Philip Kilbride, a professor of anthropology at Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pa., wrote Plural Marriage for Our Times: A Reinvented Option? (Bergin & Garvey; 1994).

He argues that plural marriage is not a sexual practice but a form of the family - one that is the ideal in most of the world's cultures, though monogamy is the statistical norm in every culture. He says that considered from the point of view of what is best for children in a nation with a 50 percent divorce rate, the option of plural marriage in some cases would keep families intact and would give more children a father in the family, whereas monogamy has brought only a high divorce rate.

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E-mail: pkilbrid@brynmawr.edu.