INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 11 - N. l (35-40) - 1996 J. Vince-Pallua Institute of Ethnology, Faculty of Philosophy University of Zagreb lvana Lu(ir 3 10000 Zagreb, Croatia Key word: Bigamy, marital infertility, social culture Introducing a second Wife. A Matrimonial Aid in Cases of a Childless Marriage On the basis of the corpus of 2.727 answers to the questions contained in the archives of the Ethnological Atlas, Department of Ethnology, University of Zagreb, the author has tried to pro- vide an answer to the question concerning reasons for introduc- ing a second wife while the first wife is still alive. Attentive comparative analysis of the entire material (analized according to religion) leads to the incontestable conclusion that the first and basic consideration is the desire for children or the desire for male children. This makes the position of the infertile women tragic. The basic life credo of patriarchal societies is the produc- tion of children. Often a woman can establish her position in society only after she has borne a male child when she may have a place in the husband's family on the basis of blood ties. The author comes to the conclusion that in this respect, even among the Muslims, where more than one wife was allowed, it is less a matter of a second wife, or bigamy, in the true sense but of introducing a new wife as a matrimonial aid primarily in cases of a childless marriage. In the Ethnology Institute of the Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb University, there is an archive of about three million leaflets with answers to questions from four volumes of questionnaires conducted in some parts of south-east Europe for the Ethnological Atlas. Roughly, the questions cover problems from the material, spiritual and social culture and may be divided into 150 extehsive topics. Most of the material was gathered by field-workers between 1960 and 1970. The aim of this project was to collect material for making ethnologi- cal maps (as part of a common project, the European ethnological atlas), and to scientifically interpret the data obtained based on the distribution of cultural elements prepared for the map with the use of heuristic typology: Here we will deal with a question from this material that did not show itself very suitable for cartographic,presentation, a question from social culture: Are there (or were there) cases when a man (not 'only a Muslim) takes a second wife beside his still living wife? (questionnaire Ill, subject 117/14, p. 149). l excerpted answers to that question from the archive material mentioned before the war began in part of south-east Europe, part of the Balkan peninsula~ The materia! refers to the situation as it was inthe first half of this century in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia with Vojvodina and Kosovo. We have a body of 2727 answers that were not suitable for cartographic processing, for distributional presentation, so we will use them as a large sample of archive material illustrating the question ,given. The book by George Peter Murdock, Social structure, contains an