Reasons for Joseph Smith's Polygamy:

Women Outnumber Men?

Throughout the world’s history, the numbers of living adult women have usually exceeded the quantity of adult men. Contributing factors creating this disparity include an increase in male deaths as a consequence of war, physical exposure, dangerous lifestyles, etc. In addition, in most societies, pious women appear to have consistently outnumbered pious men. Brigham Young observed: “The fact is, let the pure principles of the kingdom of God be taught to men and women, and far more of the latter than the former will receive and obey them.”[1] These two observations combine to support that there will be more female religious adherents than male devotees.

Sometimes Church members and other observers have assumed that plural marriage was instigated to allow this apparent “surplus” of women to marry.[2] This disparate ratio would otherwise relegate some women to earthly spinsterhood in a monogamous society. Nauvoo Church member John C. Kimball declared that in Nauvoo, polygamy was a “common sense” response to the excess female converts:

The fact is while at Nauvoo, our missionaries abroad made converts among single women a great deal faster than among men. The consequence was that, coming into a new community where they had no homes or protectors of their own, we had to parcel them around among our different families. This, we soon found was giving rise to scandal and to possible illicit attachments, and as a matter of decency and morals we had to provide someway by which this excess of women could have some normal relations to the families where they were placed. Marrying them to their heads with all the safeguards of religion seemed to us the only possible way: And so using our common sense we took that as the will of the Lord.[3]

No historical evidence supports John Kimball's recollection, but his story demonstrates some of the practical justifications that have been promoted.

David J. Whittaker noted that Jeddidiah Grant used this reasoning in 1851 to justify polygamy to politician Thomas L. Kane who was defending the Church’s position to Washington bureaucrats: “Grant went on to relate that he had explained to [Thomas L.] Kane that plural marriage was necessary because females outnumbered males three to two, and this ratio was forcing many women to marry outside the church.”[4] Grant reasoned:

In the propagation of our principals and the gathering together of those who embraced them, it was found after nine years experience, that the aggregate number of females was three to two males, showing that one third of our women must remain single, or marry out of the Church.

Either was thought impolitic. The Prophet Joseph Smith was left therefore to inquire of the Great Alouheam [Elohim], who is and ever has been the disposer of this matter, granting from time to time special dispensations according to the situations and circumstances of the people to whom said dispensations were given; the dispensation given by the Lord through the Prophet, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is one limited and strict in its nature; like unto the one given unto Abraham and others in his day and not as elastic as the dispensation [which] appears to have been in the days of David and Solomon.[5]

Non-Mormons also reflected the idea that polygamy might be needed because there were more women than men. Writer John W. Gunnison penned in 1852: “It is… maintained that there is great disparity of numbers between the sexes, and that the predominance of the female is more than can be accounted fro from war, the dangers of the sea and other perils, and therefore nature indicates the propriety of plurality, as ‘marriage is honorable to all.’”[6]

Franklin D. Richards wrote in the February 17, 1855 Millennial Star:

The census tables disclose one fact of melancholy importance, which has not sufficiently engaged the attention of our social philosophers. They show that, in the largest cities of the Union, the females out-number the males in the ratio of ten percent; so that, if every man were compelled by law to take unto himself a wife, a vast number of the fair sex would still be doomed to the torturing "hope deferred" of old maidenhood!...

But, alas for the ladies! inequality of number is not the only calamity they have to contend against. There is no legal compulsion of every man to marry. In this free republic, each man may exercise a sultanic despotism over his own affections, and in the matter of matrimony, consult only his own inclinations... We leave it to statisticians, curious in such themes, to detail the moral and social results inevitable in a condition of female superfluity...[7]

Such feelings persisted into the twentieth century. Researcher Philip R. Kunz acknowledged: “A 1970 study of 421 resident of rural Utah indicated that the respondents believed a female surplus was the prime reason for the Mormon practice of polygyny.”[8]

Despite these observations and assertions, a close review of the numbers of women and men in Nauvoo and later in Utah support that it was never a primary driving force in the practice. Concerning gender censes in the West, historian Donna Hill wrote: “The claim of surplus women is not valid, since the United States census from 1850 to 1940 and all available records of the Utah church show that men outnumbered women in the church and in Utah.[9] Scientist and Church Apostle, John A. Widtsoe observed:

The most common of these conjectures [explaining why polygamy was practiced in the 1800s] is that the Church, through plural marriage, sought to provide husbands for its large surplus of female members. The implied assumption in this theory, that there have been more female than male members in the Church, is not supported by existing evidence. On the contrary, there seem always to have been more males than females in the Church. Families -- father, mother, and children -- have most commonly joined the Church. Of course, many single women have become converts, but also many single men.”[10]

The argument that polygamy was needed because the numbers of single women exceeded the number of unmarried men is not generally supported by population studies of the period. This explanation appears to have been more of an afterthought, a logical justification that in some localities was true, but actually had little or no impact on the introduction and practice of Joseph Smith’s polygamy.

[1] Brigham Young, June 23, 1874, Journal of Discourses, 18:249.

[2]Leonard Arrington and Davis Bitton wrote that one of the reasons plural marriage was practiced “might well have been the practical difficulty of providing for all the unmarried females who were attracted to the new religion. (For some reason… a slightly higher number of females than males accepted Mormonsim.)” (The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints. New York: Vintage Books, 1980, 195. This idea was also discussed by Apostle Orson Pratt in “Celestial Marriage,” The Seer, Vol.1, No.2, p.28-p.29; see also Charles W. Penrose in 1867. “Why We Practice Plural Marriage,” The Millennial Star, 29 (September 14, 1867) 37: 577.

[3] John C. Kimball in the Christian Register quoted in Anti-Polygamy Standard, 2 (September 1881) 6: 44; italics in original.

[4] David J. Whittaker, “The Bone in the Throat: Orson Pratt and the Public Announcement of Plural Marriage.” Western Historical Quarterly 18 (July 1987): 297; see also David J. Whittaker, "Early Mormon Pamphleteering," (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1982), pp. 324-25.

[5] Jedediah M. Grant to Brigham Young, December 30, 1851, typescript in Scott G. Kenney Papers, Mss 2022, Box 11, fd 14, HBLL, Special Collections; emphasis in original.

[6] John W. Gunnison, The Mormons, or Latter-Day Saints, in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, 1852, 71.

[7] [Editorial], "Matrimony -- Disparity of Sex," Millennial Star, 17 (February 17, 1855) 7:110-11 see also [Franklin D. Richards, ed.], "Baptism and Plurality of Wives," Millennial Star, 17 (October 13, 1855) 41: 642.

[8] Phillip R. Kunz, "One Wife or Several? A Comparative Study of Late Nineteenth-Century Marriage in Utah." In Thomas G. Alexander, ed., The Mormon People: Their Character and Traditions, Charles Redd Monographs in Western History, No. 10. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1980, 60.

[9] Donna Hill, Joseph Smith, the First Mormon. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977, 360.

[10] John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations: Aids to Faith in a Modern Day, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1943-51, 390.