Is Polyamory Good for Kids? (Deborah Anapol for the Poly Party Line)

In her book Love Without Limits: The Quest for Sustainable Intimate Relationships, Dr. Deborah Anapol takes the position that growing up with actively polyamorous parents might actually be beneficial for children. So we'll let her speak for the Poly Party Line here.

And then we'll rip her to shreds.

Whoops – what I meant to say was that I will dismantle her argument, ever so genteelly. I will slip that gaudy feather boa off her shoulders, and we'll get a look at the unadorned clavicles of the truth.

Here's Anapol's list of the ways in which the children of polyamorous parents might be better off than their stuck-in-the-monogamous-mainstream peers:

• “more loving, hugging and lap sitting, and higher quality parenting”
• greater chance of one or more stay-at-home parents
• “siblings for those who would otherwise be the only child of a couple”
• youthful parents AND more mature parents, simultaneously
• higher standard of living/better off financially
• group living is more ecological, which benefits everyone
• “the best hands-on education in cooperation, tolerance and sharing”
• family is more likely to “settle permanently in a community and put down roots”
• better education
• enhanced emotional development
• reduced incidence of “symbiosis, child abuse, and adolescent rebellion”

Well, holy frikadeller: it's a wonder EVERYONE isn't flocking to polyamory – for the sake of the children, if for no other reason!

And here's another thing I wonder: Why haven't I seen all of these benefits accrue to my own children? After all, Parker and I have been actively polyamorous for twelve years – since Denali, our oldest, was two. Granted, our kids have experienced some of the benefits Anapol mentions. For example, I do think they're getting a good education in cooperation, tolerance and sharing – although that's at least as much thanks to living in a co-housing community as it is to having poly parents. But where are all those extra wage-earning adults Anapol assumes will be contributing to our children's financial well-being?

As it turns out, Anapol is advocating for a very specific form of polyamory, something she calls “combo families.” In other words, she doesn't mean for her list to apply to my children (or her own, apparently, since she admits to being unsuccessful in her attempts to form a combo family).

Here's her description of what the combo family is and how it functions:

Three to eight adults, of any mutually agreeable age and gender mix, form a marriage-type partnership. Possibly they incorporate or form a family trust, since there is no legal means of marriage for more than two people in the United States. They live with their co-parented children in one large or several adjacent houses or flats. They share domestic and economic responsibilities, just as an old-fashioned family does, but there are more hands to join in the work – and the fun!

Anapol's utopia is a polyfidelitous one: she envisions a traditional marriage, except that each spouse would be plighting his or her troth to two to seven mates, rather than just one.

Never mind that Anapol has been unable to realize her dream, and has had to raise her own children as a single parent with a succession of partners (in the case of her older daughter) or as part of a de facto couple (in the case of her younger child, at least as of the time when Love Without Limits was written).

But the combo family is still a terrific idea, right? If combo families were a part of the real world – if they existed anywhere but in Anapol's imagination, that is – they would raise some jim-dandy kids, dontcha think?

Well, maybe. It's generally recognized that Utopia is a great place to raise children. If only we could all agree on exactly what Utopia ought to look like, I'm sure we could create it together!

For me, the problem with Anapol's utopian vision is the polyfidelity component. Yes, it's true that I don't find polyfidelity personally appealing (see my November 2010 post, “Polyfidelity: Happily Ever After?”). But it's also that I just don't see that model working for most people, even among the minority of people who identify as polyamorous. The only situation in which polyfidelity actually seems to function (and by that, I mean that a multi-adult family is able to form in the first place, and then is able persist long enough to raise children) is among fundamentalist Mormons and other religious groups (or, if we take a global view, in tribal societies very different from our own). I'd rather not take religious polygamy as my model, thank you very much. Not only that, but I'd argue that many of the benefits to kids that Anapol gets so starry-eyed about do not apply in the case of children raised in fundamentalist enclaves. Reduced incidence of “symbiosis, child abuse, and adolescent rebellion”? I don't think so!