I’m curious about how poly couples deal with the issue with their kids. Do they introduce their kids to their other lovers? Are their kids embarrassed by having “swingers” for parents? Do the adult children of polyamorous couples ten to be poly themselves? I’m sure that the answers will differ from family to family, but I’d be interested to hear about people’s experiences with the subject.
You’re right that it varies dramatically in different families. I can give you three anecdotes to begin your collection: my family of origin, my own marriage and my best friend’s marriage.
My own parents divorced when I was six, and Dad moved with his friend to another state and married her. They had a large house, and three part-time kids (my two step-brothers and I). Gradually, my brothers became their full time kids. They also had roommates who would stay with them for varying periods of time. Some men, some women. They were friends of my dad and step-mom, and some of them were pretty cool to me, and some ignored me. My favorite was a young woman in her twenties, when I was 14 or so. She took me along to work house cleaning with her, and we had a good time. One day, after work we were hanging out drinking cold soda or something, and she made some offhand comment during a story about “your dad’s girlfriend”. I sort of froze, and she said, “You *did *know your dad and step-mom have an open marriage, right?” Uhhhh…no, I didn’t. But I was also not about to tell her that, what with being 14 and knowing everything, of course! So I just sort of played along while my brain was going, “WHAAAAAAAAAA?!” I soon realized that this woman was also my dad’s girlfriend, and suddenly the “roommates” thing took on a whole new meaning. (To be honest, I don’t to this day know if any of them were simple roommates, I just assume they were all boy or girlfriends of my folks.)
Fast forward a few years, and my folks met another married couple with whom they decided to build a house and live out their retirement together. Again, I don’t have details of who sleeps with who, but I do know they consider it a group marriage. I don’t know if they still see others outside the foursome, but I wouldn’t see why not.
I never talked about it with them at the time. It wasn’t until years later, when I was considering creating an open relationship of my own that I brought it up. I got some good advice from them, but it’s not regular dinner table conversation, or anything. While I was a little freaked out, in the long run I grew to respect it as a valid option.
Of the three of us kids, one brother and I are in open marriages, and the other brother I believe is monogomous, but I’ve never asked.
My own marriage: we haven’t told our kids. Mom and Dad do sometimes go out with “Friends”. Sometimes that “friend” is a friend, sometimes a boy or girlfriend, but we call them all “friends.” (As in, “Where’s Dad?” “Oh, he’s out with his friend Rebecca.” I figure if nothing else, this teaches my kids that grown ups can be friends with the opposite gender. If, at any time, a kid asks us, we’ll discuss it openly and honestly, with age appropriate answers. My son is 13, my daughter is 18 months.
My friend’s marriage: it was quietly open until a few years ago, when they decided to move her lover into their house. They told their daughters that Mom was, in effect, taking a second husband (though not legally, of course.) The girls had just that summer met another poly family, so was reminded of “Steve and his wives” and had some frame of reference. I think they were 9 and 11 at the time. The older girl struggles with it a lot. Then again, she struggles with everything a lot, she’s just that kind of kid. The newer man is a lot stricter with the kids and doesn’t put up with her crap as much as her dad, which doesn’t help. The other girl is totally and completely fine with it, as far as anyone can tell. In fact, at 8 (yes, before she knew about her parents), she started “poly dates” with other little boys, including my son! It was pretty friggin cute to see the little girl sitting on a picnic table bench with WhyKid to one side and her “other boyfriend” on the other. I suspect she’ll end up poly, but one never knows.
I do wonder sometimes if WhyKid knows we’re open. He has the obvious example of my friend’s marriage, so he knows that poly is an option, whereas I had no idea such a thing existed. It’s not a secret among our friends. He’s the kind of kid who doesn’t want information until he asks for it, though. So I respect that and wait for him to ask.
By the way, I know you mean no offense, but you should know that “swingers” is not a word most poly people like much. It’s mildly offensive, because it incorporates only a small segment of the poly options. “Swingers” are generally looking for anonymous or nearly so sexual relationships with others, with little or no emotional attachment or longevity. I have never swung, and am not interested in swinging.
I cannot speak to the subject of polyfolks with kids personally, as I don’t have any as of yet. However, I can speak a little about those people I know and the context I intend to raise my children in.
Of the poly families I know where there are adult children, some of those children are poly and some are not. In cases where the children are not aware of their parents’ other partners (as at least friends of the family), it has generally been cases where a marriage with children already has been opened.
My children, when I have them, will be in a multi-adult family. My husband’s long-term other partner and I have talked at length about our relationships to each other’s children (we have settled that we are each comfortable treating the other’s relationship to our children as something a bit more than ‘aunt’ but less than ‘mother’). I hope that my other partner will be a parent to my children; the issue is currently explicitly not under discussion due to his preferences for getting his life in order before considering having responsibility for a small squalling protohuman.
A family I know reported at one point that their children got envious comments from some of their schoolmates. Something to the effect of “Yeah, I have two daddies and a mommy too, but your parents all like each other. You’re so lucky.”
Another family I know had a stalker reporting them to child protection; they found that the fact they were out about being poly served as a partial protection, as when the CPS people went to the kids’ school and said, “Do you know these children are being raised by N adults?” the administrators and teachers said, “Sure, they all come to parent-teacher conferences.”
“Polyamorous,” eh? That’s the politically correct term nowadays for fucking around?
OK, I’ve printed out the OP
Fuck! I should never do this on two Jack Danielses!
OK, I’ve printed out the OP, and I’m gonna carry it with me, and the next time some self-indulgent, religious asshole accuses me of being immoral because I’m an atheist, I’m gonna’ whip out this printout and force the sonofabitch to read it. Because, I’ve been married for 34 years to the same woman, never cheated on her, never divorced her (we’ve been through some shit, oh yes we have, but we stayed together, worked hard on our marriage because we loved our boys, and we’re damn glad we did!) and I gotta tell ya’, I consider myself a helluvalot more “moral” than some self-indulgent shitferbrains who fucks anything that comes along, and calls it an “open marriage.” What bullshit!! “Open marriage” is a euphemism for “I’m a self-centered prick/cunt who want’s the pretense of a socially acceptable marriage contract, but still wants to fuck anybody who strikes my fancy.”
Polyamorous my ass!
Actually, it seems to be a bit of a move toward dropping pretenses, if you ask me.
Whooooooo boy. Somebody’s feeling brave tonight!! Must say though, I do tend to agree with you, with certain caveats and stuff but.
kam is not, I repeat NOT pulling up a deckchair to watch the fireworks, no-sir-ee.
You are being just a bit judgmental don’t you think? First off you haven’t read the thread very closely, or if you did your comprehension is not up to par. Here let me help you
So Polyamorous is not fucking around as in a different partner every week.
Secondly, how does your condemnation of their lifestyle differ from some religious asshole’s condemnation of your atheism? Here is a hint, there is no difference. Intolerance is intolerance.
Get a clue, buy a vowel if need be.
Rick
Who is not in a polyamorous relationship, but has no problems with them.
Fuck I think I would struggle with it too if my mom just moved some guy in who wasn’t my dad and then I was expected to lissten to some douche I don’t even know. This really isn’t the same as a step-parent I don’t think a child can really understand this.
No kidding, the first responsibility of a parent is to provide a stable environment for his/her child. When a parent allows the gratification of his/her sexual needs to trump the developmental needs of a child, then that parent is a piss-poor parent.
Introducing a revolving door of adults into the house-hold and maintaining a sexualized home-life undermine the child’s emotional development. These people would have been better off not reproducing, or in establishing a firewall between their sex-life and a stable homelife for their children.
POOL and MADMONK are on it.
If you want to have this kind of relationship as an adult, that’s fine I guess. Hell, I would like it too (even though I consider it immoral, I bet it would be fun). But you shouldn’t do this when you have kids. That’s what your college days are for.
It’s pretty much the same reason I oppose homosexual couples being allowed to marry and raise children. It’s very selfish, and the odds of your kid growing up with a good framework of social values are no doubt greatly reduced. Why is a “framework of values” important? See below:
"You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken. Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas that are, for the most part, the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?
"We cannot… anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable, and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts…
"Then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything; and beauty, the effluence of fair works, shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze from a purer region, and insensibly draw the soul from the earliest years into likeness and sympathy with the beauty of reason.
“There can be no nobler training than that.”
-PLATO’S Republic
** Moderator Warning**. You’re correct, Sunrazor, you’d be better off posting sober, then you’d probably not make the mistake of posting like this in IMHO. Don’t do it again.
samclem
“No doubt,” eh?
Your comments and that of others in this thread is based on the assumption that a relationship that you find strange is bad for kids. I can think of some reasons why it might be a GOOD thing for kids – show them how the real world operates, introduce them to variety, different people, prepare them for differences between people and show them how to get along, etc. That sounds like a good framework of social values to me.
Until you can conclusively prove that a polyamorous household is always detrimental to child development, your statements only reveal bigotry.
Teaching kids to love one another is always preferable to teaching them to hate.
I don’t follow your logic. How is the second example selfish? What’s the comparison between a devoted, monogamous gay couple and a poly family?
Don’t include me in your condemnation of homosexual couples raising children. I am all for raising children in loving, constructive, and stable homes and the sexual orientation of the parents is not an issue. What is important is stability.
Ditto what madmonk28 said
As long as we’re dealing with opinions here, I really don’t appreciate the venom spouted at poly’s here.
I suspect there is more then a little jealousy involved. Sunrazor’s post boils down to “Sleeping around would have caused a divorce. A divorce would have been bad for the kids. So both I and my spouse basically sucked it up and tried to make the best of a bad situation”.
Well, what if you could have stayed married, on the best of terms, while each had other people in your life, making it richer? Wouldn’t that have been preferable? Ideally, that is what the best poly-marriages are all about.
I think it is telling that **WhyNot ** didnt even know her parents were in an poly-marriage untill she was told. She just knew her parents (and therefore, she herself) had a rich social life.
Polyamorosity is not for me, but I am in no position to condemn it.
However, if some other guy were disciplining my kid we would be having a good old fashioned prayer meeting. IMHO, your polyamorous rights end where consideration for the children begins.
Since when does a polyamourous relationship destabilize the environment? If the relationships are solid, it’s a non-issue. You’re condemning them for something you don’t even know is occurring.
How is love a bad thing? How could it be anything but virtuous?