Our identical twins had been home from the hospital for just over a month when I saw a Facebook post from my friend Niko. He was also having a baby – but instead of doing it with two parents, he was doing it with three: himself (papa), his partner (mama), and her other partner (dada). In addition to having a mom and two dads, a fourth adult would also be living with the family – as the baby’s “bonus adult”.
I wasn’t surprised by this unusual arrangement; Niko has been openly non-monogamous since I met him years earlier. I was excited for him and his growing family, but I also felt a sharp mix of envy and despair.
I stared down at the tiny person on my lap as he slowly (so slowly) drained a bottle. Then over at the one on my partner Mark’s lap. And then at the bowl of cereal going soggy by the breast pump. My mom had just flown home and we were officially on our own for the first time as a family of four. I’d never been so hungry or so exhausted.
“Can you imagine?” I said to Mark. “If we had four adults here right now? If someone could make lunch and someone else could help with the laundry?”
Mark laughed. “Yeah, we’d probably shower more than once every three or four days.”
Our kids are now two and I manage to shower more days than not. But nothing about the past couple of years has been easy. Our tightly plotted schedule of daycare pickups and dog walks and work and appointments is easily upended by the arrival of a sudden fever or new molars. It can take weeks to regain our footing after a stomach flu roars through the house.
When I saw that a recent study in the UK found that a third of heterosexual men were open to having more than one spouse or long-term partner, along with 11% of women, my first thought was: well, duh. I like being in a monogamous relationship, but I sure could go for another adult around the house.
The researchers are careful to note that being “open to” non-monogamy is not the same thing as actively practicing it. They asked participants to imagine a hypothetical situation in which having more than one spouse was legally and socially acceptable. But in real life, non-hypothetical interest in alternatives to monogamy is on the rise too.
Additional studies have found that one in five people surveyed in the US and Canada have experience with non-monogamy. Taken together, these studies suggest that the love-marriage-baby-carriage story of what makes a happy life is losing some of its shine. And there are good reasons why.
In our increasingly individualist culture, we tend to think of our romantic partners as extensions of ourselves. As a result, we look to marriage not just for love and mutual support, but for personal growth and self-discovery. We want our partners to help clean the house and remind us to go to the gym, but also to keep sex interesting and have thoughtful things to say about the latest season of The Bear. For those with kids, we expect all of this and a committed co-parent. It’s a lot to ask of one person.
In fact, our expectations of our spouses are higher than they have ever been. The privileged few who have the time and resources to invest in their marriages are genuinely happy, but many find themselves disappointed and disillusioned. Before we had kids, this kind of high-effort, high-reward relationship felt like an exciting challenge to me. But these days I’m thinking about how to put less pressure on my partner, by turning outward rather than in. We don’t have extended family nearby but I long for a network of care that is more durable and flexible than the nuclear family alone can provide.
My friend Niko’s baby is now over a year old. When I called to hear how things were going in their family, Niko was happy to chat about it. “Having [a third] parent and an additional close caring adult in your household is exactly as good as it sounds,” he said. But he was quick to add that that didn’t mean there aren’t challenges.
There are no templates for their family structure, so managing the household requires a lot of conversation and planning. “We were getting together to discuss these kinds of things for a year before my partner was even pregnant,” he said, adding that they still spend a lot of time sorting through the details of everything from parenting schedules to household responsibilities to how they introduce their family to other people. More people means more negotiation, but it also means more sleep, more flexibility, more support.
I’m definitely not the first person to feel the limits of the nuclear family. But I continue to be surprised at how insistently thinkers, pundits and policy-makers argue that the two-parent, married family is the solution to any number of social problems – from poverty to happiness. One upcoming book even promises that marriage has the power to “save civilization”.
This marks single parents, divorced adults, unmarried cohabiters and non-monogamous folks as a threat to society. No amount of banging the marriage drum seems to work, however. With the exception of a brief post-pandemic boom, marriage rates have consistently declined over the past five decades.
Monogamy isn’t on the verge of collapse – it’s still the arrangement most people prefer. But in some very measurable ways, the institutions that go with it – marriage and the nuclear family – are failing us. Those who want to save society by saving marriage might be better served by considering just how fragile these institutions become when we expect them to do the work of an entire community of people. Instead of writing books urging everyone to pair up fast, one might lobby for support systems that actually meet families where they are, by mandating paid parental leave or subsidizing child care.
I don’t think everyone should rush out and find another spouse, but I do think there’s something monogamous folks and marriage evangelists alike can learn, which is that we all could benefit from building a bigger boat. In the media, non-monogamy is often framed as either part of an exciting sexual revolution or a moral failure, but for Niko it’s really a way of thinking about the world. Stepping outside the norms of marriage and the nuclear family has made it possible for him to find broader possibilities for care and community.
“I spend a lot of time with my co-parents where we’re all covered in poop and very tired,” he said. “And what prepares you for that isn’t an abundance of romance.” Instead it’s a hard-won sense of solidarity – solidarity that comes from letting go of the assumption that one person can and should meet all of your needs.
Mandy Len Catron is the author of How to Fall in Love with Anyone: A Memoir in Essays and The Loneliness Project newsletter
