Joseph Smith/Polygamy/Children of polygamous marriages

  1. REDIRECTTemplate:Test3

Children of Joseph Smith by polygamous marriages

Children of Joseph Smith by polygamous marriages


  1. REDIRECT Question: What is known about possible children through Joseph Smith's polygamous marriages?
See also Brian Hales' discussion
The answer is yes or no, depending upon the type of plural marriage Joseph and the woman entered into. Those that were for this life and the next (called “time and eternity”) could include sexual relations. Those that were limited to the next life (“eternity only”) did not. Overall, evidence supports sexual relations in less than half of Joseph Smith’s polygamous unions, and available documents indicate that such relations were infrequent.

Kathryn Daynes observed that any assertion that most of Joseph Smith’s plural marriages included sexual relations is “a conclusion that goes beyond documentary evidence.”[1]

  1. Kathryn M. Daynes, More Wives than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840–1910 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 29. ISBN 0252026810.