The Problem With Polyamory: A Social Scientific View
by Rosemary L. Hopcroft, IFS:
As Kay Hymowitz and Ashley McGuire have both noted in this space, polyamory is having a moment. There is the attention being paid to Molly Roden Winter’s book More, and New York Magazine recently had a “practical guide” to ethical non-monogamy as its cover feature. But support for polyamory is not just coming from elite minority groups. A Pew Research survey last year reported that over half of Americans under the age of 30 say that an open marriage is acceptable. According to a study by the Kinsey Institute, one in nine Americans have already been involved in a polyamorous relationship.
Older people will recognize polyamory as akin to the free love and wife-swapping of the Swinging Sixties, which was, in part, an expression of the youth culture of the Baby Boom generation, and a rebellion against the traditional mores and strict sex roles of the 1950s. There is some of that cultural rebellion in the current trend toward polyamory. For example, Winter, who has two sons with her husband, complains about a culture that expects mothers to be selfless. She says: “You should have a full self, you shouldn’t have to give yourself up to be a mother. I don’t think that is helpful to children either.”
The Swinging Sixties owed much to the introduction of the birth control pill and the feminist revolution. But this is long in the past. Why is this new trend toward polyamory happening now? Cultural changes have many bases, but one important reason for the rise in polyamory in the U.S. is the on-going decline in marriage and childbearing. The decline in marriage means that a smaller proportion of the population are married, and thus there is proportionately more sexual behavior outside of marriage. The decline in childbearing, both within and outside of marriage, combined with lengthening life expectancy means people have longer periods of their life where they do not have young children in the home. All of this creates a situation that is conducive to polyamory.
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