Is Polyamory Bad for Kids? (Guest Post by Denali)

This is what my 14-year-old son has to say about what it's been like to grow up with polyamorous parents (almost completely untouched by me -- I do confess to adding three apostrophes):

When I was young, I had no idea of what polyamory was. My parents just seemed like parents. All I knew was that my mom's boyfriend was practically part of the family. He was great with kids, and I would look forward to his visits. He was an influential adult in my early life. When I started to see the real picture, at about eight years old, it still seemed normal. The topic would occasionally come up around friends, and I got mixed reactions. The most common was: “That's weird.” In fact, that was all I ever heard for years. Only in the past two years have I ever had a different reaction. There are two others: “That's wrong,” and “That's awesome.” All of my best friends today have said the latter. To this day, most of what it means to me is just more family friends. It has always been nice to have someone outside of the family visit, to go on a hike or have dinner with them.

Now to answer another question: are kids whose parents are poly likely to grow up to be poly themselves? I don't know. My parents haven't influenced my personal preference, but for all I know, it's possible. It's not for everyone. The important thing though, is that it doesn't hurt anybody. For me, all it meant was more parental figures in my life, more fun adults whose company I would enjoy, and that is still the case. I see no reason to assume it will ever be any different. For some reason, the idea has never seemed personally appealing, and I think I've figured out why. The reason monogamy exists is partly because people can be too jealous to trust their partner to someone else. This often stems from poor self esteem, the fear that someone else is better than you. Don't get me wrong, the fact that people sometimes just love one person is a huge part, but the jealousy factor is important too, and so often overlooked.

Were there any problems with this growing up? Not really. As I mentioned before, the only issue I ever had was when friends would look down on my parents. And again, these people always had so many other disagreements with me, disagreements about political, moral, and religious views, to name a few. Is there anything morally wrong with adultery? Yes, in my opinion, but adultery and polyamory are not the same thing. Polyamory requires an agreement from everyone involved. The real crime of adultery is the lying. By these definitions, no religion even so much as mentions polyamory, whereas adultery is generally not cool.

Also, my parents have one of the strongest relationships I've ever seen. They disagree occasionally, everyone does. But never, in fourteen years, have I received even the slightest hint that there was anything wrong with their marriage. Only once* has there been this problem with any of the other relationships my parents were in with other people. Again, this is partly because they feel comfortable enough with their relationship that they feel no need for jealousy. Polyamory isn't my thing, but I see absolutely no reason why it can't work for other people, and fourteen years of exposure have not taught me otherwise.