Monogamy Is the Best Path to Higher Fertility

Unlike Christianity, which since its beginnings has offered monogamy and celibacy as the only options to its adherents, Judaism has a complex attitude to polygamy. While polygyny—multiple wives for one man—is clearly permitted by the Torah, in practice it has ceased almost completely among observant Jews, and even a century ago was rare outside of Yemen. Halakhah prohibits it completely for Ashkenazim. Yet such biblical heroes as Abraham, Jacob, and David had multiple wives, even as the Tanakh almost always portrays polygyny as a source of familial discord.