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The internet and dating apps surely play a part. It's also become more acceptable to be non-monogamous. I lived in the bay area for a while and hung out among q

• abledon 8y ago
  Kids like a stable environment to grow up in too — messes up their psychological development when there is a revolving door for new ‘daddys’ and ‘mommys’ . We are for promiscuity at certain stages of life but.... yes the costs haha
  • jamescostian 8y ago
    I know this is true for divorce situations (probably because of the fighting), but I didn't know that polyamorous parents could mess up a child's psychological development. Any sources for this?
    • mantas 8y ago
      Not the OP, but one important bit for the kid is to have stable set of rules. If there're multiple individuals with different parenting styles, kid gets confused and don't know who to look up to and what rules to follow. That needs good coordination even in mom-dad situation. And gets more and more complicated if more people are involved. More specifically for polyamorous, it seems to keep much harder a stable, jealousy-free, neutral relationship. Even in mom-dad, kids tend to pick favourite parent or parent picks a favourite kid and that creates all sorts of issues. This would definitely add much more tension with multiple "moms" and "dads" around.
      • jamescostian 8y ago
        Those are very good points, thank you. I agree that having more people increases the chances that there will be more different parenting styles. And when the child picks a favorite, there will be more people whose feelings get hurt. And I can totally see how both of those things would negatively impact the parents and child.
      • flukus 8y ago
        > Not the OP, but one important bit for the kid is to have stable set of rules. If there're multiple individuals with different parenting styles, kid gets confused and don't know who to look up to and what rules to follow. Don't they always adapt to different rule sets anyway? There is one set at home, one at school, one when they go visit the grand parents and one for whoever is babysitting. There is a lot of overlap but a lot of exceptions/infractions depending on the context. Plus kids are more or less constantly probing for edge cases and try to push the boundaries naturally.
        • bnjms 8y ago
          > Don't they always adapt to different rule sets anyway? ... Plus kids are more or less constantly probing for edge cases and try to push the boundaries naturally. Isn’t this observation kinda the point of the assertion kids need a stable set of rules at home going back to one source above others whether that is either parent or both as a pair. That’s what prevents them from endlessly pushing their boundaries out. Also this kind of reasoning is hard in forums because people on forums seem to have a lot of difficulty not crossing generations for groups with specific examples and hypotheticals.
          • flukus 8y ago
            > Isn’t this observation kinda the point of the assertion kids need a stable set of rules at home going back to one source above others whether that is either parent or both as a pair. That assumes that their parents are the ultimate source of authority and in many cases they aren't. Parents don't typically enforce much of a dress code for instance, but schools will often require uniforms. Kids have to learn a different set of rules for different contexts. > That’s what prevents them from endlessly pushing their boundaries out. The only thing that seems to prevent it (or limit it anyway) is constant enforcement, but that's also usually limited to where they have authority. A rule not being enforce in one context is a rule that will probably be broken in that context. Once in a while breaking these rules might even make them appreciate them.
    • distant_hat 8y ago
      'Messes up' might be a harsh term but there are a number of threads on Reddit asking people about growing up with swinging or poly parents. If the primary relationship is strong and kids get exposed to certain things at the right time, it seems they don't have any negative impact and maybe some positive impact seeing different kinds of relationships etc. In other cases, some had negative associations from homes getting broken up due to one partner getting closer to someone else or poly relationships which split up.
  • rosser 8y ago
    Polyamorous != promiscuous.
    • mantas 8y ago
      Theoretically. But in practice...
    • King-Aaron 8y ago
      Anecdotes for sure, but Polyamorous == promiscuous is the norm in those circles from what I've seen over the last two decades.
  • AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
    I think this necessitates a change in how we view marriage, not sex. If we looked at marriage as a construct for the purpose of raising children together, relatively divorced from love and lust, then it would still be able to provide a stable environment for children even as the parents are free to have other lovers. Basically, we'd need to change the narrative from 'marry your one true love' to 'marry a good friend'.
• jliptzin 8y ago
  You can have both.
• arvinsim 8y ago
  > It also seems to me that if a sizeable chunk of young men end up feeling undesirable, unwanted, and frustrated, the consequences won't be pretty, we all lose. Pretty much. This is the demographic most susceptible to radicalization.
  • meko 8y ago
    See: isis to alt-right
    • EdSharkey 8y ago
      so tiresome
    • justtopost 8y ago
      Or anarchist to far left. Its a dumb game, but we can play if thats your style.
• emptysongglass 8y ago
  You’ve hit on my fears too. I was in LA for a year among yes, queer circles, and nearly everyone was playing with poly but that’s all it was: play. All relationships were superficial and all fled for the hills as soon as difficulties were encountered. What is a life when you can depend on no one for comfort. This goes hand in hand with my thinking that no one knows how to do poly “right”. They appear to be tools for people to stay blissfully ensconced in their regimes of self-care. I remember in my first poly relationship I was ready to go to war for my partners. But I almost never felt this readiness returned. To them, it might have been so much adornment for an aesthetic life holding little in the way of deep and lasting engagement. For an image of what this could look like, Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers” hits the spot.
  • heavenlyblue 8y ago
    Tragedy of the commons.
• Udik 8y ago
  Michel Houellebecq (especially his first "Whatever", original title "Extension du domaine de la lutte", "Extension of the domain of the fight") should be obligatory reading for everybody, as it deals exactly with these issues- from a rather cynical and depressing point of view, of course.
  • 0b01 8y ago
    Funny thing you mentioned it. While I personally think nobody should read his works, Houellebecq is the writer to peruse after contracting a terminal case of spiritual malaise. One thing I want to add is that Houellebecq's body of work is an assortment of potential solutions to this modern day problem which has become more pronounced in the US lately. The Extension of the Domain of the Struggle (Whatever) is his first novel. The motif is that similar to economic inequality, due to sexual liberation, the sociosexual arena has become more winner-take-all, hence the extension in the title. The plot chronicles the disillusionment of a sexless programmer in denial after going on a road trip with a similarly dysfunctional co-worker who ended up commiting suicide. The story ends the protagonist going postal but offers no practical solution. His next book The Elementary Particles follows two half-brothers who were dysfunctional in opposite ways. One was a complete sex addict who failed to individuate and the other became a monk like molecular biologist responsible for making sexual reproduction obsolete. His next novel Platform is an in-depth analysis of the discontentment of sex tourism from the perspective of his alter ego, which is clearly formed by his own lived experience in Indonesia. I think it's his least coherent work FWIW. The Possibility of an Island arguably follows the timeline of Atomised and describes the nature of love through the narrative of three clones of the same person from the hedonistic present, totalitarian future and hunter-gatherer post-apocalytic future. Submission is about the return to traditionalism after a Muslim party won the election in France. The effect is complex but nominal as we all know there is no going back. I am waiting for the English translation of Serotonin which should be released before end of next year.
• krapp 8y ago
  >It also seems to me that if a sizeable chunk of young men end up feeling undesirable, unwanted, and frustrated, the consequences won't be pretty, we all lose. Those young men need to stop basing their self image on their own ego and sense of sexual entitlement. What we're seeing here, in my humble and uneducated opinion, is the end of a period in societal history where women served the role of sexual currency in a market of male status. The social and religious pressures on women to validate men through sex and marriage are no longer relevant, and women are now seeking sexual fulfillment and relationships on their own terms, rather than those dictated to them by patriarchal society. However, many men are still wedded, as it were, to the old model whereby their social status is accounted for by the number of women they have had sex with, and whether or not they are in a sexual relationship at the moment. They feel cheated because society has told them they are entitled to sex, and that there is something wrong with them if they don't get as much of it as they want. What bothers me about this conversation is that disastrous, society-shattering consequences are always mentioned if women keep choosing not to have sex with more men, but no one seems willing to suggest that men need to change the way they view sex, relationships and themselves.
  • arvinsim 8y ago
    > However, many men are still wedded, as it were, to the old model whereby their social status is accounted for by the number of women they have had sex with, and whether or not they are in a sexual relationship at the moment. It certainly is not an "old" model since most of society still ascribe to it. Men with many partners are still seen as more desirable due to network effects.
    • krapp 8y ago
      "outdated" then, perhaps, because it depends on a power hierarchy between the sexes which is losing relevance in modern societies. Yes, the model is still prevalent, but I'm arguing that's exactly the problem. Basing status and self-worth on sexual conquest makes no more sense than basing it on the number of slaves in one's retinue or the size of the pile of gold in one's treasury. It's a ridiculous and archaic way of thinking. edit: I may have lost vouching privileges again, so to address blockmarker's dead comment below, unlike other animals, humans are sapient and capable of acting beyond the limits of mere instinct. The entire premise of human civilization, law and society is that abstractions beyond our animal nature are not only possible, but desirable. Yes, it may be part of our biology for males to want to seek out multiple mates, but it should also be part of our biology, then, for males to murder the children of other males in order to maximize the spread of their own progeny and genetic lineage. And we should be marking our territory with our urine and solving all disputes with ritual violence rather than a system of laws. We don't have to act like gorillas, we can be people if we choose.
• metafex 8y ago
  There's (in my experience) not a very large overlap between overly promiscuous poly people and other poly people. Not having long-term stable partners is also not mutually exclusive with being polyamorous and many poly people (again, in my experience) benefit from having multiple deep relationships with whom they can share their problems and struggles with. Load-balancing actually benefits all in this case. A better comparison would be that children growing up in a polyamorous environment are more like a tribe of people instead of the classic family.
• everdrive 8y ago
  >but because having a stable long-term partner seems like it can be beneficial in helping people through hard times This becomes truer with age, too. How much extra energy do you have at 45? Do you have an extended family to help you? Not everyone has a good family, but with a marriage you have two chances at having a family. People will say polyamory doesn't preclude this, but there are hardships I'd never consider outside of a serious marriage. (full time financial support, integration into a family structure, etc.)