Serial Monogamy
Serial monogamy is a mating practice in which individuals may engage in sequential monogamous pairings, or in terms of humans, when men or women can marry another partner but only after ceasing to be married to the previous partner.
One theory is that this pattern pacifies the elite men and equalizes reproductive success. This is called the Male Compromise Theory. Such serial monogamy may effectively resemble polygyny in its reproductive consequences because some men are able to utilize more than one woman’s reproductive lifespan through repeated marriages.
Read more about this topic: Monogamy, Varieties of Monogamy in Biology
Famous quotes containing the word serial:
“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)