My son, now almost 20, sometimes tells people that growing up in a polyamorous household has made him a staunch monogamist. My now ex-husband and I flirted with non-traditional relationships for the entire length of our marriage, and my children, now old enough to look back and critique it, feel strongly that they bore the brunt of the down side of such relationships. After my ex and I divorced, he became involved with another woman and created a blended household with the two children from his marriage with me and his new partner's daughter. They became very open about their polyamorous relationships in much the same way Mr. Harrison describes -- sharing weekends with other couples and their children, with a goal of having a large multi-adult household.

My daughter frequently bonded with the women involved, and was devastated over and over when poly relationships abruptly ended and one couple was replaced with another, the past partners suddenly non-grata in the household. The lack of any legal obligation to allow my children contact with these other partners led to a repeated experience of loss and abandonment that my daughter still struggles with.

I have plenty of friends who have also had similar experiences -- multi-couple families forming and dissolving in new configurations that left children at a loss and struggling with a complicated new family structure that was difficult to explain or seek support and handling. As a result, I've become fairly outspoken about my concerns that couples and individuals exploring polyamorous relationships think seriously about the repercussions for children. In short, children often end up being non-consensually drawn into emotional relationships that can dissolve without care for the children's needs, where the children's emotional and financial wellbeing is not acknowledged or safeguarded enough by the involved adults or the legal and custodial system.

I have friends in polyamorous relationships, and I never know quite what to think. By the numbers, though, they seem no more or less successful than my monogamous friends, and on average they seem no less sane. But still, I wonder.

Thus, it's good to hear -- from someone who's had plenty of cause to think about it -- that as with other relationships, the problems come from the turmoil, not the mere fact of the relationship.

Thanks!

Like it or not, gay marriage has paved the way for polyamourous relationships. Many feminists look forward to the end of the traditional family structure.

See http://www.beyondmarriage.org/full_statement.html for more information.

Coupled with increasing penalties for fathers who get divorced, it will be hard for anything resembling a family where children are solely by their biological parents, even though numerous studies indicate the importance of fathers in child development and the multiple benefits children raised by their natural parents receive.

Marriage is now about legal benefits and individual adult female rights more than anything else. It's a Brave New World.

There's a wistfulness for community in Mr. Harrison's article. Is it possible that the experiments in polyamory during the '70's were also an attempt to reestablish broader familial communities beyond the confines of the "nuclear family?"

In many rural, so-called "traditional" cultures definitions of family extended beyond two parents and their offspring. Extended families often live under one roof. Yet in our industrialized, individualized society, we've narrowed the definition of "family" to the point that many of us have "reunions" to even see our extended family. There's no sense that we belong to a bigger family structure.

I'm thinking in part of my own family. I'm second generation "off the farm." The idea of sending their parents to an old people's home would have been unthinkable to my grandparents. Yet my uncles and aunts have seriously considered this option for my grandparents.

One of my best friends from High School is a Nigerian who now lives in New York City. During a recent visit, he lamented his difficulties dating American girls, who did not understand why he continued to live at home, even though he has a good job in financial services. In the American context he is a "loser." In the Nigerian context, he's a "good son" by putting the well-being of his family ahead of his own.

So I think I can understand Mr. Harrison's wish of a bigger family, despite the weirdness of polyamory. Yet I also think that his parents built their community on shaky ground. Community cannot be built simply on individual sexual needs and desires. Community needs commitment through the good and the bad.

I like the idealism of attempting to express sexual and romantic feelings for people other than one's spouse without resorting to lying and secrecy. In some ways I wish it was more the norm now. Instead I read in a national women's magazine survey that 25% of women suspect their husband of cheating, which in many cases must be devastating for feelings of trust and self esteem.

I don't actually know anyone attempting polyamory, though. And I watch 'Big Love' in open mouthed wonder. And I wonder which is worse for children - secrets in a marriage, or divorce?

Polygamy has been around long before gay "marriage" was even considered acceptable by some in the Western World. Sure, it's typically been the 1 male/20 wives scenario throughout most history, but to claim that gay marriage made group marriage more prevalent it just plain idiotic.

If anything, gay marriage proves that committed partners (2 only, not group marriages) can raise perfectly well-adjusted children who go on to live productive lives. I personally know several examples of grown adults that were raised by gay parents (before gay marriages were even legal), and they have no animosity about how they were raised. And despite what the Christian Right sez, they never end up being gay like their parents, or "perpetuating" the gay lifestyle...they just are more TOLERANT than most other folks about gay rights, which is the last thing the Christian Right wants to see...but that's another topic for another time.

On the flip side, I have yet to encounter or see a successful group marriage that didn't end up ruining the children's lives in some way in the long run. It always sounds good on paper...more relationships, more "relations" (wa-chicka-wa-waaaaaaa), save money on the bills, etc...but when you mix up the sex lives of 3 or more adults, it never seems to work in the long run.