path_of_one
Embracing the Mystery
Hello. You are certainly welcome to keep your beliefs, and I respect them. However, science does not agree with what you are saying here; I am happy to provide references if you like.Friend said:
1. It is a falsehood that women are monogamous by our very nature. The widespread (in nearly every culture on earth and every time on earth) problems of adultery by women, and the preoccupation with keeping women from interacting with other men in a sexual way is testimony to this. Women typically do not have as high a sex drive as men, but sex drive and number of partners are two separate issues. The evidence is that women struggle with lust and commitment to a single man, just as men struggle with lust and commitment to a single woman.
2. It is not true that in all cultures throughout time, men are typically the head of household. In many cultures, the headship is shared equally between men and women or women had the dominant say in the household- not just modern cultures, but also in practically all hunter-gatherer societies (which made up about 90% of human history) and in most horticultural societies. Most pastoral societies (such as those in the Middle East) and agricultural soceities (ancient Europe, most of Asia) are patriarchal. Many cultures have gotten along just fine for millenia with women as heads of household or as equals.
3. Many families have two or more heads in many different cultures. Sometimes it is a shared headship between the adult men and women (married together), sometimes it is shared among adults of multiple generations (father and son, mother and daughter). Speaking from experience from a successful marriage in which we are equal partners and equal in our headship of the household, it isn't that difficult if you are respectful of one another and of like mind to begin with.
4. Polyandry (more than one man with one woman) does occur in some societies, though it is rare. It works fine for them.
5. In societies in which polyandry is the norm, or in which little emphasis is place on the finding the "real" father, lineage is typically calculated through the mother or is not important. Many cultures care little about pedigrees, or simply reckon them through the mother since there can be no mistakes there. In some societies, women and children live separate from the men or live with the mother's kin (brothers, father, etc.) so the father is hardly present in the child's life and the chief fatherly responsibilities fall on one's uncle. In some societies, there is little property (such as among hunter-gatherers), so lineage doesn't much matter because there is no inheritance. Children are raised by their parents by marriage and by the entire group as a whole, and it really doesn't matter terribly if they are not biologically the child of the father.
6. Genetic studies have shown that there is virtually no impact of cousins producing children. There is a problem if brothers and sisters or parents/children reproduce. There are many cultures in the world in which marrying a cousin is the best marriage choice and is encouraged and they have not suffered genetic defects. The worst genetic defects seem to occur in small, closed population groups in which no external genetic information can come in to the group. If the group is sufficiently large and open, cousin-marriage does not seem to be a problem.
7. I do not believe that what separates humans and animals is attention to lineage and/or pedigree. I would wager that most people would disagree with that, though they'd give different reasons for the distinction depending on their religion. But especially because many humans do not care much about lineage/pedigree, that can't be the dividing line between us and animals, at least not scientifically.
My thesis is on the economics and ecology of family cattle ranchers in the United States. I'm focusing on rangeland management decision-making. My theoretical focus is on how people experience their landscape, the link between spirituality and cultural assumptions and practical decision-making and action, and how to promote conservation to people with widely diverse cultural backgrounds and relationships to the land. 
