I am descended from polygamists on both sides of the family. In addition, I work with a family that comes from a polygamist culture, (Saudi Arabia) and I have read Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia.
My Arabian friends tell me they are not polygamists because “It makes the women (meaning the wives) cry.” They have to compete for affection of the husband, and that’s not a very fun way to live for the rest of the family.
As for my own observations, I have noticed some common denominators in all polygamist cultures. Because of the fact that there are multiple wives and therefore many children, the kids don’t and can’t have a good relationship with their dad because there are so many of them, and discipline is often non-existent. Therefore, many of them (especially in the USA) don’t have a decent male role model. In addition, perhaps because of all the general dysfunction, rape, incest, and abuse of many kinds abound in polygamist cultures. Maybe you won’t find that in every family, but it is common.
In the USA, polygamists are often caught with food stamp and welfare fraud, etc., and the ones on the Arizona/Utah border had a habit of abandoning the teen boys because there was no room for them with all the young girls being married off to older men.
It’s a pretty chauvinistic culture by our standards, with the women being kept in traditional roles (some are not allowed to work outside the home), and many don’t finish high school if they marry young.
However I have also known of polygamists with many wives who had quite a system figured out. One wife did all the cooking, another handled the laundry, another ran a business outside the home, and another kept track of the children. This was from a documentary or newspaper article (I don’t remember which). They did say that money was extremely tight.