Polygamous Community

The question that I wanted to raise has to do with number 16. of the socratic seminar questions for Things Fall Apart. This question deals with the idea of a polygamous culture in respect to our society, the United States, compared to the society which Okonkwo lived in. In this question there is an African proverb which states, "It takes a village to raise a child." This quote refers to the polygamous culture, and how children are raised by their father and various mothers. I am almost certain that polygamy is illegal in the United States, while it is still practiced in many other parts of the world. I agree with the proverb and how it connects to polygamy. A child with a father and many mothers has that many more parental and adult figures to look up to and model themselves off of, which can easily be an advantage to polygamy. I picture a polygamous family as its own seperate community in a way, where there are many adults willing to help each child as their own and grow up to be successful persons in the community. Family arrangements in the United States are monogamous, where only two people are faithfully devoted to each other. In a monogamous relationship, there are only two parents raising their children, which can have many positives. Instead of the children feeling like they have many mothers or fathers whom they may not feel connected to equally, the children are aware and can depend on their two parents, knowing that they are their only parents. Children will then grow up knowing the ways of monogamy and how it is extremely emphasized positively in many cultures including our own in the United States. In Things Fall Apart, the society was polygamous, with many of the men in the clan having multiple wives. Okonkwo had three wives, and still wished to have more because it correlated to the amount of respect and power that he would have in the clan. I am not sure if polygamy today has these values, where the more wives you have the more power and respect you have. However I know that polygamy is still practiced today in many parts of the world, and there is a great debate about whether polygamy is right or wrong compared to monogamy.