Gyimah Stephen Obeng
Department of Sociology, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada.
Soc Sci Med. 2009 Jan;68(2):334-42. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.09.067. Epub 2008 Dec 6.
Although studies have found children in married families to have better health outcomes than those in other family types, this strand of research implicitly views marriage as monolithic and, by default, monogamous as found in western industrialized societies. In polygynous cultures, there is a need to make a distinction between polygynous and monogamous families, because these marital arrangements might imply varying levels of parental support necessary for optimum child outcomes. Using pooled children's data from the 1998 and 2003 (N=4938) Ghana Demographic and Health Surveys, this study investigates the effects of polygynous marital structure on child survivorship and assesses whether the effect is uniform over the entire childhood period. In models that did not allow for age-specific effects of polygyny, children in polygynous marriages were found to have an elevated risk of death. Further analysis revealed that only older children experienced the survival disadvantages associated with polygyny.
尽管研究发现，与其他家庭类型的孩子相比，来自已婚家庭的孩子健康状况更好，但这一系列研究默认将婚姻视为单一形式，且如同西方工业化社会那样是一夫一妻制的。在一夫多妻制文化中，有必要区分一夫多妻制家庭和一夫一妻制家庭，因为这些婚姻安排可能意味着为实现孩子的最佳成长结果所需的不同程度的父母支持。本研究使用1998年和2003年加纳人口与健康调查的汇总儿童数据（N = 4938），调查一夫多妻制婚姻结构对儿童存活率的影响，并评估这种影响在整个童年时期是否一致。在不考虑一夫多妻制的年龄特异性影响的模型中，发现一夫多妻制婚姻中的孩子死亡风险更高。进一步分析表明，只有年龄较大的孩子面临与一夫多妻制相关的生存劣势。
