter traces the history of Mormon fundamentalism from the Manifesto of 1890 to the present time. Although the Mormon Church denounced plural marriages in increasingly stronger terms over this period, a small band of fundamentalists held fast, continued to follow what they believed to be the true tenets of the religion, and coalesced into a formal organization in the late 1920s. From then on the movement developed into the several groups that are active today. The events described next are rooted in the minds of modern fundamentalists and help to explain their religious faith and commitment to plural family life.

Beginnings: 1890–1929

As federal and civil opposition to plural marriages mounted in the years prior to the Manifesto of 1890, the president of the Mormon Church, John Taylor, became a fugitive because of his advocacy of the practice. In 1886 Taylor had a religious experience that fundamentalists recount as a testimonial to their belief in plural marriage (see Driggs, 1990; Bradley 1993; Van Wagoner, 1989). While in hiding from federal agents, Taylor was guarded by several young men, including Lorin Woolley (who years later founded the modern fundamentalist organization). One night, Woolley heard voices conversing in Taylor's room, when he was presumably alone. The next morning Taylor told his bodyguards that during the night he had been visited by Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ, who had instructed him to hold fast to the principle and practice of plural marriage, despite the growing pressure not to do so.

In this chapter we discuss three qualities of parent–child relationships that relate to family structure and to gender relationships between husbands and wives: fathers' relationships with their children; the naming of newborn children; and the terms of reference children use to refer to their own mother and to other wives in their family.

Fathers and their children

By now it should be clear that plural wives/mothers are central figures in the lives of their children. According to traditional Mormon theology and cultural values (and American values as well), wives/mothers are the main caregivers, teachers, and socializers of children. Mothers in contemporary plural families are closely bonded to their children, become upset when they feel that their children are not being treated fairly by their husband, and are sensitive to how their children are cared for and disciplined by other wives.

The questions of concern here are: How do husbands/fathers relate to and interact with their children? Do they display the same emotional bonding to their offspring as do wives? What role do they play in day-to-day socialization, discipline, and care giving? We cannot fully address these questions since we only have a handful of cases from which to draw information on the relationship between parents and children. Furthermore, we observed fathers interacting with children only infrequently, and then mostly during our discussions. What we describe next must therefore be viewed with caution and is not necessarily representative of plural families in general.

Plural family life is greatly affected by relationships between wives that are more or less independent of the husband. These relationships revolved around their general feelings about living with one another in plural families, their mutual responsibilities for managing homes, how they get along rearing their children, and their interpersonal compatibility.

Home management

Cooking, cleaning, meal preparation, and other aspects of managing a home are important social and religious responsibilities of contemporary plural wives. Needless to say, women in American and Western cultures have also have had the same responsibilities for generations – and still do today, notwithstanding the recent trends that have blurred rigid gender roles.

A fundamentalist Mormon woman's role in the home has both theological and cultural roots. According to Mormon doctrine, a man is the religious and social leader of the family, teaches his wives and children theological values, and may govern his family in their own heavenly “universe” in the afterlife. Women are expected to maintain “stewardship” of the home; raise and teach their children proper social, moral, and religious doctrine; and strive to build a healthy relationship with their husband. The home is also a place where a wife can display her own personality, creativity, and independence from other wives. Thus managing the home is a strong gender-linked responsibility of women in plural families. In this sense, caring for the home has strong dyadic meanings since it bears directly on husband–wife and wife–children relationships.

Harry, now in his 60s, had been away from home on a business trip for several days. After a long drive he arrived at the family compound and was greeted by an excited group of about 20 of his 65 children and two of his five wives. Soon thereafter the other wives and more of his children came to see him. He and his children and wives greeted one another warmly, especially since it was the weekend of the monthly family reunion and meetings. Everyone was expected home that weekend, including Harry's 37 sons and 28 daughters and their families and more than 300 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

William and his three wives – Carlyn, Danielle, and Alayna – have begun to achieve their dream of a home of their own in which they and their 12 children can live as a united family, in accordance with their religious beliefs. All converts to Mormon fundamentalism, they have struggled for years, living in rented apartments, basements of homes, and, during one hard winter, in a tent. In spite of ever-present economic strains, they finally began building their own home in a semirural area near Metropolitan City. The family has been in difficult financial straits, so construction goes slowly, they try to grow some of their own food, and they find whatever work they can in a tight economy.

We obtained most of the information for this project over a five-year period, from 1987 to 1992, with some supplementary interviews and observations done up to 1994. However, the foundation for the research was established in the early 1970s, when Joseph Ginat was completing graduate studies in anthropology at the University of Utah. Beginning then, and up to the present, Ginat maintained relationships with members of both fundamentalist groups that are the focus of the present book. He also completed a research project in a fundamentalist community (Parker, Ginat, and Smith, 1975). Ginat has visited the urban and rural communities regularly since the 1970s, consulting with their leaders and members on biblical, archeological, and religious history; visiting and living on occasion in the homes of community members; attending and speaking in church and other meetings; hosting leaders and members in his home in Israel; and taking delegations on tours of holy sites in Israel. Given his extensive knowledge of biblical history, theology, and archeology and the fact that he is not an American but an Israeli (and one who was descended from the biblical tribe of Levi – spiritual leaders of biblical times), Ginat has been readily accepted by the fundamentalist communities.

Our collaboration began when Irwin and Gloria Altman visited Israel in 1986 to participate in professional meetings. Joseph and Dalia Ginat hosted the Altmans and, after two weeks of renewing an earlier casual acquaintanceship, we decided to fuse our interests in close relationships, family structure, environment and behavior, and polygyny, and crafted the present project.

Our work on this book began quite coincidentally and accidentally. In 1986 Gloria and Irwin Altman were in Israel attending a conference, having also previously arranged to spend some social time with Dalia and Joseph Ginat. The Ginats and Altmans had been casual acquaintances in Utah in the 1970s, during the time that Joseph was completing his Ph.D. in anthropology and Irwin was a faculty member in psychology at the University of Utah. Over the course of many social occasions when the Ginats hosted the Altmans in Israel, we decided to collaborate on a study of family life among Mormon fundamentalists who espoused and practiced polygamy. During his years in Utah, Joseph had become acquainted with members of fundamentalist groups, many of whom he and Dalia visited in their homes and communities, and several of whom spent time with the Ginats in Israel.

We originally planned a small-scale study of relationships between husbands and wives, and between wives, in modern plural families. But once begun, the project grew and grew, our interest and commitment mounted, our relationships with fundamentalist families deepened, and the work expanded into a decade-long effort. This book is the story of what we learned and also reflects the intellectual perspectives, collegiality, and close personal relationships of the Altmans and Ginats with one another, and with the families who participated in the work. There are several reasons for studying polygamous families in contemporary society.

Wedding ceremonies signify the end of courtship or other premarital events and the formal beginning of a husband–wife relationship. Weddings may consist of a series of activities, including the bride and groom's arrival at a ceremonial site, vows and rituals, gift exchanges, feasts and celebrations, and immediate postnuptial events. Couple members, families, friends, and community members often participate in weddings, playing roles in accordance with cultural practices.

Weddings of present-day Mormon fundamentalists vary with regard to where ceremonies are held, who officiates, who attends, what participants wear, and what role established wives play. At the same time, fundamentalists weddings follow the general format of Western Christian marriage ceremonies. The bride and groom appear before an official of the church, prayers and pronouncements are made regarding the religious basis and importance of marriage, the bride and groom are told of their responsibilities to one another and to their religious values, and the couple exchange vows of love and loyalty. Although a fundamentalist wedding formalizes the dyadic bond between a man and a woman, established wives often participate in the marriage ceremony, thereby also symbolizing the communal nature of weddings and plural family life.

We first describe wedding and marriage ceremonies in a sample of world cultures, to illustrate the variety of ways in which the event is observed. We then turn to the dyadic and communal aspects of marriage ceremonies and the location, management, participants, and tensions and stresses of fundamentalist weddings.

The Mormon religion is relatively young, having been established only in 1830. Yet it has a rich and complicated history. One of several Christian religious movements arising in the United States in the 1800s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown and prospered over the years. Its present membership exceeds nine million, and Mormonism is now a worldwide religion with a large following in Canada, Mexico, and Latin America and growing numbers in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The international headquarters of the LDS Church is in Salt Lake City, Utah, and there are many members in Utah and surrounding states. There are also many Mormons in California and other western states.

The historical backdrop of the early 1800s

A host of factors contributed to the rise of religious movements in America in the early 1800s. In some respects, the era was similar to the 1960s and 1970s, which were turbulent years for America's established values and traditions. The divisiveness of the early 1800s resulted in many conservative countermovements, Mormonism among them, aimed at restoring “traditional values” and establishing greater stability in society.

Another striking feature of American and other Western societies of the late 1700s and early 1800s was a growing emphasis on individual autonomy and freedom (Coontz, 1988; Hawes and Nybakken, 1991; Kern, 1981; Rothman, 1984). More people embraced the idea of romantic love, sexual freedom, and the freedom to choose one's marital partner.