What It's Like to Grow Up in a Polyamorous Household

According to the old proverb, “It takes a village to raise a child.” In addition to mom and dad, children need supportive relationships with a host of adults, from aunts, uncles, and grandparents to teachers and other trusted adults. And yet, we tend to focus our attention on the nuclear family as the crucible in which the child’s adult personality is forged.

We also tend to forget, here in the WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Developed) world, that most people, for most of human history, have not lived in nuclear families. Although the nuclear family was only adopted as the standard family structure in the twentieth century, enough generations have grown up in one to make it seem the most “natural” way for people to live. We even worry that children will somehow be irreparably harmed if they don’t grow up in a standard nuclear family, such as when they’re raised by a single parent, a same-sex couple, or by grandparents or other relatives.

In the non-WEIRD world, however, children more regularly grow up in extended families, with aunts, uncles, grandparents, and other adults living under the same roof or in close vicinity. They also grow up with lots of other members of their own generation, not just siblings but also cousins and other children whose parents are not their own. If you want to choose a single family structure to call “natural,” it would have to be the extended family, since it’s the way we’ve organized ourselves for most of our existence.

Growing Up in a Polyamorous Home

Because psychology is mostly a WEIRD science, its practitioners are often biased by the culture in which they’re steeped. For example, we may worry that children may be harmed if they don’t grow up under “normal circumstances,” with a mother and father and a sibling or two all living together in the same house. Yet research to date has shown that children can thrive in a variety of household arrangements. Children of single parents can flourish, especially if there are grandparents, aunts, and uncles around to whom they can feel close. Likewise, children of divorced couples can also thrive in their extended stepfamilies, as long as parents and stepparents get along reasonably well.

But what about the children of polyamorous parents? How does negotiating relationships with parental paramours affect children’s social and personality development? Practitioners of polyamory have long argued that their children thrive in their poly-extended families because they have multiple adults to provide them with support. Of course, that’s exactly what you would expect polyamorists to say as they justify their lifestyle. What we really need to know is how children in polyamorous households feel about their parents’ romantic partners. To this end, Canadian psychologist Milaine Alarie and her colleagues conducted 18 structured interviews with children living in polyamorous households. Their findings are reported in a recent article in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

For the most part, the children interviewed for this study expressed positive attitudes about their parents’ romantic partners. However, younger children tended to like their parental paramours more than teenagers did. This pattern makes sense when we keep in mind that younger children are more dependent on the adults in their lives, whereas teenagers are building relationships with peers and exerting their independence from their families.

It’s also important to remember that teenagers have a better understanding of what their parents’ polyamorous relationships entail. Even when they felt no particular closeness to their parents’ other partners, many of the teens recognized that these paramours made a positive difference in their parents’ lives, thus making family interactions a more pleasant experience.

4 Ways Children Can Benefit From Their Parents’ Paramours

Among the younger children of polyamorous parents, four themes arose during the interviews. The first theme was that the parent’s romantic partner was someone to have fun with. Many of these children gave examples of how they shared a hobby or learned new and interesting things from one of the parent’s paramours.

The second theme was that the parent’s romantic partner was an adult that contributed to the child’s material well-being. The younger children talked about swimming in their mother’s boyfriend’s pool or playing with their father’s girlfriend’s dog. However, none of the teenagers saw their parents’ paramours in this light. Again, this is likely due to the fact that teenagers look more to their peers than to their parents for social interaction.

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The third theme was that the parent’s romantic partner was an adult who supports and cares for the child. Many of the children commented on the way that parental paramours took on childcare responsibilities. Some even remarked that they could be confidants in ways their own parents couldn’t be. The role of confidant was especially important for pre-teens and teenagers.

The fourth theme was that the parent’s romantic partner was an adult who brings friends that are the child’s own age. In this sense, children of parental paramours serve much the same role as cousins or children of their parents’ close friends. This was especially true for the younger children, who are much more reliant on their elders for providing access to playmates. While it’s certainly possible that conflicts could arise in such circumstances, none were reported in these interviews.

What Children Need to Thrive

A general finding of this study is that the more the children of polyamorous parents interact with their parents’ romantic partners, the more they like them. But this shouldn’t be surprising, since psychologists have long known that familiarity is one of the key drivers of interpersonal attraction. That is to say, we tend to like those people that we spend a lot of time with, whether at home, at school, or at work.

It’s also important to note that the teenagers often expressed concern that their parents’ polyamorous lifestyle may cause problems for them or their parents because of the social stigma against it. This insight brings us back to the general observation that no particular family arrangement is “natural” or better, but social attitudes can make some of them easier to live in than others.

In sum, what children need to develop into happy, productive adults is an environment filled with supportive adults in harmonious relationships. Whether that home consists of a single parent with grandparents nearby, a same-sex couple, an extended stepfamily, or a polycule of adults who all care for and respect each other, children will flourish as long as they receive the love and support they need.