After releasing my survey about Polygamy on Facebook, I honestly did not think I would get many responses as I did, because I made the assumption that a lot of people do not know what polygamy is. I ended up receiving 41 responses! Out of these 41 responses 31 of them were between the ages of 12-19, and 10 of them were over 20. I originally thought that more adults would respond to this survey over the amount of teenagers that did only because I assumed that they would have strong views about this topic. When I got my results back for the question that states "does polygamy go against societal values?" out of the four people that said no, three of them were between the ages of 17-18. This was a prior observation that my survey proved to be true, because I thought that younger people would be more accepting of this form of love because we are growing up in a different generation than our parents did.
For people who are effected the most by polygamy it seemed to be very close between the wife, and her children. I personally agree that children are effected the most in this type of family. Something that surprised me greatly was how legalizing polygamy and gay marriage did not intertwine with each other as well as I thought they would. I originally thought that if people were accepting of gay marriage that they would be accepting of polygamy as well because I would think that they had an understanding of universal love. The results showed that most people who said yes to gay marriage, said no to polygamy. Something that I was not surprised about was that a little over half of the people said that their description of love did not fit the practice of polygamy. Even though a lot of descriptions had to do with the unity of two people and loving each other unconditionally.
Overall, my results are what I expected for the most part. I am happy with them, and I am extremely happy with my research. I loved embracing the fact that I had an opportunity to research something that was once a foreign subject to me. Learning about different types of relationships and how they differ from a typical monogamous relationship is something that really holds my interest. If I had to go back and pick another topic I would not do it. I genuinely enjoyed learning about polygamy, and the happiness and daily struggles that come to these people who practice it.
