what the world has to say about poly parenting (if you want to know, which you might not)
So in a haze of other things, I missed mentioning last week when my article on poly parenting went live on Babble. It was was brief, and really fairly surface, but I thought it was pretty cool to be able to give a non-sensationalized, first-person perspective on this in a mainstream publication with a broad audience. (I should have guessed what headline they would come up with. Too bad it's the same as one of my favorite erotica stories, by Mary Anne Mohanraj.)
The editor also blogged it on the AOL news blogs, which someone sent me the link to, and I made the mistake of following it. Oy. None of the comments are any different than I would have expected, really. I just had made an unofficial plan not to read them, and should have stuck to it.
Anyhow, since I did, here are a few probably unnecessary responses:
- This was a narrow essay focused on my family and how we parent. I never claimed poly (or marriage of any sort) was easy, and you will never hear me say that. We have our deep disagreements and ongoing angst, some of it on poly topics. I don't actually believe we're immune to the pressures of the world and human frailties. However, when I say that our challenges do not include simmering jealousy within the triad or problems with parenting, I actually mean it. And when I say that poly also comes with some benefits that help to counterbalance the challenges, I mean it. It's sad to me, though not surprising, that those fairly mild claims are so hard for people to believe.
- To those folks who insist on saying that "eventually one of you will get jealous of the others and leave": Eventually, your wife will cheat on you.
- To the folks who insist we're damaging our children like their free-love parents damaged them: I'm sorry to hear about your irresponsible parents. Get a therapist.
- To the folks who were offended by my making fun of people asking first thing about our sleeping arrangements: Yes, I understand your curiosity. I have spent rather a lot of time patiently indulging people's curiosity. I don't mind it. It's just funny to me that that one comes up first so often, when there are so many more interesting questions to ask. But so you can breathe easy, at the moment we have one bedroom with a king bed and one with a full.