I’m not sure he abdicated it. I think he’s sharing it with two people instead of one. I guess before I argue any further, am I right to assume this was discussed with the family in some fashion before it came down or did The New Guy just show up? I would not agree with this arrangement if an older child expressed issues with it and then they did it anyway, though if a kid was around 4 or 5 years old, I think that kid would come to understand the arrangement as “normal” and probably wouldn’t find it odd at all.
What a tidy place to hang the other comment I was gonna make. 
I am incapable of seeing a one-mom-one-dad home as ideal.
I look at my friends with young children who are trying to do one-mom-one-dad stuff. The parents are constantly overstressed and frazzled by the amount of work they have to do to keep their kids well-cared-for. They have very little time to even maintain their relationships, let alone do anything that isn’t completely devoured by the children; if they want to go out, their ability to do so is entirely dependent on finding someone to look after their kids. Many of them are financially strapped. One couple I know was sufficiently so to move in with her parents, whose response to ‘Could you look after the grandkids one night next week so we can go out to dinner’ is a snide, “Maybe you should spend more time with your children.”
Frankly, I don’t know how nuclear family people do it without going irrevocably mad. And my parents didn’t, actually; they were entirely monogamous and socially normal people, but our neighborhood practiced something moderately akin to tribal caretaking of children in public spaces and ran on little ‘1/2 hour of babysitting’ cards. I grew up knowing that there were other adults accessible to me – not extended family like in traditional tribal societies, aunts and grandparents and the like, but other families with small children who were pooling resources to make childrearing not a completely crazymaking thing, and several older folks (primarily a couple across the street and the lady next door) who also dedicated some time and care to the pack of kids in the neighborhood.
One of the reasons my husband and I are moving at the moment is that where we live at the moment is pretty isolated from our friends in general; it’s a pain in the arse to get out to visit them and to have them in to visit us. And we’re planning on having kids soon – and having them here would not be possible to deal with, because there’s no ready possibility of having any sort of community support. (Setting aside the isolation from people we’re close to, one of my neighbors thinks that a good way to deal with an upset child is to throw a screaming fit.) We’re moving to get closer to people who can help us distribute that work; if our local partners turn out to be willing to help us with some chunk of the heavy parental lifting, that would be fucking terrific.
Yes.
No.
She welcomed him at the time, and still likes him and the arrangement most of the time. Most of her anger is directed at her father, and has been literally since she was an infant. (This kid is the closest to a Nancy Spungen I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet.) She only acts out against the New Guy when he won’t let her become violent with other family members or shirk her agreed upon responsibilities. And, once again, I have to reinforce that since he’s been in the picture, she has gotten much, much better than she was with two parents alone.
Don’t you think you’re nitpicking a bit, not to mention projecting an adult viewpoint onto a kid mentality a bit? Kids are nowhere near as hidebound in their ability to accept situations as they later calcify into as adults. To a kid, everything adults do and espouse is equally counterintuitive and incomprehensible. This is why, in the process of socializing children, we have to tell them to do things many hundreds of times over before it sinks in–because to a kid, nothing is an “of course,” it’s all grafted on arbitrary behaviors that adults find desirable and teach kids to do.
Kids very naturally adapt to home situations just as they adapt to learning language–if you raise a child of any race in an environment where a certain language is spoken, the child will learn that language regardless of his genetic origin. No one language or home situation is inherently weird to a kid, they just see things as “different.” The tendency to reject different situations as less desireable or wrong or weird is a learned one, heavily influenced by the adults around the kid.
If a child is well fed, housed, loved, has attention and discipline and adults around her who are grounded, happy, loving, productive and giving a good example, she will be a happy, adjusted child. She will not give a damn about whether or not she has more parents than someone else and it will never occur to her that her situation is unusual until some opinionated adult comes along to “inform” her of how “terrible” her situation is because it’s “not normal.” Kids have to be taught how to be bigoted assholes by grown up bigoted assholes, it doesn’t come naturally to them.
So, getting back to your original point–are you really so naive as to believe that step parents could never have been in the picture BEFORE the original marriage broke up? Or that perhaps people who’ve been divorced before might be a tad gunshy and be reluctant to remarry, but not necessarily reluctant to live together? Are you actually contending that until a marriage license is produced that the New Person has no right to discipline a child who lives under his or her roof? Is the situation substantially different just because there was no traumatic divorce, THEN a new stepparent in the mix? Seems to me that this would be a better scenario for a child, no trauma, just another caring parent around to help out with the family. Seems like a win/win to me.
AFAIC The ideal environment for kids has committed authority figures who love eachother, set clear rules, and enforce them reliably and evenly. Knowing that they are loved, what behavior is expected, and being able to predict the behavior of other family members makes kids feel safe.
Once a child is old enough to realize, or to be told, that mom and dad are poly, the important thing to stress is how little has changed. I know a few poly couples. Mommy and daddy still have that big romantic Disney love. They just happen to also enjoy physical relationships with other people. I see them as fine parents. If they weren’t I’d butt into their parenting a whole lot more.
You’re not really addressing my point, though, are you? My point was that the reasons I was addressing, which YOU gave, namely:
all apply to the step-parent situation, as well as to the polyamorous situation.
Whether or not your father is gone, or your new father got married to your mother doesn’t affect if stepdaddy/daddy#2 is a mean some-bitch who moves in to your house and screws your mother.
I second that
This is wrong on so many levels, I can’t even begin to list them. I feel sorry for these kids - they are going to have big problems when they grow up…
I’ve never understood this. If one wants to be polyamorous, why marry?
I’ve never understood this question. What makes my relationship with my husband less worthy of recognition, celebration, and acknowledgement? Is there some reason we should not undertake responsibility to each other?
We love each other, we are committed to our relationship in the long term, we support each other, we are partners. Our marriage is about us, not what we do or do not do with other people.
I lived with a Polyamorous couple for a few years. In fact, I was practically a fifth member of a four way marriage. ( I was intimate with one of the women, but not the other.) I no longer live with them, but we’re still good friends. It was while I was living with the first couple that they joined households and became a four way open marriage. It was all open and aboveboard, the Kids, two boys 13 and 16 at the time as I recall knew what was going on, knew that their parents marriage was open. We were Pagan and the Family’s outside Lovers were all Family friends, or known to the kids from Pagan circles. The older son has since started a poly family of his own, and isn’t handling it quite as well as his father. It does take a modicum of emotional maturity to handle a Poly relationship, and yes it is Quite different from swinging.
There is, of course, some perfectly valid reason that you are seconding a post which garnered a warning? Let me know what it is.
Benefits are generally only offered to married couples. Marriage means many things to many people. Sexual fidelity and love don’t even have to appear on the list. I’d guess most marriages don’t put love at the top of the list. Money, security, children, social pressure, companionship, etc. They’re all perfectly valid reasons to marry. I think it’s realistic to think that one person can’t be everything to another person. It’s a brave person who is willing to not only admit that, but to try to achieve a more complete level of satisfaction in their life and be up front and honest about it.
There are plenty of people who have confidants of both sexes outside the marriage. I suppose that could be considered a form of polyamory as well. I think the sexual aspect of it is what people have a hard time with, but it’s really only part of the picture.
Ah, I have a problem. The roles traditionally adscribed to each gender, at least around here, suck my ovaries. They include things like “you’re the daughter, so you’re going to have to take care of your parents, and perhaps your grandparents, no matter what, while your brothers get home free”.
To me a healthy relationship would require a husband that doesn’t feel threatened in his masculinity whenever I yield the Black and Decker. Around here, that family contests traditional models - not in the same way as poly (the version of “open” where everybody and his Mom knows that Guy keeps two households is considered “traditional” around here), but still, in the 6 weeks I’ve had my flat I’ve had to explain repeatedly to every neighbor that no, I’m not going to get a man to hang my pictures on the wall, I do my own hanging. Said neighbors include several professional women, including a clinical psychologist who is separated and has the two daughters living with her.
/hijack
The topic at hand is polyamorous relationships. The other aspects that differentiate a polyamorous relationship from a monogamous relationship were implied. Sorry that wasn’t clear.
What does divorce have to do with anything?
Because the topic at hand got turned into another man’s right to discipline your kid. It’s been pointed out that
A. this happens in many contexts in your life already, if your kids go to school, stay with a babysitter or go over to another adult’s house.
B. this happens in situations of divorce and re-marriage all the time without the consent of the father.
C. the father involved invited this particular man to do it.
It’s clear that you wouldn’t. That’s fine, no one’s asking you to invite another man into your marriage. That doesn’t mean no one else would choose it, or that it might happen without your choice.
If we were having a discussion about Cheeris and I sad “I don’t like them because they look funny, taste bad, and get stuck in my teeth” would you pop in and say “Sounds like you are talking about dandelions to me”?
We were talking about an actual poly relationship, not a divorce.
How did this hypothetical divorce come about? Was it amicable? How soon after the divorce did she re-marry? Did the child have to move to another neighborhood? Town? State? Are other children involved? Did the parents work hard to reconcile their differences? Or did they just say “You know, this isn’t working out. Let’s change partners?”
A teacher disciplining a child is a far cry from another man moving into a household and controlling a child’s life. Babysitter likewise. It surprises me that you would equate the two. Perhaps it shouldn’t. If you feel that a babysitter and a parent are equal figure sin a child’s life, that would go a long way toward explaining why you would countenance such a potential upheaval to her world.
The children had no choice in this new relationship. It did not come about because of a failed relationship. Having children should involve a sense of responsibility that puts personal gratification way behind the welfare of he child. The child in questioning is struggling with the new status quo, specifically the new “father,” which is reason enough question the judgement of the adults involved.
They seem like self-indulgent people to me. There are more important issues in the world than their own pleasure.
No, but I might say, “Hmm. Dandelions look funny, taste bad and get stuck in my teeth just like Cheeris. Do you have the same problem? Guess those problems aren’t exclusive to Cheeris.”
Yes, actually, she did have some say in it, as I’ve already said. It was discussed with both girls as a possibility, and their input was weighed in the ultimate decision. That’s about as much, if not more, input than any kid gets over any new parent in the case of a “monogomous” remarriage. I know you think the two are fundamentally different, but until you explain why, I’m not going to accept that assumption for our debate.
Her parents, her therapists and everyone who has come into contact with her agree that despite her occasional resentment, her general behavior and mood has improved vastly because of this man’s presence in her life. You don’t know her, so you don’t get a vote.
Kids resent their parents all the time. It’s part of how they grow up with appropriate boundaries and limits. I don’t see why this girl should get a free pass on acting like a jerk.
But neither do they add anything to the Cheerio discussion. You are using Cliff Clavin logic here. You know why you and I are so much alike? Neither of has been gored by an albino razorback while playing pinochle on the moon.
Let me think of a couple of other examples that fit the divorce/poly criteria.
*Your mother and her brother killed her husband for the money and are having an incestuous relationship.
*A serial killer/rapist has taken you both hostage.
I might think that. I am not sure I have stated that. I gess it would come down to whether the number two as it pertains to partners in a marriage is fundamental or not. For the purposes of this discussion I will stipulate either way you want.
Gosh. Do I need to check in with you before I offer an opinion in this forum? On this board? Were we voting?
So this new guy is now a parent? How so? Fiat? Double Secret PolyNoTakeBacks?
They don’t need her input. They need her permission. As I said, if my parents had pulled this shit on me I would have been out of there.
I don’t care one way or another what consenting adults do witht their sex lives. Children change the equation. If you think that a nine year old and an eleven year old are knowledgable and mature enough to hold their own in a discussion of this magnitude then I suggest that you have an eccentric grasp on things. Was “no” one of her options? If not, it was not a negotioation, or a discussion. It was an executive order.
You can discuss something without giving a child a say in the ultimate decision. 90% of what a parent does is an executive order. Not everything we do makes our children happy, monogamous or not.