My 2 cents worth, having been among Mormons quite a while ...
 
LL> I dunno.  It's a Mormon thing.  Not quite sure if that is
LL> a one-way street or if it cuts both ways.
 
Polygamy was a sort of social-security.
 
In the beginning of the LDS-church the trek west was still a significant thing.
 
It is often forgotten and nondescribed how many men died, also among settlers,
and while generally women did the household, men brought home the bacon.
 
So when the husband dropped away, the income dropped away as well and with no
organized system of social security it was like "oh shit". So it became
accepted behaviour in the LDS-church for a man with the necessary means to take
another wife (and her children) whose husband had passed away. It was common
practice as well with the plains indian tribes, but nobody references that...
 
The same kind of behaviour we saw after WW2 with tens of thousands of women
becoming widowed and faced with a loss of the principal breadwinner. Many women
remarried, not out of love but out of necessity, and opted to not have the
remains of their husbands shipped home because it would be impossible for them
to combine a pretty loveless marriage to some guy with a corpse in the local
cemetary.
 
 \%/@rd

--- D'Bridge 4