The risks of "chosen family"

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month seven bloggers - ALBJ, Delightfully Queer, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, Post Modern Sleaze, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Non-lovers" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

From Stalin Ate My Homework, by Alexei Sayle:

'One year one of the members [of the Communist party] told me he would make me a toy fort for Christmas... It took a long time to arrive but finally, wearily, right on Christmas Eve he deposited it at our house - and it was magnificent. It had all the things I had specified: a drawbridge you could wind up and a working portcullis and a little light bulb that worked off a battery. Then he stopped coming to the meetings and I never saw him again. That was one problem with having a family that wasn't based on blood ties - people often inexplicably vanished and you weren't supposed to miss them.'.

I'm expecting to read a few posts about how polyamory can build a "chosen family" and about close emotional ties with metamours this month. I'll enjoy reading them, but that's not what I'm going to write about. Partly because I think the other bloggers will pretty much say what I’d say anyway, partly because I've written it already but mostly because there is something else on my mind, which is how all this will affect my daughter. Because although I am sold on the benefits of chosen family, the polyamorous tribe and the added love that she will experience because of our extra lovers and metamours, the above passage from Alexei Sayle’s autobiography gives me pause. So too, does the onetime blogger PolyMom who believes strongly that polyamorous parents should stop dating when they have children because those children “deserve to grow up with minimal changes to their family configurations.” I don’t agree that the only way to provide stability is to stick to a rigid set up, but she does have a point.

Friends and lovers have drifted in and out of our lives. Some good friends moved overseas, some just stopped calling, and since having a baby, we’ve built a new social circle of other parents who understand and share our experiences. I expect that as time goes on, we’ll see some friends more often, others less. Not all of these people will be considered part of our tribe or family, but of those that do, not all will remain so. When you choose your tribe, it isn’t stable. And, as Alexei Sayle found out, when your parents choose it, the people who you might consider family aren’t there because of you. Chosen family is risky.

Despite the title of my previous blogpost on the topic, real tribes aren’t chosen. A tribe is based on kinship, not friendship. Teresa Pitman wrote a guide for those interested in building a tribe in the style of the Continuum Concept and advises people not to be too picky: “People who actually live in tribes are born into them”, she says. “And I suspect that if we lived in tribes there would be people who we would get along with easily and those with whom we wouldn't mesh quite as well.” When we choose our family, the reasons that caused us to choose them might change. The success of tribal living is perhaps the lack of that choice.

I don’t want to sound defeatist, because I really am sure that Small will benefit hugely from the love that both my boyfriend and my husband’s girlfriend have shown and will continue to show her. Not to mention my boyfriend’s girlfriend, my husband’s other long-term lover and several other wonderful metamours, friends and lovers. These people who enjoy her company as well as ours will bring nothing but good things into her life. I don’t think that cutting any of them out would benefit her or improve the stability of our family. But these people, no matter how much they love her, are there primarily because of us, not her. Her grandparents, on the other hand, would still be her grandparents no matter what. If we fall out with our parents, they would still want a relationship with her. If we lose touch with one of our lovers and Small is especially close to them, what then?

While I think PolyMom does have a point, I don’t think that polyfiedilty or monogamy solves the problem or necessarily creates any more stability. After all, Alexei Sayle’s parents were monogamous. But it is still something I think about, and I haven’t decided what, if anything, we should do about it.

She is still very young, of course, and the only adults she shows clear signs of bonding with are those she sees at least once a week. So even our biological family aren't really family to her yet, no matter how much they love her. So at the moment, this isn't something I worry about. But it won't be long before she'll start asking about people she's met, learning to recognise names and faces, and enjoying the company of some of the people we love. Maybe by then, I'll know what to do.

Until then, if anyone has an answer, I'm all ears.