Is Polyamory Bad for Kids? (DP vs. PPL #3, round 1)

Dominant Paradigm: Maybe polyamory is okay among consenting adults, but it's bad for kids to be raised by polyamorous parents.
Poly Party Line: Polyamory is good for children in all kinds of ways. In fact, it's probably better for them than growing up in a traditional nuclear family.

I don't think I'm going to be able to get through this topic in one post.

The very first time I ever “came out” as poly, I was implicitly judged to be an unfit parent.

This was in the summer of 1999, and Denali wasn't yet three. I was taking Lucy Grealy's nonfiction workshop at Writers at Work. One of the other participants was a grandmotherly type, a retired high school English teacher who was working on a personal essay about her battle with breast cancer. She wasn't a particularly good writer, but I still remember feeling a pang of empathy when she read aloud a passage about coming out of anesthesia, bringing her shaking hands to her breast, and feeling for her fate with her fingertips – and finding nothing there but a puffy bandage.

So, the workshop was over, and we were all headed out of the classroom for the final time. I made some offhand comment about my son. This woman, who happened to be very close to me, given the bottleneck in the doorway, recoiled. She seemed to be making an effort to control herself as she stared at me with barely concealed horror.

“Oh! After what you told us about your...life, I just assumed you was a childless woman.”

I've never forgotten her phrasing. Here was an English teacher, shocked into the colloquial you was of those born and raised in rural Utah. In comparison, the term childless woman sounded overly formal, stilted even.

What she meant was this: I already disapproved of you. Now I realize that you lack the modicum of decency it would take to realize that you have no business being anyone's parent, and I think you are downright wicked. I pity your poor child.

This was the first of many such reactions. Most people seem to think that growing up with polyamorous parents is some kind of curse.

I remember giving a guest lecture on polyamory at the local University, when I was eight months pregnant with Sienna. That caused some serious consternation among the students, let me tell you. I could practically see the Madonna/Whore dichotomy messing with their minds as I scanned their frozen faces and attempted, unsuccessfully, to make eye contact.

Most recently, there have been some awkward interactions with Pat, my boyfriend Travis's former roommate, now his next-door neighbor. Travis has told me that she's asked about my children, wanting to know where they are on the nights when I visit Travis. “They're at home, with their father,” Travis told her. This failed to reassure her.

A couple of days ago, I was over at Travis's on a weekday afternoon – he was at work – enjoying a (very rare) quiet moment to myself. I was reading a novel, sitting just outside his front door in one of his green plastic lawn chairs, when Pat walked by.

“What are you doing?” she wanted to know.

Maybe I'm paranoid, but I heard an unspoken, “...and where are your children?”

“I'm reading a book,” I said, as if this weren't obvious.

She seemed flustered by this, and ended up responding, rather lamely, with, “Oh...what are you reading?”

What she really wanted to say was, “You are neglecting your kids.”

So, for all you Pats out there, here's my defense:

My children have two parents who love them. I have always taken my responsibilities as a parent seriously. I took exceedingly good care of myself when I was pregnant. I did the whole natural childbirth thing, even though it was excruciating. I breast-fed both children, Denali for a year and Sienna for close to two. Neither of my children has spent so much as one day in daycare. I fret about the things that most parents fret about, and plot and scheme and tear my hair out about how to get Denali to eat vegetables or whether or not it's okay to let Sienna watch Dragontales when I have work to do. I want to teach my children all the things I know about being a human being – about how to care for themselves, others, and the earth. Above all, I want Denali and Sienna to be happy with the paths they choose, whatever those may be -- and I believe that one of the most important things I can do as their parent is to model that for them. 

I am happy with the path I've chosen.  Not entirely unconflicted, maybe, but I feel basically good about who I am, as a person and as a parent. I think my children can tell that I feel this way, and I think it makes them feel safe: they are free to concentrate on the exciting business of becoming themselves, without worrying unduly about me.

In short, I don't think being polyamorous makes me a bad parent. I don't think it makes Parker a bad parent. We're not perfect, but no parent is.