One Man, Many Wives, Big Problems: In their book, [Valerie] Hudson and [Andrea] den Boer note that "bare branches are more likely than other males to turn to vice and violence." To get ahead, they "may turn to appropriation of resources, using force if necessary." Such men are ripe for recruitment by gangs, and in groups they "exhibit even more exaggerated risky and violent behavior." The result is "a significant increase in societal, and possibly intersocietal, violence." Crime rates, according to the authors, tend to be higher in polygynous societies. Worse, "high-sex-ratio societies are governable only by authoritarian regimes capable of suppressing violence at home and exporting it abroad through colonization or war." In medieval Portugal, "the regime would send bare branches on foreign adventures of conquest and colonization."

Simon Denyer & Annie Gowen: Nothing like this has happened in human history. A combination of cultural preferences, government decree and modern medical technology in the world’s two largest countries has created a gender imbalance on a continental scale. [...] The consequences of having too many men, now coming of age, are far-reaching: Beyond an epidemic of loneliness, the imbalance distorts labor markets, drives up savings rates in China and drives down consumption, artificially inflates certain property values, and parallels increases in violent crime, trafficking or prostitution in a growing number of locations.Those consequences are not confined to China and India, but reach deep into their Asian neighbors and distort the economies of Europe and the Americas, as well.

Vinita Dawra Nangia: Women from poor villages across China come here not so much to look for a job as to land a rich man who will maintain them as concubines. The practice is so widespread that there are “concubine villages” in Shenzhen that have hundreds of women living in spacious apartments funded by wealthy lovers. These are as near the border as possible, so that rich Chinese men can leave work early, enjoy a rendezvous with their mistress and still get home to their family in time for dinner! It is not uncommon for a man to have two to three such mistresses in separate apartments!

Humans, we are told, are by nature polygamous, and men more so. Experts explain that each human being has three centres of love and emotions — passion, attachment and romance. All three need not be satisfied by the same person at all times, and humans are attracted to new partners in an attempt to fulfill these basic needs. You may enjoy romance with one person, mutual confidences with another, and sex with yet another.

Historically, the world has frowned upon polyandry (one woman with two or more men), while tolerating, if not outright encouraging by legalising, polygyny (one man with multiple sexual partners). In this one aspect, nothing seems to have changed. Even today, a woman entertaining more than one lover at a time will find much less empathy than a man doing the same.

Polygyny is legally permissible in some cultures, while polyandry has never found support. Even in the rarest of rare cases of a woman with more than one man, the husbands have almost always been from the same family, as was the case with Draupadi married to the five Pandavas. This is so because wealth is controlled mostly by men, making it easier for them to run a harem of women rather than the other way round. Also, consider biological factors; men have more to gain with multiple partners than women. Evolutionary biologists say polygamy is good for men, but not so for women. If a woman gets pregnant, a polygamous man can still have sex/children with his other partners, whereas after pregnancy a polyandrous woman cannot satisfy any of her men for quite some time. The practice of polygyny was rampant in the hunter-gatherer and tribal societies from which we evolved. Then, as well as now, it has remained the preserve of the rich and well-established. Monogamy came to be socially imposed in ancient Greece and Rome, and was later actively encouraged by Christianity. Though today Western society frowns upon polygamy, it is still legal in many non-western societies, particularly Islamic and some African countries that allow a man to have multiple partners.

Interestingly, Michael Price from the Psychology Department of Brunel University West London, equates serial monogamists such as Donald Trump and Larry King, who divorce older wives and marry younger women, as polygamists too, since they also monopolise the reproductive years of a number of women. In that sense, all celebrities, stars, prominent sportsmen and business tycoons with a series of women, can be termed polygamists as well!