AHC: Make Polyandry Common And Socially Acceptable

In the societies where polyandry is legal, what happens to the surplus women? Wouldn't the society suffer more from a reproductive standpoint by having a lot of virginal women than men?
In a society that enforces normative monogamy, when men fall in battle the surplus women are, yes, left nonbreeding as old maids or widows unable to remarry. Same happens when men are sworn to celibacy as monks or priests. The old maids and widows may or may not affirm their intentions by giving vows as nuns themselves.
Polyandry might catch on in the upper classes, though from a man's perspective, he loses far more reproductively with polyandry than a woman does with polygyny.

But a man loses even more by celibacy than he loses by polyandry.
 
But a man loses even more by celibacy than he loses by polyandry.

It is not exactly true. Let's say that a woman have three husbands, when she is pregnant the child will have only one father, but the other two will be spending their efforts taking care of a child of another man. From a biological standpoint they will be wasting efforts. In celibacy at least they will not be wasting efforts. If the woman have 5 babies from only one of the husbands he will gain nothing in comparison with a monogamous marriage, but the other two husbands will lose almost the same than they were about to lose practicing celibacy.
 
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In a society that enforces normative monogamy, when men fall in battle the surplus women are, yes, left nonbreeding as old maids or widows unable to remarry. Same happens when men are sworn to celibacy as monks or priests. The old maids and widows may or may not affirm their intentions by giving vows as nuns themselves.

Yes, but monogamy works in part because it's the best solution when the sex ratio is roughly 1:1. In a monogamous society, an unbalanced gender ratio of marriageable people is a deviation from the system, whereas in a polygamous, an unbalanced gender ratio is purposeful. A society with a polyandrous marriage system is going to be faced with either a lot of virginal women who could be having kids, thus a severely low birthrate compared to its neighbors OR a lot of single mothers whose partners are busy contributing their work and resources to a child that statistically isn't theirs. And in the event of a war, the sex ratio of males to females will be even more artificially skewed. While it might become acceptable for a queen/empress to have more than one husband, it makes little sense for a society to widespread adopt the practice.

Also, in societies with high polygyny rates where polyandry might be considered a viable alternative, it still isn't practiced. Men simply wait longer to get married.
 
I've only done some quick research, but apparently puerperal fever is a disease that used to cause very high mortality rates among women who had recently given birth, sometimes rising as high as 40%. If puerperal fever, or a similar disease, could cause similar mortality rates in our hypothetical society, it may be enough to cause the surplus of men/deficit of women that you're suggesting.

Puerperal fever as an endemic lethal disease was almost entirely spread by doctors. It came from the European paradigm for several decades, when dissecting cadavers in hospitals to instruct learning doctors became commonplace, but germ theory was not understood. Due to a variety of factors, doctors looked poorly upon the suggestion that before going from dissections to assisting childbirth deliveries they might wish to wash their hands. As an American doctor famously put it after all, "Doctors are gentlemen and a gentleman's hands are clean!"

Regardless, puerperal fever is not going to cause anywhere near enough casualties for a significant population shift.
 
It is not exactly true. Let's say that a woman have three husbands, when she is pregnant the child will have only one father, but the other two will be spending their efforts taking care of a child of another man. From a biological standpoint they will be wasting efforts. In celibacy at least they will not be wasting efforts.
True. But celibate men commonly do contribute to raising of children - especially their nephews and nieces. They are not their own children, yet closely related. Popes, while usually childless since 13th century, practiced nepotism and appointed some nephews as cardinals. These tended not to win elections; but the position of Bishop of Chernogoria was hereditary, uncle to nephew, in House of Njegoš for two centuries.

So how about a royal or noble family where the younger brethren, instead of joining the Church, and supporting their nephews without getting laid and getting a chance of fathering the nephews, actually get to share the bed of queen/lady with their eldest brother the King/Lord?
 
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