Won't Someone Think of the Children?

In October, CNN published this pretty good article about a family made up of three adults and their nine-year old daughter. Of course, the responses across the internet ranged from supportive to appalled, and many on toward the "appalled" side of the spectrum purported to be about the writers' concerns over a child being raised in such a family. Some folks assumed that the situation was de facto unhealthy; others saw it as unstable, and wondered what it would do to the girl when her family broke up and the third partner, who is not one of her biological or legal parents, disappeared from her life.

Whenever an unconventional relationship comes up, onlookers always express concern about the children. Whether it's the mixed-race child of a biracial couple, or the black child adopted into a predominantly white family, single women or men becoming parents by choice, lesbians and gay men parenting, or non-monogamous people practicing non-monogamy while raising kids, the same questions come up: Is this good for the child? Won't it be harmful to them? What about the social stigma they'll face? Is this family--whether of gay men or of three people in a partnership or a couple that dates outside the relationship--too inherently unstable to raise children?

This concern is so common that I have even had a polyamorous friend tell me he thought it was wrong for parents to practice polyarmory while raising their children.

I, of course, have several thoughts about this.

Gosh, I Never Thought of That Before

I can't tell you how many people have told me that the Tiny Tornado might change his mind about his gender expression. People somehow believe that the first thought that pops into their heads when they hear about him is something that hasn't occurred to us in all the years we've been living in the situation.

The "what about the kids" questions about polyamory feels similar. Whether people pay due attention to the needs of their kids is independent of whether they're monogamous. Surely you can think of plenty of examples of monogamously married people who think only of their own wants and needs and not of their children's; I was raised by such people, and I'm pretty sure my brother is another such parent. Whether people take good care of their kids' physical and emotional needs is about whether they take good care of their kids' physical and emotional needs, not about whether they do that as a single parent, part of a married couple, as part of a trio, as someone who's been celibate for decades or someone who has a new sexual partner every time the moon is full.

This is why I'm such a fan of the good-faith question. Because I'm perfectly happy to answer those. "How have you dealt with being a parent and being polyamorous," for instance, is a good-faith question, and I can tell you a story to help answer it. "Don't you worry about your kids?" is not a good faith question, because it tells me that you think the answer is "No, I don't. I think only of my own gratification." But that's not how it is.

Last year, I dated a person I'll call Lovely Girlfriend. It was a long-distance relationship that started at a Quaker gathering, and the first time I visited her, we were sitting in her kitchen drinking tea and she said to me, "So, I'd like to talk about breaking up."

"So soon?" I said. "I didn't think we were there yet."

She wasn't dumping me. But she wanted to talk to me about how to be with each other so that if we stopped dating (and we did, about a year later), we could do it well. We both have kids; we like each other's kids, and our kids are friends. At Gatherings, we've done a lot of shared kid-activities and reciprocal child care. We have a lot of friends in common, and a relatively small, tight-knit community of people is an important part of both our lives. Lovely Girlfriend wanted to talk about how we would be with each other so that, whether dating turned out to be a long-term thing or not, we could still care for each other's kids, and we could continue to share our community.

It boiled down to being decent, and honest. And I think we were. Next time we see Lovely Girlfriend and her kids, the children might or might not sense that the relationship between us is different than it was. But her younger kid will still hug me hello (I hope), I'll still be happy to take the whole passel somewhere fun while Lovely Girlfriend fulfills a work commitment, she'll still sit with my younger kids in the cafeteria while I have a committee meeting, and the two of us will still be glad of the moments we can steal to be together in the busyness of a gathering. She'll still be one of my kids' grown-up friends, and mine, too.

Things aren't always that smooth, because people aren't always decent and honest, especially if strong emotions get involved. But that leads me directly to my next point:

My Kids Have Lost Precious Grownups. But It Hasn't Been Anybody I Was Dating

I think people who worry about relationship instability in polyamorous relationships imagine that we're doing something like telling the kids, "Hey, kids, here's Lovely Girlfriend. She's your new Other Mommy. Give Other Mommy a great big kiss!" And then a year later, Other Mommy is gone and the children are bereft.

We haven't done it that way, though. Lovely Girlfriend and I, for instance, were friends before we started dating, and we didn't announce the change to the kids, though they did notice we were visiting each other a lot more. Once when I hung up the phone, Word Boy said, "Was that Lovely Girlfriend?" and I said, "No, it was my doctor. Why?" He said, "Because usually you only answer if it's Lovely Girlfriend." So, you know, they do notice things. But they don't get real-time updates every time a relationship shifts a bit in one direction or another.

I always want to tell people, too, that being monogamous doesn't necessarily protect your kids from these kinds of losses. It hasn't protected mine. Raider used to have a friend, one of his best friends since college, who was very involved with us and our kids for years. She was so close that the kids called her "Aunt Cowrie," and my photo albums are full of pictures of her giving Baby Lego Savant bottles, playing with him, reading books to him, helping him plant flowers. She was the one who saw Word Boy's first steps, hanging out in our living room with him while I cooked dinner, and the turtle-shaped sandbox we recently got rid of was a gift from her.

And then she disappeared. She told Raider that she disapproved of our parenting so strongly that she couldn't bear to stay around and watch us ruin the children. And, just like that, one of the most important people in my kids' lives was gone.

But we still had Farina, one of my best friends, and her family. Now that was a close, stable relationship--a few years ago, Raider commented that our families had become to intertwined he didn't think we could get rid of each other if we tried. We lived about an hour apart, but visited back and forth regularly. For most of a school year, I kept their oldest son two days a week while they were experimenting with homeschooling, but that was OK because he was one of the Lego Savant's best friends. Farina repaired my front door and put new screens in the breezeway windows. I lent her money to buy her first rowing shell, and she lent me money when we were having trouble paying our mortgage during the custody fight with TT's birthfather. We took vacations together. Farina's wife became a good friend in her own right.

And then some problems Farina had with PTSD and depression got worse, and she began to lie to me, and to be verbally abusive. When I tried to talk to her about the situation, she became more entrenched, describing herself as my victim and redoubling her attacks on my character. I ended the relationship, and one more time the kids--and I--lost someone important.

You all probably know, as well, that last Christmas my dad, the kids' only surviving grandparent, disowned me for letting the Tiny Tornado live as a boy. I don't expect to see him again.

My point is, my kids have already suffered the kinds of losses that people worry about when polyamory comes up. But not because I was dating someone. We could have avoided these losses by not having best friends and a dad, but that hardly seems reasonable. (And I don't go around asking people with friends and parents whether they've really thought about the risks.)

Let Me Sum Up

My point, and it seems like such an obvious one that I can't believe I've taken so many words to make it, is that, in some ways, there is nothing special about the relationships you have when you're polyamorous, and the path they take is as varied as the paths taken by monogamous marriages, close friendships, relationships with biological family, dating relationships you have when you're single. As parents, we're making decisions all the time about who is part of our children's lives: whether to take them back to Miserable Small Town for another crappy tension-filled Penn family Thanksgiving, for instance (thank you, Dad, for solving that one for me); whether to introduce them to a certain friend; whether to trust them with that coach or that teacher. We make decisions ourselves about who to trust with our own hearts. Sometimes we get it right; sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we get it right and it still goes wrong. Sometimes somebody you thought would be there forever, isn't, and there's nothing you can do about it.

I still trust people. I trust Raider to the ends of the earth. I think we'll be together forever, but I believe that even if we're not, he will always be a great dad and a decent person. I have a girlfriend now that my kids adore, and I trust her with them. I trust her with their hearts. She might break mine, but she'll always take care of theirs.

But what I trust most is myself. I trust me to take good care of my children. I trust me to stand by them. I trust me to get into good relationships, and to get out of bad ones without drama. I trust me to explain things to my kids, as clearly and compassionately as I can, and I trust me to stand by them as they work out any confusion or sadness they feel. I trust me to do these things because I have done these things. I trust them to be smart, loving, emotionally whole, and resiliant, because they have always been these things.

There will always be losses. That is the cost of loving. I hope my kids come to feel, as I do, that the loving is worth it.

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