My original posting on Polygamy in the 21st Century has brought in a lot of response, so I thought it would be good to examine some of the further issues that I believe a polygamist family would have to deal with. If you haven’t read my first posting, I suggest you read it first.
A polygamist relationship is sure to bring with it many difficulties along with the potential benefits. It might even be fair to say, that without a great deal of planning and understanding it would be much more difficult than a conventional marriage. There will always need to be a defined plan for how things are done, who gets what, and who is responsible for what to ensure that no-one in the relationship ever feels left out, or unfairly treated.
Raising The Children
Children are a blessing to any family, but children also come with a significant quantity of responsibility and headaches, trust me, I know. In a family as large as six adults, it may not be possible for one person to raise all the children, and it shouldn’t be one persons responsibility. In the beginning it may not be so difficult, but as the family grows and more and more children are brought into the family, things will most certainly become more difficult to manage.
This needs to be thought out a great deal before any children are born. In an ideal situation, the parents would be able to split responsibilities equally, with half the adults being parents and half working to provide for the family. In a worst case scenario, I believe that no parent should have to raise more than 4 children alone, although anything over 3 especially if there are large age differences can be extremely taxing.
Although it would be tempting to assign specific duties to a specific parent, or to allow each parent to care for their own children specifically, a shared marriage is based exactly on that “sharing”. Regardless of birth parent, all parents will love and care for all the children. Although I agree that there should be some room for a birth parent to specifically focus on their children, it should not always be the case. Just as one parent should not always be assigned to one set of parenting duties, and not be allowed to experience the others. For example if you have boys and girls, and some are in soccer and some in ballet, it might be tempting to assign one parent to do all the chauffeuring, or to assign one parent to soccer and one to ballet, but this then deprives the other parents from experiencing those as well.
Instead a balance should be setup, with for example one parent being responsible for soccer and ballet this week, and another parent being responsible next week, and so forth, keeping things in a rotation, and allowing each parent quality time with each child.
There should also be consideration by the working parents for the child raising parents. Child raising doesn’t clock out at 5pm, and is probably one of the hardest jobs in the world. Therefore special consideration should be given to the parenting adults and the working adults should chip in and ensure that the parenting adults get every other night off, and every other weekend off.
In the event that the are less parenting adults than working adults, then each working adult should take and split their annual vacation time from work, using half for vacation and half to give a parenting adult a vacation. Which brings me to my next topic…
Enjoying Rewards Like Vacations and Bonuses
There will no doubt be some consideration given to how to best handle things like vacations and work bonuses.
Although in a Utopian society it would be ideal for all adults and all children to be able to always go on vacation together, but that is a Utopian society which we have yet to achieve. In reality trying to schedule time off work, babysitters, etc. for six adults is going to be a nightmare. Therefore it’s going to be imperative that a schedule be created which is fair to everyone. The schedule of course will depend greatly on the family itself. A family with a combined income of $100,000 will be able to afford less than a family with a combined income of $500,000.
Lets say for example that each year the family can afford to send one couple on a nice vacation, and the other two couples on a modest vacation. The way to arrange this fairly might be:
Year 1
| Nice | Modest | Modest |
| Husband 1 | Husband 2 | Husband 3 |
| Wife 1 | Wife 2 | Wife 3 |
Year 2
| Nice | Modest | Modest |
| Husband 2 | Husband 3 | Husband 1 |
| Wife 3 | Wife 1 | Wife 2 |
Year 3
| Nice | Modest | Modest |
| Husband 3 | Husband 1 | Husband 2 |
| Wife 2 | Wife 3 | Wife 1 |
Now you will probably notice that in my example I rotate the husbands and the wives in different directions down the table. The purpose for this is to ensure that every husband and every wife get to vacation together, and every person gets to enjoy a nice vacation every three years.
Beyond vacations, there will also be things such as prizes won, bonuses from work, and such. Financial rewards I will discuss later, for now lets look at actual material rewards.
Although it may be tempting to say the reward belongs to the person that earned the reward, it may create a level of jealousy, especially with the parenting adults, and some people may be in a position to earn more rewards. For example a radio talk show host is probably going to receive a lot more gifts from sponsors and such than a chef at a restaurant even though they may have the same income level.
In order to resolve this, a table of rewards should be setup similar to what the vacation schedule looks like, but you would need to add a category for price of the gift. For example you could have a table for items under $500, items under $2500, items under $10,000, and items over $10,000. Each list would have it’s own sorting, and you should try to avoid having the same person start each list, instead balance it so that each person starts a specific list, once a reward is awarded in that list, then that list rotates, and the others stay where they are.
How you do it specifically should be defined at the beginning of the relationship, so there is no miss understanding and hurt feelings later on.
Managing The Budget
Like any marriage, finances are bound to be one of the most difficult parts of a polygamist relationship. Imagine if two people have a hard time agreeing on money, how six is going to be. This is again where an extensive amount of preplanning needs to come into play.
Each person in the relationship should be considered to contribute equally regardless of income, and thus gain equally from all finances placed into the family. How you do this exactly I’m not certain, but I have some ideas. First you need to balance everything out based on need, for example, the parenting adults may need minivans to drive the children around, where the working adults may need much smaller and cheaper cars to get to work. A base should be set for each class regardless of the individual. In addition all child expenses, household costs, etc. should be added into a lump cost. So lets say you estimate the family needs 2 minivans, 1 truck, and 3 cars. Base payment amounts for these should be added to the overall budget.
Once all basics costs are paid, a fixed amount should be put into a retirement fund for the entire family. For this you will probably have to setup a trust fund of sorts or at least a family trading account. But the fund should be equal to all, and rights to the fund should probably have been established in a prenup just in case.
Once everything that the family needs is paid for, then and only then should an equal portion of remaining funds be distributed to each adult family member equally. This money can then be used by each family member as they see fit for their needs. If for example adult 1 “needs” an XBOX 360 in their room, they can purchase that out of their one, if adult 2 “needs” a nicer car, they can cover the extra out of their money. This ensures that everyone has equal, but everyone also has a chance to gain personal possessions for themselves as well and maintain some individualism.
I would also suggest that the family put away at least 10% of any remaining funds into an emergency fund until such time as the family has at least 6 months of income in reserve, this ensures that if any one or multiple family members become unable to bring in income, the family has time to make adjustments.
When financial bonuses are earned at work, these should be contributed to the family fund and divided as any standard funds would be. Each member of the family is equal and in their own ways had to support the person earning the bonus so they could earn it, therefore it is not prudent to the relationship for greed to enter the equation.
Sex
This will probably be the next most difficult topic that this type of family would have to deal with. It’s certainly easier if there is one male and three females or one female and three males, but in the proposed 3 x 3 relationship this becomes more difficult. In a way you almost have to schedule things, wives will of course have that time of the month, and they should not be expected to perform during that time. Men will undoubtedly feel they can’t get enough. You could setup a schedule something like the vacation schedule where each partner rotates with the others, and this may actually work to prevent issues with someone feeling someone else is hogging another partner, but it may also be best to have a primary partner, and then have rotations two nights per week. Those each husband would have a primary partner in a wife, and then two nights per week, could share their bed with another partner. This would be setup on a schedule, but nights could fluctuate as needed for mother nature.
This of course would require agreement on primary partners before anyone was added to the marriage so as not to force anyone into a relationship they do not want.
Clearly entering into this type of relationship will require a very healthy sex drive. I think that it should be determined that for example unless previously arranged no partners share another partner on the same day, and protection should be used by all partners for safety and to avoid unwanted pregnancy.
In Closing
I can only imagine the logistical difficulties in this type of relationship, from finances, to travel, to bedroom allocation. It requires a strong bond to survive in this type of relationship, and excellent communication skills. Everything you do needs to basically be a contract, put in place and agreed to by all to ensure that all members know what is expected and what to expect.
As always I welcome your feedback on these thoughts.
Andrew
