And Baby Makes Four
My daughter has two moms, one dad, and no complaints.
by Miriam Axel-Lute
November 15, 2007
I won't pretend a multi-adult family is without its challenges. Trilateral decision making, whether about chores or dental care, can take at least three times as long. There are more individual pair bonds that need attending to. Around the holidays, the calendar fills up even faster when there are three sets of grandparents to visit. When I liberate myself from the computer, I have been mistaken for the nanny of my own child by local shopkeepers. (Okay, that's actually just funny.)
Still, in my world and in the worlds of the other polyamorous parents I know, all these challenges generally just mean more time is focused on family and parenting. So it always brings me up a little short to see people trotting out the "clearly bad for children" argument about my family. "Much as I might like to add a sexual partner or two to my married life, I just can't see how it could be in my children's interest to follow that fantasy," wrote one man in a letter to Salon.com responding to an article on polyamory. "Someone will get pissed off eventually. Someone will move out. Some child will be sleeping at two houses . . . You just know it."
Hmmm, sounds a lot like the state of monogamous marriage today, doesn't it? Cheating, stagnation, abuse, fights over money, new loves breaking up old loves, a fifty percent divorce rate.
I mean, yes, lovers/step-parents constantly coming and going and families falling apart and reforming at the drop of a hat certainly sounds like an unideal environment for children to me. But this is just what monogamous people imagine polyamory must be, just like straight people for so long imaginedAll three of us went to every prenatal appointment. that gay people did nothing but have sex. It has very little to do with the lives of real poly families. I do know, however, where they've seen such scenarios actually happening: in families with insecure single or divorced, serially or theoretically monogamous parents.
There's no question in my family about who is a parent. All three of us went to every prenatal appointment. My wife cut the cord at the birth and is on the birth certificate as the witness. We took the same last name so as to share a family name with our children. We paid way too much money to a lawyer to draw up a co-parenting agreement so that our intentions are crystal clear, even though the state of New York would consider it an unenforceable contract.
My daughter just learned to pronounce "Mommy" and "Mama" differently, and every morning the first thing she does when she wakes up is take inventory: "Daddy!" "Mama!" "Mommy!" If someone's left the house already it requires repeated explanations. There's certainly no question in her mind who her parents are.
©2007 Miriam Axel-Lute and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Miriam Axel-Lute is a freelance writer, editor and poet. She is an
award-winning columnist for Metroland, and lives in Albany with her two partners and daughter. Her website is mjoy.org. |
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