All the recent surveys of polyamorous people find that about half of them are parents (see chapter 2 for details on demographics). However, at least half of these attempt to hide their extramarital relationships from their children or have teens or adult children whose lives are mainly independent of their parents or utilize polyamorous gatherings, other social occasions, or coaching sessions as a vacation from parenting. As a result, in the course of everyday life, I’ve had far less opportunity to interact with the children of polys than with their parents, except in the case of personal friends where spending time with the entire family was a natural part of our interactions. Consequently, while I believe my observations can be generalized to a wider population, this may not be the case. It’s possible that the children of poly parents I have not met are different from those that I have met. I’ve attempted to remedy this by including representative interviews that allow the reader to get a feel for the person who is talking and draw their own conclusions.
In addition, Dr. Sheff agreed to share the preliminary findings from her research with me. Her sample is also skewed in that virtually all her participants thus far come from the network of people who strongly identify as polyamorous and who attend various polyamorous conferences, potluck dinners, or other social events. Dr. Sheff has found that some polyamorous parents are reluctant to talk to anyone “official” because they are concerned about losing custody of their children. The common perception that children in poly (and nonheterosexual) families are at higher risk for sexual abuse than those in monogamous families, which appears to be completely unfounded according to Dr. Sheff, also makes people nervous about talking to her. Her focus has been to rely on unstructured interviews to determine what kinds of experiences children in polyamorous families have, what the internal dynamics of the family are, and what kinds of things these families do that help them survive. Further, she’s included nonbiological parents who she says are sometimes more involved in the day-to-day parenting than the biological parents, perhaps because they have more time and inclination for it. Nevertheless, as I spoke with my own contacts and heard what she had found thus far, a cohesive picture began to emerge.
In the absence of existing research on polyamorous families, Dr. Sheff has looked to the research on children of gays and lesbians for clues. There’s a fair amount of this research, she says, because much of it is funded from within the gay and lesbian communities themselves who have a “we are family” campaign that funds research as well as political activity. The lion’s share of sexuality research money is also going to the study of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) issues, and the little funding that exists for family research comes mostly from conservative groups for whom polyamory is not of interest. The GLBT research has found that essentially all the pressure the children of homosexual parents face is from outside the family. In other words, nothing has been found in the families themselves that’s a problem for the children, but they do encounter judgments, prejudice, and negative attitudes from outsiders, such as teachers or neighbors, or are concerned about appearing different. The same appears to be somewhat true for children in polyamorous families, although one bisexual poly parent told me that his teenage son’s perception was that polyamory was more acceptable than bisexuality among his peers.
Geography, as well as individual differences, no doubt plays a role in the extent to which children of polyamorous families encounter prejudice or feel different. I’ve been told by people in Europe and Australia that this is definitely an issue, while for many of the children in Dr. Sheff’s study who live in the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s not. Dr. Samuel Widmer is a Swiss psychiatrist who has five school-age children with his partner Daniele and another four children between ages three and eleven with his other partner Marianne. He reports that they all live together happily and think nothing of it until they start school. “Afterwards, they go through different stages of looking at it. But all of them so far always again find a positive outlook. They are proud to be special.”1
Australian researcher and educator Dr. Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli points to the need for addressing the ways in which children in polyamorous families may experience discrimination, prejudice, and misunderstanding both from “the wider heteronormative society and from within the gay and lesbian community.”2 One anecdote about two aboriginal boys is illuminating. While these students are likely even more sensitive to possible repercussions than white Australians, I could imagine similar scenarios among American minorities as well.
“The two students were not ‘cousins’ as they labelled themselves at school: that was the word they used for whites to prevent suspicion. Their mothers were not blood-sisters but certainly sisters. They shared the same husband, the children shared the same father. They all lived happily in one house. At school, the children kept to themselves in order to discourage any intimacy with other children that could lead to discovery and a further reason to harass them as they were already experiencing ongoing racist harassment. They had also been warned by their parents not to let white teachers know or else they’d be taken away from their family, a theme that was all too real for this family whose own childhoods had been mostly spent in mission homes after being removed from their families as part of Australia’s racist assimilationist policies.”3
Australian whites also reported problems in the schools. Two blood sisters who share the same husband and are raising their children together reported that “it’s been harder with the school and for now, the less said to them the better. We worry they may get some child welfare person who may decide this is an unfit or dysfunctional home just based on the fact that we’re poly. Or if one of the kids got into trouble at school, there used to be this assumption that it had to do with their home background. Slowly, that’s blown over as the kids are happy and healthy. But they’ve also experienced some teasing from other kids and they tend to be careful who they say things to. It’s not fair that kids should have to worry about such things.”4
Dr. Pallotta-Chiarolli decided that writing a novel for young adults would be one way to support teens who are struggling to reconcile the realities of their bisexual and/or polyamorous families with the heteronormative mainstream culture. The result was Love You Two,5 which is the tale of Pina, a young Australian woman who accidentally discovers that her mother loves two men. Then, when she turns to her uncle for help, she learns that he’s bisexual. It’s all very confusing for Pina, who loves her mother but has trouble integrating the realization that there are different ways to love.
Dr. Sheff reports that in the United States, the majority of the children she’s talked to have been pretty relaxed about their parents’ relationship orientation. Most say that it’s fine with them, that they have no problems with it, or that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, but this might not be the case in families who are less openly polyamorous or live in more conservative areas. Some of the advantages mentioned are that they get more attention, more help with homework, and more people to give them rides. They have other adults to go to if they have a problem they don’t want to take to their parents. Sheff found that the poly family is often a resource for tween and teen friends of the family for sex education. They tend to be comfortable with and available for discussing sexual issues and are a source of reliable information—not having sex in front of them or with them, Dr. Sheff stresses. In contrast to the findings in the gay and lesbian families and in Australia, only one boy in her sample said that it’s been bad for him because he feels he can’t bring friends home without having to explain it all, so it hurts his social life. Others commented on it being painful when a parent’s partner who they’ve gotten attached to leaves, but of course this is sometimes a problem in monogamous families who divorce especially when the noncustodial parent doesn’t maintain contact or has an acrimonious relationship with the ex-spouse.
The only other research that I’m aware of in the United States that looked at children in group marriages was a study done
by Larry and Joan Constantine in the 1970s, but they did not investigate the children’s interface with schools or the wider society in which they lived. The Constantines conducted their research on a self-funded shoestring, outside of academia, and while they used psychological measures and other objective data in addition to personal interviews, they were admittedly biased in favor of what they then called multilateral marriage. Nevertheless, they reported that the children in these multiadult families were, on the whole, far above average in terms of self-esteem, academic performance, and social skills.6
I asked Dr. Sheff whether she saw the older children choosing polyamory for themselves, and she said that mostly they were still too young to have really made a choice, but it seems to vary. One nineteen-year-old boy said, “Why would I want to limit myself when I’m so young? It’s natural to be attracted to more than one girl.” A teenage girl said, “No way! I need too much attention and I’m too jealous for polyamory. I can’t imagine how my mother has done it all these years!”7 Is the traditional gender divide showing itself in the next generation? Two data points are not enough to draw any conclusions, but perhaps one day Dr. Sheff’s research will help answer this question and others. Meanwhile, my conversation with Raymond may shed some light on the relational choices of the next generation.
THE NEXT GENERATION
Raymond is the twenty-year-old son of my friend Becca. I first met him when he was a young teen and was immediately impressed by his poise, warmth, and good humor as he greeted me and welcomed me into their home. Unlike many teens who tend to treat adults with suspicion or disdain, he animatedly took part in the dinner conversation, which spanned a number of complex social and ecological issues, and offered to loan me a paper he’d written for a school project on one of the topics we’d been discussing. Raymond is a handsome and athletic young man, as comfortable in his body and with his emotions as he is with words and ideas. He’s now a college student with a steady girlfriend.
Raymond spent his early years in Puerto Rico in a happy family that consisted of his mother and father, Will, and his mother’s girlfriend Marta. The sexual relationship between the two women eventually expanded to include Will. All three enjoyed working and playing together as well as nurturing Raymond. After a few years, Marta got involved with another man who became her primary partner, but they all remained close friends. Some years after that, Becca and Will split up, and Becca eventually linked up with JG and moved to Italy, then returned to the United States for Raymond’s high school years. Her description of the care with which she introduced JG into the household is characteristic of her sensitive and protective stance toward Raymond, even as she embarked on a sexually open, polyamorous life.
“Raising kids in an ‘alternative lifestyle’ household can be tricky,” Becca admits, “not so much because of the kids part but because of the alternative part. I always respected Raymond’s integrity as a person. So that meant that in our house, stability, acceptance, and communication were top values. If a new relationship was developing, this new person would become a frequent dinner guest or visitor but not to the point of disturbing the family rhythm. When JG and I were seeing each other is a case in point, even though this was not a polyamorous situation at the time; we were just getting together as a couple. Since this was my first serious relationship after leaving my sixteen-year relationship with Raymond’s father, I was hypersensitive about disruption in my son’s life, so I only allowed JG to spend the night on weekends, when Raymond was at his dad’s house. Finally, after nearly nine months, Raymond was going to be with us the whole weekend, and he pleaded, ‘Can’t JG do a sleepover? Can’t he spend the night tonight?’ Raymond felt so comfortable with JG that he considered him his buddy (which JG had for some time been pointing out to me). From then on, we relaxed more into family mode.
“When other lovers then entered into our sphere, I kept the sexual encounters out of Raymond’s view. As far as he was concerned, these were new friends who were hanging around, and he was certainly benefiting from the new perspectives around the dinner table and fun outings with interesting people. It’s not that I think sex is something to be hidden, but maturing into one’s sexuality is a process, with experience that is age appropriate to each stage. Polyamory is alternative, and in some places that is threatening. We had a friend whose neighbor called Social Services because she was letting her preschoolers run around the yard naked. Then for months this mother had to deal with surprise visits from social workers. We could not risk such visits because on the walls of our house hung erotic art—explicitly erotic art that formed part of the book we were working on: The Pillow Book of Venus and Her Lover—Reinventing the Myth.8 It was a dynamic in our household, too, because James regularly showed up from his art studio with a new painting, which we celebrated. Then I would write a poem to the painting and debut it in front of James and Raymond.
“In the early years, I did not want to expose Raymond to the art because I felt he was too young to understand it, but as a tween, he began posing his first sexual questions, so we used the paintings to illustrate our answers. And our answers were from a Tantric perspective: That love between/ among people was the greatest human experience, that not only could the power of love awaken a person’s potential as a human being but also a person’s spiritual magnificence. So the ‘sex talk’ with my son was more like a roundtable discussion among the three of us that lasted years.
“From our relaxed openness, Raymond got the impression there was nothing wrong with sexual love, and this is more important than whatever details he might have known or not known about our sex lives. The atmosphere in our home was one of inclusiveness, candor, creativity, cooperation, and comaraderie. We did have to keep reminding him that repression out in the world also existed. We told him he had to keep the paintings and our other lovers a secret because we did not want Social Services knocking on our door or threatening to take him away from us. I was raised in a sexually repressed family where sex was only for procreation, as far as my siblings and I could tell. It was my intention to end that family tradition with my son.
“Raymond didn’t have the fear or shame around sex that his friends had picked up in their families. Still, when he got to high school, he had a girlfriend who was jealous, and he also fell into the jealousy trap. Since it had never been part of our world, I was surprised to see him go through jealousy. But then, Raymond was his own person and had to go through the lessons himself. Because of our openness, however, he had the advantage of still coming to us with his struggles, so we could help him find his way.”
When I asked Becca how she thought her polyamorous lifestyle had affected her son, she said, “I hear of the ups and downs of his relationships, just like any normal young man. So while I would like to say that our sexualoving lifestyle saved him such grief, I see that is not so. On the other hand, he sees the slings and arrows of his love life as part of his spiritual path, and I also notice that he truly honors his girlfriends and maintains friendships with old lovers. As a mother, then, I do not worry about him. He has the tools necessary to navigate his course through life. I am not the only one who thinks so, either; when he graduated from high school, he was awarded the annual scholarship given to the one student ‘who represented the greatest hope for the world.’ What the scholarship committee may or may not have realized—but what I know—is that by being raised in a nonrepressive environment, Raymond was allowed to develop his whole self, which includes his intellectual, spiritual, physical, and sexual identities.”
Raymond himself openly discusses his relationship history in an amazingly insightful way for a young man. “When I was fifteen, I was very interested in a girl but refused to get into a relationship with her because, for one thing, she lived hours away, and she wanted me to commit to only her. I didn’t want an exclusive relationship. I would’ve reacted differently now, however, because there was no one else I was actually interested in at the time. So why not have a relationship with her? But I thought I
might meet someone else. I wanted freedom, without taking enough responsibility. Now I take my current girlfriend’s feelings more into account, even if I don’t agree with them. Back then I had a mental, rational thing of not wanting to be monogamous because of who I am and who my parents are. I was being in my head instead of feeling it out, but I didn’t realize—I don’t have a need to not be in monogamous relationship now. Why not make a commitment with her?
“I had close relationships with other girls at the time because of how it was with those girls. A group of us surfed together, went on camping trips together, but while we touched and hugged a lot, it wasn’t really sexual. We enjoyed hanging around each other. My two closest female friends were attractive to me, but we had a deeper friendship. Now at college, girls will act like they’re hitting on you, but they’re just being loving with you. Sometimes it’s confusing.
“Living in the Venus and Her Lover household did contribute to the maturing of my sexual identity. I was more mature than most kids without going through that interior shit. So first I learned this framework on how to go about my relationships . . . a higher vision. It was a positive thing in my life. It gave me something to look towards. Then I started having a girlfriend, and there was my own interior personal stuff working that out in relationships. Okay, Mom and JG act this way, but what does it really mean? Cool ideas, now let me internalize that. Then, I’ve had to work through it all on my own.
“I had the same girlfriend my junior and senior years in high school. We studied together, we were on the swim team together, we had fun together. But she was very jealous, I would get jealous, and we would argue . . . drama. Yes, I was horny and wanting to have sex, but even more, I thought: I’ve learned a lot about a healthy functional relationship, but I’ve never experienced a dysfunctional relationship. I did have a love for her, and I thought: even though I’m unhappy with how things are, I’m learning so much. I just need to go through it. It taught me a lot of what I didn’t want, on a deeper level, not just in my head from what I learned from my parents. Being able to talk to your parents about your relationships and sexuality is a big advantage! It cuts out a whole ton of shit. It provides more clarity on those very personal questions. If you can only seek answers from society and friends, they can give you a skewed view of life.
Polyamory in the 21st Century: Love and Intimacy With Multiple Partners Page 17
