“X is unnatural” is so value laden it cannot be reasonably taken as a value-neutral statement no matter how it was intended. To do a thing which is unnatural is inherently bad in our lexicon. In fact “unnatural” is one of our language’s greatest critiques of non-normative behavior.
As seen in the examples:
Homosexuality is unnatural.
It is unnatural for a woman to not want children.
In reality, all human behavior is perfectly natural – including both monogamy and non-monogamy – but some of it is not normative.
We’re talking about raising children, though. As Peeta points out, the more people involved in a relationship, the less stable it’s likely to be. As it is, the divorce rate in traditional monogamous homes is pretty high, and the odds are much higher that people will come and go when you add more to the mix. This is a very bad thing for children, it’s been shown over and over again that consistency in the home and with caregivers is best. Plus, what are the odds that in the average poly family, there is going to be the time, skill, and mix of people required to make it work? Seems like there are a lot of places it can break down.
You: " Let’s also assume for the sake of discussion that the adults all entered into the arrangment with free, informed will, that they are healthy psychologically, not coerced, and not raised in a poly environment. Rather, they have all decided that this is their preference, and though they might feel jealousies and there might be skewed power dynamics, they are all reasonably happy with the arrangement most of the time, as one might be in a typical marriage"
Me: “assuming the adults can be happy with it”.
I think that’s fundamentally the same thing, in spirit, you just did the small-print version. I left it brief because it seems self-evident that the fucked up versions of polygamy most of us have been exposed to in the media are not a great idea for anyone, and we can tear that down all day, so we needn’t go there.
I disagree that it’s at all fair to characterize my OP as X by mashing a bunch of things that came up in the course of a week and 400+ posts together and coming up with a completely different dish that doesn’t accurately reflect what I said not only in the OP itself, but the whole thread.
I think that scads of time and posting could be avoided entirely if people would do a lot less “interpreting”. We’re all speaking English, there doesn’t need to be any interpretation, and if there needs to be clarification, let the person who put forth the words originally do the clarifying. Drives me batty the way people insert multiple layers of meaning where none exist, whether they do it to me or anyone else. And my head pops off my neck entirely when Person A insists to Person B that Person A knows what Person B “really meant”. (I’m not alluding to anyone here, just completing the thought). It’s incredibly insulting and I will never understand it. It seems glaringly obvious to me that assuming we know what someone “really” means, instead of assuming they mean what they actually said, leads to hurt feelings and general acrimony. The same goes for the reverse: not saying what you mean and expecting people to read between the lines leads to just as much of a mess.
That’s why I take things at face value and why I should be taken at face value.
I don’t know what you are referring to here. but my response to this as a general observation is this: I don’t sweat a full on investigation of every notion that passes by me, nor every person. Who has time for that? If the subject or person expands in importance or interest, I will investigate further as the need may arise.
In addition, when I say I take things at face value, I was referring to people. If a person says they are something, believe something, do something… I assume they are being truthful until I have some reason to believe they are either lying or mistaken, which can come about because their behavior is suspicious or because other information comes to light that contradicts them. I give people the respect of allowing them to tell me what their truth is, and I assume they are honest and self-aware until they give me reason to think otherwise.
But I don’t take at face value any statement about anything coming from anybody, that way lies madness.
At the top we have Al and Betty in a monogamous relationship. Below, we have Arnold, Barb, Carl, Diane, Eve, and Frank in a poly relationship. Each line represents the personal relationship between the two individuals. For each individual added, the number of personal relationships increases.
If Al lies to Betty, he has betrayed her and must face the consequences. Whether or not their relationship survives depends on their commitment to one another, the level of betrayal, and Betty’s capacity for forgiveness.
If Arnold lies to Barb, the others will not be able to remain entirely neutral and let things work out between Arnold and Barb as they may. Carl is more emotionally attached to Barb than he is Arnold and so he takes her side and in the midst of sympathizing with her increases her sense of betrayal, as tends to happen when you’re upset and someone is agreeing with you. Frank is more emotionally attached to Arnold than Barb and so attempts to lessen the sense of betrayal and smooth things over. Now in addition to a problem between Arnold and Barb, there is a problem between Carl and Arnold, Carl and Frank, and Frank and Barb.
Eve and Diane might be trying their best to stay out of it, but how can they? They may have to remove themselves emotionally, which only increases the difficulties.
What could be a mild bump in the road for a pair becomes disaster for a group. Is polyfidelity wrong? No, not at all. But if you go that route you’ve got a much more complicated road ahead of you.
Setting aside whether I’m right about monogamy specifically, the fact that I was referring to monogamy at all should make it pretty clear I was using the simplest definition of unnatural, which is also the first definition in every dictionary I looked at: In violation of a natural law / contrary to nature / ot in accordance with or determined by nature.
I understand your point, but I think it only holds where we’re talking about something that has been more widely condemned as unnatural in the sense of “bad”,as in your examples. But who decries monogamy as something bad? No one I’ve ever heard of, not even poly people, so jumping to that interpretation seems weird.
As I pointed out in the other thread, lots of things we do are unnatural, they are behaviors imposed by culture and society, but if you could leave a bunch of babies to grow up completely free of established cultural influences, to figure it out from scratch, you wouldn’t see most of those behaviors: covering your mouth when you sneeze or cough, wearing clothes, using utensils, saying thank you, endangering your own life to rescue a stranger’s (that’s the unnatural behavior of firemen…)
And then if we take Peeta Mellark’s example one step further, what happens when, after years of trying to work things out despite constant emotional abuse, A finally needs a divorce from B and C, but is still madly in love with D, E, and F. And A might be the biological parent of one of B’s children, while E has done most of the child raising. Can A divorce some spouses but not others?
I’m not saying anything about what is moral, or natural, or legal. But the whole situation has potential to get complicated beyond repair very quickly, and leave the children in a mess not knowing who to call “Mom.” Polygamy may be good or bad for adults, and it may be convenient or inconvenient for child raising, but even with good intentions it is very risky for everyone involved. Much more so than conventional marriages and divorces.
I missed the edit window, but I just remembered that for this discussion the OP wanted to limit it to typical polygyny, where one man is married to several women (who are not considered “married” to each other). So my example above is irrelevant.
Polygamy will probably get too complex really fast for most people. But for some, it may be the only way. There may be a great mom to be out there who is not willing to have children unless she gets to do it the way she feels is best, which may be a poly lifestyle. For her, the idea of a monogamous lifestyle may be torture, if not complicated. Different strokes, folks.
It may not be the idea way for everyone in this society to raise a family (or any society, maybe), but it may be the perfect way for certain people and families to do it.
I don’t think it’s the same thing in spirit at all. For instance, a person can be happy in a situation where they don’t have a free, informed will. And half of that thread was arguing the free, informed will issue. And I think that any discussion of whether or not something is good for children is going to have to include an examination of how the adults react to it, my other points about the power dynamics and the jealousies are relevant, which is why I didn’t choose to pretend those don’t exist in my hypothetical poly relationship.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume that if you think polygamy is an excellent way to raise children, it’s because it’s solving some problem that’s inherent in monogamy. Take childcare, for instance. Obviously, if both spouses work outside the home, there’s a problem that needs to be solved…who’s going to care for the children? (And if you think that’s not problematic, you obviously haven’t had to do it. :)) Your implication (and, yes, I’m interpreting what you are saying! That is a natural part of human discourse.) is that the reason polygamy is natural is that it “solves” these kinds of issues that are inherent in monogamy.
You just seem very non-probing, for someone who is interested in Truth. If the Browns tell you that everything is hunky-dory, you assume that since they haven’t given you any reason for you not to believe them, what they’re telling you must be true. When actually the fact that they never tended to mention the downsides was reason enough to believe there were some.
I have to disagree that whatever makes a parent happy is the perfect situation for them to raise their children in. If the poly relationship causes a lot of chaos in the home, then it’s far from ideal, and in fact harmful.
Actually, it does. If failure *wasn’t *more likely, it *wouldn’t *take more care.
It takes more care to cook a souffle than a casserole, because it’s much more likely the souffle will turn out wrong. That hardly means that a good souffle is a bad thing to cook, but it does mean the casserole is a hell of a lot easier.
A group of 10 of my friends often talk about plans to build a “compound” where we can all live together. It’s all talk, and will never happen. But a closely-knit community where all the families help out, have community dinners a couple times a week, and arrange for some families to watch the kids while other parents work outside the home? That really could be an excellent way to raise a family.
I would be willing to share such responsibilities with my closest friends. But if the plan involved joining all 10 friends and their children into one big happy family, there are going to be huge problems. One friend is an impulse shopper. We would make great neighbors, but as a co-signer on joint accounts she would destroy the family financially.
And that’s just one example of how things could go wrong. I am certain that every one of these 10 friends, including myself, would destroy the family if we combined into a single household, by bringing in incompatible ideas regarding spending, retirement planning, home improvements and repairs, child discipline, religion, politics, and merging in new members to the household. And here I’m talking about non-sexual relationships between household members. If it were a free-love community or a 9-wives-screw-one-man community, I can’t imagine things would improve much.
Okay, so just maybe your conventional polygynous group is the exceptional one that can make it work without making the kids a psychological mess. The only way to know for sure is to try it. Is it really “excellent” to attempt such an experiment with real human kids?
you find variations of people and why they do things.
in my experience i find lots of people that have children and poly are couples are from well functioning couples with good relationship skills and love to spare.
i’m not referring to people doing poly because of religious upbringing. i’m referring to people drawn to poly because of a good secular philosophical position.
I don’t think that’s a fair assumption. I might suggest that spaghetti is an excellent meal, but that doesn’t mean I think there’s anything wrong with meatloaf.
A “village” or “commune” idea has a lot of potential to be a great way to live and raise kids. But, as you say, that’s not the same thing as a marriage or a family, and it doesn’t require multiple sexual partners (or any) or stretched resources.
