A long-time UFI staff member reminded me of an experience she had back in 2002. She had been invited to attend a seminar sponsored by the Williams Institute at UCLA. The topic: “The future of the LGBT movement.” The Williams Institute is arguably the top advocacy think tank in the country, doing research on all things LGBT.
My colleague had a conversation with a lovely middle-aged woman who inquired as to why she had come to the seminar. My colleague responded: “Because I’m concerned what the future will hold for children and their families – and the impact LGBT advocacy will have on law and policy.”
The woman, with great sympathy on her face, replied: “Oh, you don’t have anything to worry about. The LGBT efforts will never go any further than just some basic domestic partnership rights. That’s just silly to think that same-sex marriage would ever be legalized.” The woman was very pro LGBT behavior and lifestyle, but was convinced there was no “slippery slope.” My colleague and the woman parted on friendly terms.
The woman attending the seminar couldn’t have been more wrong! We’ve all watched the progression of the sexual revolution and the “slippery slope” play out in real time. Today’s article examines the legal push behind polyamory, the arguments made in its favor, and the growing body of social science on child well-being—ultimately arguing that far from being just another harmless variation, polyamory poses a serious challenge to the family structure proven to give children the best chance to thrive.
Protecting marriage and the family,
Wendy Wixom, President
United Families International
Is More Really Better? Polyamory and the Fight for the Family
Alexis Tarkalson
When Jonathan Bédard, Éric LeBlanc, and Justin Maheu were able to adopt a three year old girl in Quebec, Canada last year, the pro-family world was more than just a little rattled. Polyamorous relationships have been making significant strides towards becoming recognized as legitimate “families” in the eyes of the law, unbeknownst to many.
Speaking about the adoption, one of the men said, “Through this process, they learned that we are a little different because there are three of us, but we are no different from any other family.”
When Justice Roberts in the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges suggested that legalizing same-sex marriage could lead to the same civil rights movement for polyamorous people, the proponents assured him there was no such danger. But the danger is here before us, and we have already embarked on the steady descent down the slippery slope we were told would not appear.
Polyamory, for those blissfully unaware, is the practice of engaging in a romantic relationship with more than one person, and where everyone is aware and consenting to the open relationship. Within this behavior, there are different forms. There can be three or more individuals in a relationship who are all committed to each other, which is called a triad, throuple, or quad. Or there could be a committed and traditional relationship of two, with each one having their own additional partners, and this is called a consensual non-monogamous relationship (CNM).
There are many more variations (parallel polyamory, comet, solo polyamory) but we will keep to these two main forms for the sake of simplicity.
Polyamory is no longer some bizarre desire on the fringes of society, but now one in five adults report having engaged in CNM at some point in their life. Current practitioners find themselves in a community size of 4-5% of the population, which is roughly equivalent to the LGBT community (where it is very popular). A 2016 survey found that barely half the population under the age of 30 still found monogamy to be ideal.
How polyamorous families are being advanced
Polyamory, as just a relationship, is legal in pretty much every corner of the Western world. But should the polyamorous individual want to become legally married to their various partners, claim employment discrimination, adopt, seek child custody, share health insurance or inheritance rights, or be granted hospital visitation rights, well that becomes less and less likely. But things are changing.
Canada only recognizes a two-person structure for marriage and marriage benefits, but as shown above, in distinct provinces (Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia) they do recognize multi-parent registrations.
In the United States, cities like Berkely and Oakland in California, and Cambridge, Somerville and Arlington in Massachusetts have all passed anti-discrimination laws to prop up polyamorous families. In states such as Oregon, California, Washington, Massachusetts, and occasionally Alaska, third-parent adoption is possible (although doing so as an openly polyamorous relationship has yet to happen).
Although some polyamory people aren’t interested in obtaining the “right to marry;”, preferring instead “fluid-bonding ceremonies” and the like, there are activist groups currently out there working hard to join the ranks of those legally married. As Diana Adams, poly activist and lawyer, constantly reminds her followers: “Marriage comes with over 1,000 rights and benefits under federal law.” And they want every one of them, especially the benefit of disrupting the natural and traditional family.
Activist groups like the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition and the Chosen Family Law Center are aggressive in their efforts to capture legal recognition. These proponents make the valid point that same-sex marriage was realized once society’s culture became more accepting of the LGBT community as a whole. Therefore, they encourage more polyamorous people to come out to their families, friends, and places of employment. In addition, they actively look for opportunities to portray polyamory as normal in the media.
Some activists are working to make polyamory protected through the United State’s fourteenth amendment as they state it is an unchosen and uncontrollable characteristic, therefore a sexual orientation. Social science on the success of polyamorous families is in the works to prove these structures are just as, if not more, healthy for children as their nuclear counterparts.
The case for polyamorous families
When reading the literature on polyamory families, one can be swayed by the arguments made if not grounded in the firm knowledge that the traditional family is the best form of family for children and adults.
Every poly advocate starts their case by first stating that the traditional/nuclear family has failed us. It doesn’t work. It’s outdated and not universal. One article published in the Cornell Law Journal wrote, “As the nuclear family increasingly fails to represent most families in the United States, courts are grappling with the question of what arrangement of adults (and potentially children) constitute a “family.”
A poly advocate on a podcast said, “I think of how 38% of adults no longer live with a romantic partner and may be creating families and platonic partnerships. And just how, altogether, the majority of US adults now are doing something different than heterosexual monogamous marriage in a nuclear family. And the most recent census came out indicating that only 18% of Americans are in a nuclear family.” Since straight people aren’t even practicing traditional family anymore, why should we enshrine it as the only way to do family in our laws?
The poly advocate then states their family structures are just as moral, stable, appropriate, and healthy for children as any other structure.
One popular advocate, Dr. Elisabeth Sheff, makes several convincing arguments. She points out what she calls “serial monogamists/polygamists” and “de facto polygamy” to show that the “holier-than-thou” monogamous population aren’t as perfect as they like to think. Serial monogamy is the habit of marrying, divorcing, and remarrying as many times as one would like. Rinse and repeat. Children from these marriages face just as many disruptions as they potentially could in a polyamorous household.
“De facto polygamy” is the name she gave to the cold truth that more and more children are being born to unmarried mothers (currently at 40%) with many of these women not marrying. The biological fathers to their children are also continuing to procreate with many other women, and leading to the creation of more and more families.
Dr. Sheff then comes to her rhetorical crescendo, “Despite ongoing controversy, society does not ban de facto polygamy. With the advent of no-fault divorce, serial monogamy is the norm. Family law has already developed robust norms to grapple with the implications and effects of “serial” open-ended multiplicity with regard to children.” The silent question is: why can’t they do the same for polyamorous families?
Dr. Sheff, and others like her, make the argument that polyamory is beneficial to the raising of children in the following ways:
- Gives them an abundance of resources in physical, material, and emotional matters
- Multiple adults whereby children can form bonds with and look up to as diverse role models
- Increased supervision and time for children
- Less burn out for the parents and thereby less frustration with children
- Enhanced communication skills and adaptability
The studies stating these outcomes all agreed, “Cumulatively, this evidence indicates that polyamorous families may well fulfill state BIOC (Best Interest Of Child) standards, and uninformed or biased judicial assumptions pertaining to the unsuitability of polyamorous structured families are unfounded and contradicted by available data.”
The dangers of the polyamorous family
Dr. Sheff, in many of her articles attempting to put polyamory on the same pedestal as traditional marriage and family, does admit one important thing. She admits that poly families had a tendency to brush the less perfect aspects of their relationships under the rug so as to avoid tarnishing the polyamory name. Studies that have so far been able to successfully interview these types of families all report the families as near perfect.
Sheff writes, “…polyamorous parents sometimes emphasize positive aspects of the lifestyle for their children, downplaying negative aspects. Fearing condemnation from others who disdain their unconventional families, respondents take care to detail the ways in which their families match or exceed the emotional health, resources, and support provided by (ostensibly) monogamous families.”
She is not the only one who has noticed this, as other researchers have noticed the same. This admittal casts doubt on the very few studies that have been conducted.
Any negatives that might come from a polyamorous structured family, proponents argue, could just as easily come from a divorced and blended family, or single parent family. What they don’t realize is that is exactly the point, those are all failed variations of the traditional family structure. Why should we be legally recognizing yet another “family” structure which fails to give children the best chances for success?
When the family is held together in the way social science dictates is most conducive for a healthy environment, the most positive outcomes will be seen. Let’s look at a few things that happen in environments outside the safety of the traditional family:
- Children from disrupted families are twice as likely to struggle academically, behaviorally, and socially.
- One study found that children where an unrelated adult resided in the home were forty times more likely to become victims of physical or sexual abuse. Another study based in Missouri had similar but more extreme findings, reporting that children living with one or more unrelated adults made them fifty times more likely to die from child abuse.
- Children outside of intact natural families report being less likely to go to college, less likely to marry, and more likely to go to prison.
Dr. Sheff would then argue back, “…the harms associated with polyamory are generic familial harms, while the benefits are distinctly polyamorous in nature.”
A valid point to make. But let’s think back to what benefits she is referring to, as shown in the previous section. Each and every one of those benefits does not rely on your parent(s) having multiple lovers. You can achieve most if not all of these benefits by strengthening bonds with your extended family members or just strengthening your own traditional marriage.
The old adage of “it takes a village” is true; it doesn’t take X amount of boyfriends and girlfriends to raise a child. Those benefits are not as singular to the poly community as she would like you to believe.
Counselor Dr. Karen Ruskin wrote on her blog, “Let’s get real. Polyamory is not something you do for your kids to have a better life. Polyamory is something you do for yourself because it is something you want, you yearn for.”
Children raised in polyamorous environments have to share their biological parent(s) with a whole host of other individuals who are fleeting and temporary. As Dr. Sheff admits, there is “substantial partner turn-over”.
For the partners that manage to stick around a little longer than the rest, these children get attached and then inevitably must watch them walk away. Dr. Sheff writes this up as a positive, “Helping children develop the skills to manage loss or transition in many types of relationships, these parents hope, will provide more effective protection.”
Such a skillset is all good in fine, but it should not be one that has been honed through the successive rate in which people float through your own home. Your family should not be a place where you have to expect temporariness and change.
How we can safeguard the family
In conclusion, the polyamorous lifestyle is a threat to the family unit, as it pushes us further down the slippery slope of unlimited passions and over-indulged hedonistic desires.
They try to tell us the nuclear family has failed us, but maybe the nuclear family never failed us, but rather we failed, and continue to fail, the nuclear family. The nuclear family is the ideal and infallible as we are, we will always struggle to measure up. But that does not mean the ideal is no longer tenable. Quite the opposite. It means we try harder.
The traditional family is berated time and again as a thing of the past, and not relatable anymore due to same-sex marriage, cohabitation, single parenthood, divorce, and now, polyamory.
But the truth is that just because a traditional marriage and family is less visible than it once was, does not make it any less the ideal. The family, as so perfectly documented in the book by UFI’s very own Marcia Barlow and Susan Roylance, “Family Capital and the SDGs”, is the antidote to many of the social ills we face today and we must engage in defending it.
We can protect our families by being proactive. Be proactive by investing in your marriage and being present with your children. Get involved in promoting policies that safeguard the family. When you see family values being bypassed for inclusivity in your communities or churches or local government, speak up. Support organizations like United Families International that seek to advocate for the well-being of families.
And lastly, remember that the cultural change we wish to see regarding attitudes toward marriage and the family starts around the kitchen table.
Alexis Tarkalson graduated from Brigham Young University-Idaho with her degree in Political Science and an emphasis in American Government. She loves spending time with her husband and little boy, reading, hiking mountains, and learning new hobbies. The family unit is immensely important to her, as is protecting the associated rights, which is why she volunteers her time towards United Families International.