I thought the situation in this comic was a little unrealistic, in that CPS probably would take the child away from a polyamorus situation, but a little googling revealed that this might not be the case:
With very rare exceptions, child protective services will not involve themselves or care about what your lifestyle is unless there is clear evidence of neglect or abuse. Even if there are states whose laws allow the children to taken away soley on the basis of lifestyle, CPS (or whatever name they go by in a given state) rarely cares, because they are overworked dealing with really cases of child abuse, abandonment and other horrors. So, living openly poly will not generally create any risk of losing your children.
If, however, you ever get involved in a custody battle, being polyamorous may put you at a disadvantage. If both parents have previously been involved in polyamorous relationships, and there is no third party, being poly really can’t have an effect (you’re objecting to your ex being in a type of relationship you’ve been in also? Don’t waste my time). If one parent is poly and the other has never been poly, or if there is a third party involved, than polyamory can hurt you in a custody case. CAN. As PolyMom discussed in her blog several months ago, and I have experienced myself, it is fully possible for poly to brought up in a custody case and utterly ignored (“When I started as a judge back in 19XX, we called this kind of thing having extra resources. I don’t want to hear about it.”)
It may also vary by locality. This comic is written by a person in the UK; I don’t know how child protective services work here compared to the States, in terms of what they’ll take kids from their homes for. It probably would also be affected by whether the partners were all living together as a group or had separate residences. I don’t think this grouping is in an “all living together” scenario (the comic is based, to a large degree at least, on actual people).
A lot of the examples here seem to be polygamy with all the people living together. The one polygamous person I know has 4 houses (one for each wife). This isn’t really a point just something to consider when debating.
It also seems likely to me that legalizing poly relationships won’t mean that people who aren’t in them start jumping into them in quantities big enough to skew statistics. While I know that people can have happy, healthy, long term poly relationships (I know a few), I also think that most people “don’t want to share.” Legalizing pologamy doesn’t mean I’d consent to my husband and I taking in another spouse, I’ve already established I’m not good at sharing in that way.
There are only so many rich men out there to hog all the women - and only so many women shallow enough to want to be in that sort of relationship (and those women are already there, their title is just ‘mistress’).
Yes, as I said earlier, it isn’t the law that’s preventing rich men from accruing a harem; they can do that perfectly legally as long as they don’t call the relationship marriage.
On the other hand, the problem if polygamy because acceptable once again wouldn’t just be those relatively few rich men. It would be the much larger minority of well off but not rich men. A few thousand really wealthy men with a hundred “wives” won’t make much of a dent on a national scale; 10 or 20 million well off men with 2-3 wives each on the other hand would make a huge dent in the number of women available for relationships with other men.
Conversely, the only absolute moral value even arguable is whether or not it harms someone who didn’t do anything to deserve it. Anything else is literally a question for the various and several priests, philosophers, and people with functional consciences but differing opinions.
I don’t think this is as much of a worry in a modern, relatively egalitarian society–in the polyamorous communities I’m acquainted with, generally men who are attempting to assemble a harem are vaguely frowned upon (complete with the derogatory nickname of “unicorn hunter” especially if they claim to be looking for only bisexual women)
And would be offset by the women with 2 or 3 or more male partners, as has been pointed out several times. Polygamous relationships are not limited to the “one man, several women” scenario.
That’s what has been claimed but I don’t buy it. I would expect the overwhelming majority of such relationships be one man and multiple women. You see rich and famous men even today sometimes accumulate multiple mistresses or groupies; rich and famous females show no interest in that. They might go from lover to lover, but only one at a time.
I’d love to see a study that demonstrates this, rather than a phenomena equally explained either by “women don’t gain social status for sleeping around, so they keep it quieter” or “the media likes putting up pictures of scantily-clad hot chicks, therefore it’s more often that they’ll show pictures of rich guys’ mistresses”.
Der Trihs, I like your theory that there will suddenly be a bunch of men who won’t have any women to take for wives. They might be desperate enough to date some of us gay guys
Give it some thought here- if women aren’t sleeping around, who exactly are all these guys sleeping with? Women have historically gladly cheated on their husbands, maintained a “sugar daddy’” and a more age-appropriate “real” boyfriend, been slutty through college, dated multiple guys, and otherwise entered concurrent partnerships.
It’s possible that there is another component in the “more men have multiple simultaneous female partners” situation in addition to, or in place of, the idea that women don’t “want” that - its possible that women are more willing to share - to be a secondary partner or a mistress. And that should polygamy come to pass, all men have to do to be in a relationship is be willing to be the second or third partner in a relationship.
True, not limited to. But in the history of the world and in the world as it is today the “one man, several women” scenario appears to be on the order of 90% of such relationships.
Besides a few historically rare harems, the LDS church and movies, do you have any evidence for that?
Because, as a member of the poly community as well as an outside observer of much “cheating” among the nominally monogamous, that has not been my experience at all.
I disagree with the decrease in value of ugly desirable women.
Essentially, the ‘supply’ of women would decrease as more went with rich husbands leaving more males wiithout. The ‘ugly, undesirable’ woman would actually see her ‘value’ rise.
I find interesting, the more I read this thread, the idea that the harem model will dominate–it’s entirely been a discussion of “one guy with lots of women” or “one woman with lots of guys”.
Most of the poly scenarios I see in real life are quads, triads (either MFF or MMF), or multigendered line arrangements with no implied relationships with your partner’s partner(s).
I can only speak of the poly community I’ve seen thus far, which consists of both genders having multiple partners. I don’t see ANY evidence of an imbalance in distribution leaving swaths of men without access to women. And, as has also already been pointed out, even if nonmonogamous relationships become legally recognized that would not mean that lots of people would jump into them. Many would still prefer monogamy. Those who would choose to formalize a nonmonogamous relationship are those who are already inclined to be poly, and in my experience that includes both men and women with multiple partners.
