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> Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings

If you want to accelerate western societal collapse, this is the way to do it. What would likely occur is the richest will have a large number of wives and children causing huge amount of tension and unrest in a society.

The problems this causes are likely why monogamy is such a strong factor in the major world religions. Societies in which there is a massive imbalance in the opportunity to have offspring is ripe for turmoil.

I'm almost certain widespread polyamory will degenerate into polygamy approximately instantaneously.

Your “widespread” modifier gets you off the hook, who can say how social contract adjustments play out when they go mainstream.

But the polyamory community doesn’t look anything like polygamy. Like, not at all. More like polyandry, but most polyamorous folks I know have a single primary (and that primary lasts way longer than the average married couple, in my personal experience) and the rest of the business sees women finding multiple partners much more easily than men.

But it’s a complicated and open scene, YMMV.

A Brave New World!

BNW had a stable polyamory, that was the appeal. And a wonder drug to alleviate the few residual atavisms to boot.

But close enough.

Most modern polyamorous relations end up with the women having more partners than the men. Women have a far easier time finding sex partners than men do, on average.

But this is only a recent trend because of the advent of birth control technologies, which shifted the balance of risk in having multiple partners. Prior to this, high status males had consistently high partners than females.

No, not always. There were matriarchal societies in ancient times where women had multiple partners. You're looking at thing through the lens of western history.

Besides, what does it matter? We're talking about the future here, not the past. Contraceptive technology isn't going away.

>You're looking at thing through the lens of western history.

So? As you said, "What does it matter?" Those societies didn't survive. I don't really get how to treat the quip "you're looking at thi[s] through the lens of western history", other than as an attempt do disqualify what's literal fact by saying that it was observed by "westerners."

>Besides, what does it matter? We're talking about the future here, not the past. Contraceptive technology isn't going away.

I'm never going to understand this sentiment. "It matters" because, like it or not, evolutionary biology is a thing and attempts to subvert it are introduced at our own peril - at least until we actually have total command of controlling said biology.

To claim that those societies didn't survive solely because they weren't monogamous, patriarchal societies is either profoundly ignorant or intellectually dishonest. Societies don't survive for many different reasons, usually become some other foreign society with natural advantages (due to their geography) outcompete or conquer them. Go read "guns, germs, and steel".

>"It matters" because, like it or not, evolutionary biology is a thing

You're missing the point that contraceptive technology is here now, and not going away, so what may have worked in the past is no longer applicable because of this. Contraception changes everything.

>Citations needed. There's no proof of any of this, it's just the social norm we've had for centuries.

More like millennia. You should ask yourself why/how the concept emerged independently across many cultures and civilizations what that signals for its usefulness in building social structures that are able to respond to negative external stimuli (war, disease, environmental catastrophe etc).

>Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings; it's better for kids, and provides a more stable home life than only having 2 parents. Don't ask me for citations; you'll just have to take my word for it, just as the author of this article did.

Okay, now I'm pretty sure you're being sarcastic, since the opposite is true.

> Citations needed

There are studies that show that single parent homes correlate with certain social outcomes. The next dozen leaps, however, are way out there or patently false.

Yes, It is all confounded by the heritability of all mental traits. I suspect the offspring of single women who use sperm donors (who are screened heavily for proxies of genetic quality, such height, facial symmetry and educational attainment) are more successful then the offspring of married couples on average. I don't know if anyone has looked into it though.

I think you're putting too much emphasis in heritability rather than the impact of childhood on mental states.

I have yet to see a boy who is not mangled by his single mother into some early adolescence by oversharing of information.

> Personally, I think it'd be better if people joined into polyamorous groupings; it's better for kids, and provides a more stable home life than only having 2 parents.

As an introvert, this is my idea of hell. I have one wife, one child, and two cats - and that's about the maximum I can currently handle, emotionally and... attentively? Adding more significant relationships in my life would be really, really, really taxing.

It's simple: with a polyamorous relationship, your wife would have another boyfriend/husband to spend her time with, and also to help take care of the kid, leaving you alone more of the time with the cats.

There's no requirement in polyamory for everyone involved to have multiple partners.

I think polyamory might work fine for some, but giving it out as a blanket suggestion is asinine. My wife's an introvert, too - she doesn't want another husband, either.

Other people to take care of the kid would be fantastic, but traditionally that's done by the extended family - grandparents, siblings, etc.

Do you two not have any other friends? You don't even have to have sex with other people: add up all the time you spend taking care of kids without any help from extended family. Now imagine you join up with another couple just like you that you're great friends with, and you move in together into a bigger house, each couple with their own master bedroom. Now you have 4 adults taking care of all the kids, as well as doing household chores. Is it not obvious how this is useful?

As for extended family, what if they suck? A lot of people don't get along with their extended family. Why be stuck with your blood relatives when you can choose the people you live with instead?

> join up with another couple just like you that you're great friends with, and you move in together into a bigger house, each couple with their own master bedroom

Yes, because we've lived with roommates as a married couple. As an introvert, again, this kind of sucks.

And I don't choose to live with my extended family, either.

If you'd rather have less time to yourself, then that's a perfectly acceptable choice. As an introvert myself, I'd rather have more people to share household and child-care activities with, because that would increase the amount of time I have for other pursuits. I don't have kids myself, but I know people who do and the amount of time they spend dealing with them is incredible. I do have a house though, and even there the amount of time I spend on upkeep, repairs, cleaning, and cooking is significant. Having roommates I have little emotional connection to has pluses and minuses: you can share some of the expenses and household duties (if they're good roommates), but the minus of having less privacy kinda sucks. But if you're closer friends than that, it's not such a problem and is actually a benefit by having more emotional support nearby. Also, with more incomes you can afford a bigger house (since house size does not scale linearly with bedrooms; bathrooms and kitchens are the most expensive rooms by far), and this gives you more space than you can afford on your own.

It sounds like you’re thinking polyamory is a requirement.

In any world derived from our own, polyamory would be allowed, not required.

If you’re worried you’d be judged harshly for raising a child with only two parents, as many on this thread are judging single moms... well, you’re probably right. But maybe that’s an argument for a little more support for everyone, not for less support for the more-than-two-grown-ups-per-household folks?

I’m with you on almost everything, I happen to agree communal and/or polyamorous parenting is great (no sarcasm, kids raised this way are great); but when do you think universal female suffrage happened in the U.S.? The 19th amendment was ratified in 1920.

Are you implying there was some kind of poll tax or equivalent suppression of the female vote until the 60s?

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/living/sixties-women-5-things/...

I think ~50 years ago referred more to this type of thing, while stuff like voting rights was just included since it's relevant to the struggle as a whole.

Agreed that 1960s housewives didn’t have it easy. But they most certainly could, and did, vote.

What I'm saying is, I doubt he thinks they couldn't vote in the '60s. I think he just used ~50 years ago earlier in his comment and then later on was mentioning some of the other struggles, like voting.

Women couldn't hold most jobs until the 1960s or later; they could only be nurses, teachers, secretaries, etc. Suffrage was earlier, but just like black people (men) who got freedom and suffrage way back in the mid-1800s, they still weren't full members of society until significantly later.