I did not say that all Nuclear families have an alcoholic parent, I am implying however that Kids are better off with 3 caring parents then 2 normal ones where one is an alcoholic. I doubt most open marriage parents are meth addicts, so I doubt they could possible be worse than Meth or other hard drug addicted parents.
Keep it simple, Nuclear family with two loving, unaddicted parents is better for kids than an family with three parents and at least you have room for debate. But when you make the leap to Open Marriage as bad as Addicted parents, you sound crazy and small minded.
I think your previous post was most appropriate. It goes a long way to point out that drug addiction is rather different than a sexual lifestyle choice. My guess is that the OP has no experience with either and so really doesn’t understand.
I agree, keep the thread open. Let’s talk about it.
No, I don’t support polygamy, although I consider it a different issue. Polygamy creates a big family, but one presumes wives don’t come and go at the whim of the father. Not that I would know. Heck, I’ve never even met a polygamist.
Now you are making a reasonable debate at least, I might even agree with you, at least in context of American Society, being from outside the normal could stink.
Do you wish to retract the comments comparing them to meth addicts, or do you stand by them?
My sense from the thread I am parodying is not three parents, but an endless series of “friends” that come and go.
I stand by my instinct that open marriages have a high correlation to drug abuse and bad parenting. Call it small minded, I call it experienced. In my experience, sleeping around and drinking, for example, go hand in hand.
You do understand our confusion, don’t you, when you title your thread “Meth addicts with kids”? Why don’t open a threada bout “poly” marriages and post a link in the MPSIMS thread? That’s a good fellow.
The best way to bring this thread to a mod’s attention is via email.
Based on the Windchill study of teaching high school English for over a decade, and getting to know kids and learning about their families and seeing how kids flourish in some environments and flounder in others.
Yup. Tho I would emphasize that “safe” is better than predictable. And if that stable, safe home life has one mom and two dads, what’s the problem?
The purpose of a family is to provide for the proper raising of kids. In this country, the “ideal” is one man, one woman to do the parenting. That doesn’t mean its the only way. And that model falls flat on its face plenty of times, far too often for anyone to tout it as the naturally ‘superior’ method.
I still think that a stable, safe home life with 3 or more ‘parents’ is likely to be superior to one with one man and one woman, where one or both are substance abusers. And I’ve worked with kids, parents, addicts, felons, prostitutes, and corporate attorneys for 25 years in my role as a physician to know that using a broad brush to paint anyone who falls outside of the box as incapable of being a good parent is just wrong.
Actually, I agree with you. I do wish you had simply made your point instead of making an outrageous comparison. There is a very big difference between “mommy’s boyfriends” and “my mommy has not come home for two days now”
Your Op was deceitful, short and merely a setup. I gave an honest and thoughtful answer and found out you were comparing Meth addicts to a situation I know nothing about.
Maybe you are correct, but in the end, you are just pulling ideas out of your ass and by common sense seems too extreme.
I know of one family were the Mother was dumb but very caring, the biological father is a alcoholic and a pothead and the Mother’s lover was another pothead. For 6 month they shared a trailer with the two kids and the kids survived this and in fact were doing better than normal as three incomes were supporting them instead of just one. I have no idea how the kids are doing now, the oldest should be graduating High School. I still see the Biological father occasionally; he has been in and out of jail for missing child support payments.
The problems this family has are tied to addiction, not lifestyle.
The situations described in the Poly thread were a lot more similar to that (simply with no additional paperwork involved) than to your own description of Poly.
Many women throughout history have gotten married for economic or political reasons to men that they knew would “fool around” and considered themselves blessed when the husband just kept one lover. People make all kinds of marriage arrangements which the law doesn’t cover nor intend to cover. Fidelity is a big point with me… actually, trust is the point with me. I’d rather have a husband who has a lover and know her, and maybe share my house with her, than have a husband who goes on lots of one night stands and doesn’t tell me. The second one is a lot more common and a lot more likely to give me something I didn’t want to catch.
Sorry, Walter Windchill, I am not going to close this thread for now because you got responses you’re not happy with, particularly given your continued participation. For now the thread will remain open.
I have seen other people not like the way threads go, and request they be locked. Is there a standard that is followed to decide when to lock and when not to, or is it the whim of passing administrator? Just curious.
I any case, the thread has calmed down considerably and we’ve gone nearly five minutes without anyone telling me to “fuck off,” so I guess it can stay open. I had no idea the OP would be so confusing/deceitful/upsetting the way it is phrased.
Oh, come off it. How the heck do you expect my kid to sense the difference between my “friend” Tina, whom I’ve never slept with and never will, and my “friend” John, whom I’ve known for three years and slept with twice? Or are you of the opinion that a married person should have no friends of the opposite sex? OK, so what if I were bi? How would my kid know whether I was going out with my friend Judy to have sex at her place or go get coffee?
No one is “paraded” around the kids. I don’t ask my kid to “Go get Mama a condom, Sweetie, she’s havin’ fun tonight!” The stream - such as it is, more of a trickle, really - is “endless” only because this marriage works for us and we don’t see it ending anytime soon.
I already agreed with madmonk28 in the other thread that “introducing a revolving door of adults into the house-hold and maintaining a sexualized home-life undermine the child’s emotional development.” I also pointed out that I don’t know, personally, anyone who does this. If I did, I’d be just as upset with them as you are.
Perhaps. I really don’t know about any correlation or not. I do know that I personally am fairly well respected on this board in parenting threads, and it’s only when a poly thread comes up that I’m suddenly The Weirdo. (Well, OK, a couple of religous threads, too, I suppose, since I’m of a nonmainstream faith.) Find me a parenting question that I haven’t answered appropriately and with good feedback. Go on, just one. I have no doubts at all that I am a great mom, so your statement about correlation means nothing to me.
Oh, and as for my bemusement with her cute “polydate”, anyone with half a firing neuron could see that it is total projection on my part. The girl was doing this before she even knew that a poly “lifestyle” existed - how was she “acting out her confusion” before the “confusion” ever existed? She was a kid, playing with other kids and calling two of the boys her “boyfriends”. I brought it up merely because the OP asked if kids of polys are likely to be poly themselves. I said even there that one never knows.
She’s been seen by mental health experts, by the way, as part of the treatment of her mentally disturbed older sister (who’s illness has nothing to do with this, before you go down that road), and she’s just fine. No “confusion”, no shame, no upset. She thinks it’s pretty cool that she has three adults to look out for her, do stuff for her and love her. She’s a great kid. I think I’ll trust the professional opinion of her therapists over some bigot on a message board who’s never even met her, thanks.
