Polyamory seems to be everywhere right now, with media pieces often focusing on titillating questions, like how to navigate sex with multiple partners and reckon with jealousy.
But for the growing population of polyamorous people, the most important issues often aren’t about how to navigate sexual adventures but about how to navigate having multiple, committed relationships when legal and private institutions assume that the center of a “family” is a monogamous couple. This assumption makes it more difficult for people to organize their life in a way that deviates from the nuclear family norm.
For example, consider zoning laws. Many municipalities restrict the number of unrelated adults who can live in one home, even when the home would not be crowded, often as an indirect way of discouraging rowdy young people from living in a neighborhood. These kinds of rules can also forbid the “mommunes” (homes of cohabitating single mothers committed to supporting each other) recently celebrated in The New York Times, or other small groups of adults who, polyamorously or platonically, want to live with and support each other as chosen family.
Polyamorous people, and others who live in nontraditional arrangements, are often scared to be open about their lives because of fear of discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere. In many states, adultery is still a crime, and consent to it is not a defense. As a result, polyamorous people hide and miss out on the tacit societal support and recognition that monogamous relationships receive.
Change is needed. And members of the public who care about strong, supportive families should welcome it. Legal scholar Barbara Bennett Woodhouse observed in 1996, “Defenders of the traditional family elevate form over function — the marriage certificate becomes an end in itself rather than a means to the end of encouraging committed, mutually interdependent, and self-sustaining family systems.” Expanding our understanding of what kinds of committed relationships are possible and desirable will strengthen American society, not weaken it, particularly given that Americans are delaying and avoiding marriage like never before. Put simply, more people committing to care for each other is a good thing.
Accordingly, legal and social institutions should evolve to support what we have termed an individual’s parafamilial relationships — important relationships with extended family, friends, and romantic or sexual partners. What support should look like depends on the issue. In the case of zoning laws, it means adopting rules that “get out of the way” and allow unrelated people to live together and support each other like family.
Supporting parafamilial relationships can mean repealing laws criminalizing adultery, as New York is currently considering. It can also mean passing laws that recognize multi-person domestic partnerships, like those passed over the past several years in Arlington, Cambridge, and Somerville, which provide rights like hospital visitation for a polyamorous person’s registered partners. And it can mean passing laws that forbid discrimination on the basis of one’s relationship status or family structure, like Berkeley and Oakland, Calif., did this past spring, following similar laws being passed in Cambridge and Somerville.
Legal change like this will help not just polyamorous people but also others whose lives don’t fit into the nuclear family ideal. Extended family, platonic friends, and nonmarital romantic partners all can be critical components of a rich and fulfilling life but are often minimized by social norms that equate having a single, monogamous relationship with stability and fulfillment. So people hesitate to make major life choices with these other individuals, for both cultural and legal reasons.
It seems weird to say a relationship with a platonic friend or extended family member is more important than a longstanding romantic and sexual relationship. Or to want to live in a house with multiple adults late in life. Or to be polyamorous and center your life around multiple committed romantic relationships. But many people’s lives are, or would be, enriched and improved by making these kinds of choices.
Are there dangers in accepting, even celebrating, committed polyamorous and parafamilial relationships? So far, the research indicates no. Sociologist Elisabeth Sheff’s research on polyamorous families concluded that “children in [polyamorous] families appeared to be thriving with the plentiful resources and adult attention their families provided.” This occurs in part because, despite the dramatic and salacious tenor of media coverage of polyamory, polyamorous relationships do not tend to be any more unstable than monogamous relationships, so children in polyamorous families are not inherently more likely to have unstable parental figures, even if they have more of them.
There’s also no indication that acceptance of polyamory would lead to widespread polygyny. To the contrary, Sheff observed in her study of polyamorous families with children that she found far more triads composed of a woman with two men, than a man with two women.
Many advocates for LGBTQ rights cheered the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, codifying a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. There won’t be an Obergefell moment for a polyamorous or parafamilial movement — and there shouldn’t be. Recognizing romantic partnerships with a status, whether it is marriage or a domestic partnership, may be desirable for some, but supporting committed relationships isn’t only about creating statuses. Indeed, we should spend less time asking who is in and out of a family and more time supporting all relationships that contribute to each other’s flourishing and care. And there will be plenty of opportunities to do so in every area of law.
We must continue to build on the Commonwealth’s proud legacy of being at the vanguard of necessary social change throughout American history. Boston and other municipalities should pass legislation similar to bylaws recognizing multiple domestic partnerships adopted by Arlington, Cambridge, and Somerville. The Legislature should pass nondiscrimination laws like the ones adopted by Cambridge and Somerville, so that all residents can live free from fear that the families and relationships they cherish could be the reason they lose their job or home.
Alexander Chen is the founding director of the LGBTQ+ Advocacy Clinic at Harvard Law School and a cofounder of the Polyamory Legal Advocacy Coalition. Christina Mulligan is a professor of law at Brooklyn Law School.