this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2023
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Polyamory has benefits, but it also has big problems.
One is a scaling problem. Let's say you have a couple. Then add one person. Now instead of one relationship, you have three to worry about. Add yet another person, now you have 4 relationships. Add another person, now you have 9. Have each new so get a so, now you have 30.
Relationships are hard. Most people can't manage 1, so the idea of managing 3, or 9, or 30 is starting to get really difficult. You can split people off and say "hey, I'm going to just have time with girl 1 today and girl 2 tomorrow", and that can set up a sort of firewall, but there's a bit of a resource problem there where there's only 24 hours in a day and someone's going to feel left out or someone who needs more support won't get it.
The resource thing also hits in other ways. A lot of women want children eventually, and ideally children require resources -- space, time, money. In a monogamous relationship, a woman can monopolize a man's resources, whereas under polyamory she needs to share. "Sharing is caring" rhymes so it must be true, but the data shows that a child's quality time with their father is directly responsible for positive outcomes, so in that case maybe sharing isn't caring after all.
On the topic of kids, there can be a real problem if a woman gets pregnant. Whose is it? Now maybe one of the men steps up and says "it's mine" even though it isn't clear that's the case. What if he doesn't though? A shared responsibility often becomes nobody's responsibility.
Honestly, you can make it work, but it's hard mode. It's much more difficult to make polyamory work than monogamy, and many relationships that should die get drawn out by people who think just adding more people will fix things. In reality, a strong polyamorous relationship is based on relationships that would be strong monogamous relationships.
The Mosuo (a Himalayan Chinese ethnic group) and the Himba (the Namibia and Angola border region) are both very interesting in this respect.
The Mosuo do not have marriage (although their now extinct aristocracy and nearly extinct priesthood did/do). They live in their family home all their lives. Mosuo women have sexual freedom; no one cares how many partners they have or whether there's more than one relationship ongoing simultaneously, and it's not always certain who someone's father is (the matriarchs keep tabs on relationships to help ward off accidental incest). Fathers are not expected to contribute; they raise the children of their sisters and contribute financially to their birth-family household. But, despite the freedom to have many partners on the go with no adverse social consequences at all, most Mosuo tend towards serial monogamy, with some relationships lasting years, others for a lifetime. Those that move to urban China for work tend to adopt traditional marriage because the Mosuo lifestyle is not practical without a whole household to help care for the children.
The Himba, on the other hand, do have marriage and, polyamory for men who are wealthy enough to support more than one wife. But wives are free to have as many other partners as they wish and many women, married or unmarried, will have several on the go at the same time. If a woman wants to sleep with a married man, she gets permission from his wife. Women will often have children before they get married and those they have after marriage are not necessarily fathered by their husbands. It's not an issue because they're herders; children are a source of wealth (more goats can be herded) so the men do not care who the fathers of their children are.
I'm no anthropologist, and I hope I've done these groups justice with my brief descriptions. It's a fascinating topic, especially with respect to polyamory in a rich world context.