The topic is the effect of polygamous practices on raising children. How gender roles are modeled for children is directly on topic. The women on the show you’re so enamored of are NOT in an equitable relationship. Do you believe that is a healthy thing to model for children, yes or no? This “Dio show” stuff is just evasive on your part since my questions are compltely fair and relevant and others are asking the same questions.
I wonder what the legal repercussions would be when one wife, as in Sister Wives, has had enough and leaves the relationship with her small ones.
I’d love to see their filing status with the IRS too.
Dr. Deth: I’d have to look closer, but in the interview they said the kids attend public school.
And again: the fact that there are religious cults that turn plural marriage into the crazytown stuff is well known to all of us. I am not in support of that, so you don’t have to sell me on the evils of it.
But I don’t believe that plural marriage itself is the culprit, and it can be practiced outside that situation.
Monogamy is deeply unnatural, by the way. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of any primate species that practices it, except ours, and we very rarely actually pull it off. So formalizing our natural tendency to have multiple partners in a way that supports a loving family for children to grow up in is a very good thing… way better than a “monogamous” couple chained together for the sake of the kids but miserable, fighting and cheating.
Plural marriage may not be perfection, but I don’t see that it’s inherently a lesser system if practiced freely by informed adults.
I am aware of several intentional communities that have polyamorous groups raising children in common - and they often work very well.
I am not going to cite them, as they wouldn’t like the attention drawn, so you may disregard if you need to.
It is very difficult, and requires a whoooooole lot of patience and group emotional work- but it is possible and great for the kids.
YMMV
Cite?
It sounds like your projecting your own issues onto others. Cite that people have “a natural tendency for multiple partners?” The observable evdience would inducate that the most common natural human tendency is towrds serial monogamy. And where are you getting this “miserable, fighting and cheating” stuff? Do you honestly think that all monogamous people are miserable and cheat on each other? I’ve been monogamous for 20 years, am happy as a clam with it and have never had any desire to cheat.
I’ve watched both scenarios. Neither is actually what I’d consider stable. That marriage commitment - well, it works the same way as it does in a monogamous marriage - it frequently ends in divorce - which tends to be a lot messier in a poly arrangement, as more people have more sides to take. And when kids are involved - I have a friend who was the primary caretaker for the children, but not the bio mother. So when the family broke up, she lost her kids. And seriously, really lost them. She has ZERO legal rights to kids she raised from babies and the dissolution of the relationship was nasty enough that the bio mother won’t allow her to see them.
In some ways I really feel poly marriages are less stable than a close knit community. A lot of poly arrangements fall apart when someone wants to bring in a new partner (or does) that changes the dynamics. The sex really adds a level of emotional upheaval and complications. I have seen it work, but even the long term poly marriages I know haven’t been smooth.
(By the way, if you want to look at long term liberal secular poly marriages, the Science Fiction community is a good place to find them. They all read too much Heinlein ;).)
Now, the FLDS - those marriages are pretty darn stable due the the overwhelming religious influences at play. But to me, that sort of arrangement IS very unequal and isn’t being made entirely by choice - even if the person making it has made the choice out of free will, the social pressure to maintain the marriage is overwhelming and to me, unacceptable.
Well, yeah. 
An hour of being questioned directly and specifically, and listening to all of them clearly explain their feelings is very different than 90 seconds of quick cuts highlighting the most interesting stuff. If you don’t think so, I guess you’re welcome to your opinion, but I don’t share it.
Ummm… this equation is just a tad bizarre, but I think you’re trying to say that people hide things and we can’t all know the intimate realities of everyone’s relationships, which isn’t news. (You could also be telling us that you and the people you hang out with are just completely clueless narcissists, but probably not.)
I would, but I only spend time doing that for people who do it themselves.
If you care to cite any data that refute the assertion, feel free.
Which is my whole point.
Once again, I’ve seen the show. Five episodes. It paints a different picture.
Polyamory isn’t the topic. Polygamy is.
“*The children attend a polygamist cooperative school…” *
Hey, you are basing your opinion on a one hour carefully scripted interview. At least read the damn wiki page, eh?
Doyou really not know how it works around here. It’s your assertion, you’re the one who has to support it. How are you even defining “natural?” That’s a word with no real meaning.
Well, I’m a serial monogamist (with an occasional one-night fling mutually participated in and agreed upon - in my longest relationship that was once, for his birthday, in ten years) whose partners have never cheated on me, so you are mistaken.
Hmm. Maybe she has me on ignore? Or she just likes to spar with Dio? Puzzling.
“carefully scripted”???
Words from their mouths are lies, Wiki Is Truth?
You didn’t say you’d seen it, or if you did, I didn’t see that.
I’ll have to watch it.
I think I said it three times. But anyway, here you go. Tell me that sounds healthy to you. Or, maybe go online, find the episodes, and watch for yourself. Tell me all the crying is a good thing in a family.
Ok, why is it “great for the kids”? Let us take a traditional family. Working Dad, stay at home Mom, 2 kids. (admittedly not all that common anymore). Then let us take *that *family= Working Dad, two working Moms, one FT student Mom, **THIRTEEN **kids. (which is even less common). Which kids get more time with the parents on a ratio? Do the math.
And the kids are raised in a repressive religous fanatic culture, where the girls are brainwashed into being obediant sex-slaves and baby factories, and the boys are kicked out of the commune when they are 18 so that the old fart perverts get more wives.
How is that “great” for those kids?
The wiki here is well cited.
"When the camera is on, the Browns are glowing with plig pride. (“Plig,” as the four adults explain, is a fun slang word for the lifestyle.) Their children go to a plig cooperative school."
A few more quotes from that article: "Kody works “in advertising sales,” he tells us cryptically. Which is better than poor Janelle, whom we follow to her 12-hour workday at an office . . . somewhere . . . doing something. The cameras wait outside. It seems the Browns aren’t eager to reveal quite all, and much of “Sister Wives” can feel like a calculated performance on their part, especially Kody’s, with his Prince Valiant locks, church-rock goatee and a touched-by-an-angel perma-grin. His self-satisfied mugging grows old quick. …TLC is only too happy to provide this, in exchange for the ooky allure of it all. As with “19 Kids and Counting,” religion is the barely acknowledged elephant in the room, something the producers seem intent on cutting a wide circle around, lest viewers be scared off. Like the Duggars, whose politics and values have been all but scrubbed clean, we see the Browns (who say they are Fundamentalist Mormon) in moments of bedtime prayers, but we do not explore the nitty-gritty of their faith, politics and other core beliefs. "
Again, do the research, dude. You’re basing your OP on a one hour carefully scripted softball interview.