Why not walk your walk sister-wives in Michigan? You would never consider sharing a husband or a significant other with another woman -- even if your humor was intended as tongue in cheek. The author of this article would probably have a fit if her significant other even spoke to another woman. The show is about 90% about the backbiting that goes on among these women and is not an ideal at all -- and perhaps that's the point after all. Working men or women or stay at home men or women all welcome a respite from the responsibilities of raising a child -- why just make it gender specific? That sounds a bit a sexist in my view -- (I am a female by the way) -- many men are raising children full or part time. It's called parenting -- no matter what gender is engaged in that responsibility. Get real. The author sounds like she has absolutely no clue about what it honestly takes to raise a child. Sad. Men can be feminists, too, and would find the biased slant of this article distasteful.

Anonymous

"Polyandry (the gender-reverse of polygamy) is apparently more common in societies with scarce environmental resources, as it is believed to stabilize population growth and enhance child survival."

OK lets clear this up once and for all (haaley).

Polygamy = form of marriage in which a person [has] more than one spouse.

Polygyny = one man many wives simultaneously

Polyandry = one woman many husbands simultaneously

Most people actually confuse polygamy with polygyny.

Nobody's mentioned those magic underpants yet, so I will. This isn't about these women.

Magic Underpants!! All religions are ridiculous but some moreso than others.

...of the ladies in Michigan. They are fortunate to have friends they like and trust enough to let each help out with the others' kids. I'd love to have friends like that nearby, but as another poster mentioned all of my best girlfriends live in other states. I may have the occasional playdate with my son's friends, but I would never trust those mothers with my child or my home. Their values are so different from mine, as are their parenting techniques, that I will never be able to spend more than very short periods of time with any of them. I have no family near me, so I get it done with just my caring hubby for help.

As long as they are not sharing a man, I say "good for them!" It's a wonderful thing to see women wanting to help one another succeed.

In Spanish, the term women friends/godparents use for each other is "comadres." Kinda "companion mom." It's a great thing, and rather than worrying about the implication that these women are somehow promoting polygamy, I think we oughta be entirely in favor of their embracing sisterhood and challenging some of the isolation and "you chose to have children, they're your responsibility" nonsense of the American nuclear family. Good for them.

Last Thanksgiving, one of my best friends and I shared the kitchen for a while, and it was a great pleasure. I wish she lived closer so our kids could wander in and out at will. Actually, there are a few women I wish I could share a cul de sac with, but unfortunately that's not possible.

It's a shame that people who are supposedly for women's rights get all up in arms about something mothers desperately need. I don't mean sharing a single husband. That would suck. What I mean is the support and companionship of other mothers. My friends and I have a lot of issues and concerns in common, and pooling our resources is one way of dealing with them.

I'm not the slightest bit surprised that other women are doing the same. Who cares what they call it? Jeeze, maybe we could look at it as a way of reclaiming damaged language. I don't know. But yeah, a sister wife as these women are defining it? Where do I sign up?

If a dad who is a primary caregiver wants to join in, he's welcome. I know exactly what isolation can do to a parent's brain.

I was going to to ask why polyandry and polyamory were OK, but polygamy was not, until I found this on m-w.com

Polygamy = marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time

So it's perfectly all right to have more than one mate, many people do, and have children with more than one man, many women do, or get more than one woman pregnant, many men do. It's also OK to have an affair, have sex with someone not your husband/wife, so long as they are OK with it (open marriages, swingers, some BDSM relationships, for examples)

But, it is not OK to have *legal paperwork* on more than one, or involve your church. Everything else is actually acceptable in our society, when you think about it.

Writers who claim to be "feminists" and yet take any chance they can to load posts like this with adjectives like "creepy", "suspicious", and complaints about "losing my lunch".

Just what the fuck is it with you Broadsheet...women? You jump on the up-with-women bandwagon, yet you never miss a chance to sneak in the nasty, back-stabbing insinuations whenever you think a woman isn't toeing your particular "feminist" line. Which as far as I can tell, consists of women appearing to care about each other when in fact it's just a show to look good.

So these women want to call each other "sister-wife", so WHAT? You people go on and on about how the culture supposedly misnames women's lives, misunderstands our ideals, yadayadayada. Yet you show yourselves for hypocrites whenever something happens that makes you even the tiniest bit uncomfortable. Sometimes it seems to me that you go out of your way to misinterpret the culture around you, just so you can stir the pot and get people riled up, either over things of no consequence (EEK! t-shirts with nasty sayings, oh NOES!) or, as in this case, over things that might have a very good consequence for women (moving our lives back to shared families, as opposed to the horridly oppressive nuclear family norm that denies women the support that would make life much easier both for them and their families).

Really, come on. Is it so very difficult to take that term of affection (for so it clearly is to these women) in the way it's meant, not in the way you so nastily insinuate? For all that you (plural) claim to stand up for women, is it so very hard to cheer on some women who are making their lives better, instead of looking for the ONE detail that'll give you an excuse to insult them?