Jacob Zuma has been catching heat for fathering a child outside his (polygynous) marriage. HIV/AIDS activists criticize the Zulu custom of marrying many wives. There are good reasons to discourage polygyny, but it’s Zuma’s philandering outside marriage and not his multiple marriages that poses the real AIDS risk.

In fact, a new paper just published suggests that polygyny is associated with lower HIV transmission:

HIV prevalence is lower in countries where the practice of polygyny is common, and within countries, it is lower in areas with higher levels of polygyny.

Proposed explanations for the protective effect of polygyny include the distinctive structure of sexual networks produced by polygyny, the disproportionate recruitment of HIV-positive women into marriages with a polygynous husband, and the lower coital frequency in[...]

[Published in NonProfitBlogs - Read the original article]