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Most people’s definition of marriage includes only two spouses. But it’s estimated that about 60,000 people in the United States practice polygamy, the majority of whom do so for religious reasons. Despite the fact that this is illegal in all 50 states, the practice doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. But because it has to be done discreetly, it is often shrouded in mystery for those who aren’t a part of the same community.
That’s why many people online are fascinated by the idea of plural marriage, and if you are too, you’ve come to the right place. Reddit users who grew up in polygamist homes have been sharing details about their upbringings, so we’ve gathered their most enlightening stories below.
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#1
Made an account to answer this one.
I was raised in a Muslim family. Islamic law allows a man to have 4 wives. My father was married to my mother for 25 years. When I was a teenager my mother found out he was married to another woman in another country. My father would go on many "business" trips and it turns out he was really just visiting his second wife. My mother was extremely angry when she found out and went to the US courts to get a divorce. But in Islam, the man has the power of divorce. In order for a woman to obtain a divorce she has to go through an Islamic judge or in a case where we live in the US with no Islamic judges around, an Imam. Well the local imams didn't think she had reason to be granted a divorce since polygamy is allowed in Islam. So my mother suffered for a few years while my father continued being married to her and this other woman. I tried to convince her to forget about the Islamic divorce and just divorce him by the US courts, take half of their property, and never speak to him again. But of course she didn't feel like she could go against the Islamic way. So eventually she kinda grew to accept it. It was hard on us because at one point we went through a rough financial time, and I got sick and had a lot of medical expenses. My father lost his job at one point and we did not have insurance, and so times were already hard but harder due to the fact that he was splitting his money between my family and his other wife (he had no kids with her but Islamic law requires a man to provide for all of his wives. So even though she was employed and had her own money he still had to give her money).
We all hated my dad for the longest time. He finally divorced his second wife and after a few years we really haven't forgiven him but he lives far away anyway.
I think an important thing to remember about polygamy is how the allocation of resources affects the kids. You have to remember that the average Joe in the US cannot support 15 kids from 5 different spouses. Even if both parents have a steady income, it's not fair to expect one spouse to sponsor your kids 80 percent while you poly give them 20 percent because you have 10 other kids from 3 other wives to worry about.
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#2
My dad had 4 wives over the course of his life, and 2 simultaneously. They didn't life in the same house, but my dad preferred to stay with my birth mother because of $$. Since I am Islamic, it's allowed but my mom hates it. How can she bear to handle her husband, being with another woman whenever he wants because he's also married to her? It's really unfair for both of them, and since he has kids with all 4 of them, I have half brothers / sisters I really never get to see. It's a hard life, honestly. He doesn't pay for rent and I don't understand why my mom still wants him. If she kicks him out, he'll just go to his other wife and she can't stand that. That's my story.
#3
I'm totally late to this thread but my great uncle is a huge polygamist. He is in his mid 80s with 4 wives and 1 ex wife. He has 30 something children and nobody knows how many grandchildren. His oldest child is my aunt from his first wife, who left him after he married a third wife, and she is in her early 50s with two kids who are in their late teens. Meanwhile his youngest child is 3 years old and I'm pretty sure he has a couple grand kids in their mid 20s.
Lucky for his he is a millionaire and has the luxury to live in a rich neighborhood in Nairobi, Kenya with two mansions and several servant homes. The bigger issue is how he is going to split his inheritance. Also, he never gave his children and grandchildren the same access to funds and picked favorites when schooling his kids sending his favorite children to elite boarding schools in the UK while sending his less favorite children to Kenyan boarding schools - which were really good schools but still don't compare to British boarding schools.
#4
I was raised in a Polygamous family for most of my formative years. My grandfather had 9 wives while I was around, they were essentially my great aunts or something analogous to that. My dad only had one wife, my mom. None of my Grandfathers wives were mormon, none of them were born into that lifestyle and a few of them had college educations.
Its wasn't a cult so much as an alternative to what was viewed as a very corrupt and wasteful rest of the country/world. They homesteaded in the desert of southern Utah until the feds came and destroyed their houses, and after that they started the town that I grew up in.
I feel really lucky. I grew up around a large group of people who loved and supported me in their own way. Some of my uncles are my best friends and some of the most interesting, well adjusted, productive and responsible people that I know. We all learned how to play musical instruments, how to work hard and do right by the people that loved us. Many of my friends from outside my family have visited my hometown and all of them left with a more than positive impression. Some of my friends even consider themselves part of my family because of what my parents did for them, such as encouraging them to graduate high school or giving them food and shelter when they needed it.
Polygamy gets a bad rap because of the places like Colorado City and the injustices of the Mormon Church, but coming from a place of love it can be a wonderful thing. I'm not interested in the lifestyle of polygamy, but almost everything else my family did, from the family music circles, the big family dinners, the shared childrearing, the midwives and the fruit trees seems beautiful to me now that I am out here in the "real" world.
*edit* Sorry for the wall of text. I already posted most of this before, just thought it was worth saying agin.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 5 hours ago
Op linked to a wikipedia article about his grandfather. "Alex Joseph (June 24, 1936 – September 27, 1998) was an American polygamist and founder of the Confederate Nations of Israel, a Mormon fundamentalist sect." So... yeah, it WAS a cult XD
#5
I guess I am coming a little late. It worked well while my dad was still alive. Now that he has passed away it's hard to stay in touch with 31 siblings and two other moms while all of us pretty much work and getting together as a family is complicated.
#6
I made friends in school with a boy that came from a family of 3 wives and one husband for a total of 22 siblings. It would have been impossible to tell he came from a polygamous family because it was a boarding school, but he invited me over to his home for holidays (Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.) Needless to say I had lots of questions after the first time, which he amusedly answered.
He felt that his experience was no different than if he had grown up in a household with extended family. He had his mom, his father, aunts, and a lot of siblings. He was close to his mom and she would be the main one raising him, but his aunts also raised him and treated him like a nephew. For siblings, he said it was no different than other families. There were some he was close with that he played with, then there were siblings that were far older that were like an additional parent, i.e asking if he had finished his homework, etc. (He said: "as if I needed any more parental supervision haha!"). His father he did not get as much time to see. He was often busy with work, but it was nothing obscene. His father still taught him how to ride a bike, went to many of his games, birds and the bees talk, etc. So he still had that father-son bond.
#7
My dad had three wives and he married them each 10 years apart. His first wife was his high school sweetheart, his 2nd wife (my mom) he met at church, and his 3rd wife he also met at church.
Imagine you are a young woman in love, you get married at 18, are madly in love with your husband, and have a couple of his kids by age 27. Then suddenly, without much warning, he starts courting an 18 year old from church. And instead of getting sympathy from your parents and siblings, they start congratulating you on finding such a wonderful sister wife. You have nobody to grieve to. You have to watch your love-struck husband and his pretty bride while you change diapers and mop the floors.
I used to hate my mom's older sister wife because she treated me like dirt. Then when I got older I started seeing it from her perspective (this was after I fell in love with my own husband). So I don't really blame her for not liking my mom's kids.
In case you're curious, the 3rd wife was disabled and not very pretty. My dad married her because he knew his first wife could not handle another beautiful, young wife. Also, the disability check from the government was a bonus for our family. He didn't have any kids with wife #3, she was just kind of around. But she was really helpful and sweet.
So anyway, my mom was the favorite because she was the prettiest. This made the first wife mad. The 3rd wife kind of went unnoticed, but she was too stupid to realize that she was miserable.
#8
The rough answer. It didn't work. Mostly due to my father being a terrible human being, and less to do with the actual practice of polygamy. Growing up with 3 "Moms" and 13 brothers of sisters, it leaves a man with a different perspective on life and relationships. I'm more partial to monogamy but have no issues with polygamy. It requires a great deal of commitment and hassle to balance number of partners and raise that many kids, and I am far to lazy for that kind of work. None of my siblings ended up in polygamist relationships, so if replication is a measure of success, then I'd say it was a failure.
I think that being raised in a society or community that considers this practice taboo is severely difficult for the parents, but more importantly is it's cruel to the children. This is probably why so many polygamists end up in fringe communities in more rural areas. We were raised with the knowledge that what our parents were doing was illegal and that we had to be secretive about our situation. In public my father's other wives were referred to as aunts and our half siblings as cousins. It made for interesting parent teacher meetings growing up. My father was very anti-government and left us with a great fear of child services in all his children and this taught us at an early age to bend truth or lie. Kind of funny how ironic that is as we were fairly religious and taught that such deceptions were inherently wrong.
It's interesting to see how each of us adapted to the circumstances and how many of us ended up leaving the brotherhood, and where we ended up. There are a number of gems in my family that you anyone would be impressed to have as their dearest friends and then there are those that were and still are difficult to get along with. Like any family it's a spectrum, we just had a bigger sample size...
#9
I personally did not grow up in a polygamist family, but my great grandfather was. He had two wives.
My last name is unique enough that I can ask someone with my last name "Which wife are you from" and they can tell you.
The funny thing was that he liked one wife more than the other and that resentment is still held by some older family members who are from the other wife.
Just a fun bit of family history.
#10
I used to know a girl who grew up in a polygamist hippie commune. She seemed to have had a positive experience. She referred to her father's other wives as her "aunties", and always seemed to reflect very fondly on her experiences growing up. Her father was well-respected and a very hard worker, and I think this accounted for their relative success compared to other hippie communes.
#11
My great-grandfather had three wives. His first wife couldn't have children, so he took two other wives and ended up having a ton of children. My grandfather came from his third wife, and he generally described his childhood as being fairly normal, albeit with half-siblings that he viewed more as cousins than siblings.
What was ironic was that after he married my grandmother, he took another wife (more of a mistress than anything, but he treated her like a wife) and had two kids with the second wife. He had sworn that he would never do the same thing his father had done, but he did it anyway. My dad (1st wife and my grandpa's kid) remembers the moment when my grandma found out and she was absolutely heartbroken. It led to a lot of fighting and it really messed up my dad. My grandpa was quite open about his second wife and frequently visited his second family. When he passed away about fifteen years ago, he left a lot of money to them.
My dad will never speak of his half-siblings. The second wife and her kids are banned from our side of the family and we will never have contact with them. There's a lot of enmity on our side, but not really so much on the second wife's side.
#12
One of my cousins was raised in a polygamous family and they are honestly one the happiest families I know.
They live in a very large apartment building and they bought four apartments on four floors and have built stairs that go from one apartment to the one below it for easy traveling.
Legally, my cousin's parents are married. My uncle's main residence is with my aunt. He has two more wives. We'll call them Francine and Thundercat. Francine joined the family when my cousin was approximately 2 years old, and Thundercat joined the fun when he was around 4, and while the patriarch is not legally married to them, he did have commitment ceremonies where they got "married". They have rings and pre-nups and the whole shabang.
My cousin's mother only had one child.
Francine has none.
Thundercat has two.
My aunt and uncle both have high paying, high pressure jobs. They both work.
Francine owns a hair salon and a barbershop.
Thundercat is the stay-at-home wife.
Each woman occupies a floor with her kids, and the top floor is the common floor and my uncle's room.
There is a lot of planning that goes into the whole thing. Sometimes, my cousin would have a recital, but Thundercat's oldest child would have a soccer game, so my uncle would need to choose which one he would attend. They have a very detailed schedule and every minute of their day is planned.
Thundercat takes care of making dinner for the entire family, which is consumed on the common floor. Everybody eats together, then do the dishes together, watch TV together, etc. And then, they retreat to their own floors. Tundercat also is everybody's maid. She does all the laundry, cleans all the apartments, does the grocery shopping for everybody, etc.
My uncle divides his night time equally every week. Two nights with each wife, and one night spent alone. He has a room and his office in the communal apartment so he also has somewhere to spend some Me time.
Everything works fine for them. It's definitely not the life that I would want to live, but one of Thundercat's children has been very vocal about wanting multiple wives when he's older.
It works well for them. They have three people providing for 7 family members and seem to have found a good balance of individual family time and all the families combined time.
It was really weird at first, but my uncle has been married to my aunt for 25 years, to Francine for 20, and to Thundercat for 18 years. They are the only couple in my family that are still married, so I would say they are doing something right.
**TL;DR: One man, three wives, three kids, 4 apartments, job, alone time, scheduling, one big happy family.**.
#13
Not me but I know a guy who was born there. He had a rough life and eventually was the second person kicked out of the community. His dad was the first.
He, let's call him George, has told me that it was hell. Boys are removed from school at age twelve to work in various different places. Girls are married off at that age. Pretty much everyone there is brainwashed.
His dad,we'll call him James, was getting close to being one of the top officials in the church side of this, and ended up realizing how corrupt they are and was kicked out. Because George was his oldest son (he had over 90 children) they kicked him out too.
George has been out of that community for about ten years now and runs his own construction company.
Last year he found out that his kids were not with their mother. He decided to try to get them back. After a lot of fighting with the community, he got the state court to order them to give George his kids. They ended of having to give them up.
After talking to his kids. They were totally being brainwashed. They had been made believe that everyone outside of that community was of the devil. Nothing was good. Playing with toys was a horrible sin. You couldn't really do anything fun in that community. They are all happy to be out of it, but in it they had no idea what fun was. The kids lived in a house with 8 women taking care of around 90 children right before George was able to get them. It was crazy.
TL;DR I know a guy who was in polygamy, saw its corruptness, got kicked out, then got his kids out.
#14
I didn't realize it growing up, but over the years, I've come to accept that my dad is a polygamist. My situation could be best described as the dad with the "secret family on the bad side of town"(yes, that's a quote from "Modern Family").
My mom and dad met at work, where my mom was a secretary for my dad's family business. I don't know if he was still married with his first wife, but they started seeing each other and 6 years later, I was born. He bought her a house, a ring, and she referred to him as her husband even though no actual paperwork existed nor did he live there. The last time I remember him sleeping at our house, I was in fourth grade.
I suspect he is is still married to the first wife because I've seen pictures of them on the social section of city newspapers and, more recently, Facebook. Also, where else would he sleep? From these sources, I also know he has (at least) two children, both in their mid-30s, and at least one grandchild. I've met my grandparents once over dinner when I was 14, and ever since then I get $100 from my granfather for Christmas, which my dad delivers, so for all I know, it's really all from my dad.
My grandma passed way last year, and my dad sent me an email to tell me. I honestly felt nothing except empathetic for my dad. I met the woman for three hours over 5 years ago. She seemed lovely and gave me the longest hug ever, but that's it. She did give me $2000 around the time she started getting sick. She divided her life savings amongst her grandchildren (over 40 grand kids), so at least I know I was on her list of grandchildren. My family and I just don't talk about my dad's other family, and I would never ask to meet his kids. They are significantly older, so I feel like it was up to them to reach out to their younger half-siblings. The fact that they haven't tells me they don't want to. There are many things I just know now not to ask. I am in my twenties now and I still don't know where my dad sleeps at night.
My relationship with my dad is pretty good. He's always been supportive of everything my siblings and I do, and I still talk to him about once every other week or so, same as my mom. He's pretty much my guide as to what to look for in a future dad for my children and what to avoid in a spouse. I can live with this dichotomy; I figured it out when I was 9. I understand parents are just people, with their own faults, and it's up to me to weigh both and appreciate them for their good qualities while accepting yet not approving of their faults.
Looking back, my exes often had a lot of his qualities. Although these qualities are ultimately the reason they are exes, it is something I am constantly on the look out for in fear that that's what I'll end up with.
Twist at the end, my mom and dad separated when she found out he was seeing someone else. This new woman was younger, so at least he's consistent. I had moved out of the house, so I don't know how much tension there was day to day. However, one of my friend's parents were going through a divorce at the same time, and I remember thinking how the legal battles made it so much worse. How long it took and the fights over property made it so much more emotionally exhausting. My parents seemed to have a much cleaner break. She no longer wears her ring nor refers to him as her husband. The house and cars were always on my mom's name, so she has that. My dad gives my mom a set amount of money for the basic expenses. He said he would stop that if my mom ever got together with someone else, which I thought was a horrible way to manipulate her until I found out that this is standard alimony law.
I wonder if my dad will eventually have a child with this woman. I'm already trying to figure out how I can find out about this potential half-sibling and get to know them like his other kids didn't with me and my siblings. I have this morbid theory that we will all eventually meet and be able to know each other at his funeral.
#15
Muslim. As already mentioned in this thread, Muslim men can have up to 4 wives at a time. My mother was my father's second wife. His first wife didn't know until about a year before he passed away (in 2001, two weeks before my 9th birthday). One of his sons, my half-brother, was the only one who knew at the time.
He lived with his first wife and family. He had 9 other kids, one of which had passed away a few years before I was born. My mother and I lived in the same city. Actually, we lived about 10 minutes away from his house, but we'd only see him on Fridays for about half an hour each time. Because he was so much older than my mother, his granddaughters, my nieces, were around my age so he would bring them over sometimes to play. Even then, he would spend most of the time talking about work and finances with my mother.
When he passed away, I didn't even cry. Well I did, but only because I saw my mother crying and I hated that. I also cried because we had to cancel my birthday party even though we'd already given out the invitations. The fact that he had to stay with his first wife meant that I had not formed a father-daughter connection with him.
I wasn't angry, because it seemed like staying with his family was the right thing to do. I later found out that he was planning on leaving his first wife but my mother convinced him to stay with her because she was getting ill. It did obviously suck growing up without a present father figure, but it's pretty cool having a bunch of (much) older siblings with kids that are my age (some of whom already have their own kids, making me a great aunt). After his passing his family hated us because of inheritance issues. My mother gave up her part of the inheritance so they would agree to let me have mine. We eventually found peace together, and my step mother still regrets the way we were treated. It would've been horrible if our families didn't eventually get along.
#16
Not gonna use some throwaway. My dad was pushed to marry at a young age before even finishing high school. After many, many years and wanting to divorce his first wife, he met and married my mother while in another country. He couldn't divorce first wife because of family and also because she had no means of supporting herself. She didn't want to be divorced even though she doesn't really like him (must be the money) and wanted my dad to just end it with my mom. Well my dad didn't end it with my mom and basically spent his life trying to balance his relationships with his two wives. The relations between the siblings are alright but wife #1 refuses to have anything to do with my mom.
The problem with the family though is the effect it has on the kids. My dad would travel back and forth to take care of both families. But the absences from his travels and the hate of wife #1 toward my mom has had some mental tolls to the kids (everyone thinking he favors one family over the other, etc.). I can't talk about my mom with the other members of the family. Its like everyone is playing a tug war with my dad.
#17
I wasn't born in one but I dated a girl for a year and a half who had a polygamist grandfather that lived in arizona. One time she invited me along to go visit them for a week so I did and it was the strangest thing to me the way they dressed how like hidden the place was too it was really wierd the grandfather had 32 sons and daughters they all lived in a trailer park and the grampa lived three double wide trailers he just put together. Other from that though they acted like normal people and the grandpa wasn't the guy to marry young girls he just had three wives.
#18
My brother's girlfriend is from a polygamist family. They were Mormon and lived in Mexico, and her dad had two wives. After a while, her mom got fed up with the other wife and left for the U.S., bringing half the kids with her. My brother's girlfriend has something like 16 brothers and sisters, and she is the oldest. Her dad is super wealthy, and both of his wives were basically just baby machines. The dad comes up from Mexico every few months to visit, but from what I hear, it's usually pretty tense and all the kids resent him.
#19
This will probably get buried, but my grandfather grew up in a polygamous family in Utah. He apparently had a very rough childhood, and he really hates talking about it. His mother was one of 5 wives, and each family had minimum of 6 kids. He was the oldest of his family, and worked very hard to make sure all of his siblings needs were met. When he met my grandma, he had kept his upbringing a complete secret until they were married, and it was discovered many years into it. Although he hated the way he was brought up, he used his disadvantages to an advantage- he graduated high school with top marks, got into a fantastic college and attended Harvard as grad school. He is now an extremely successful lawyer and gave his family (my mom) a fantastic life and was a great father to them. He is one of the most inspiring men I have ever met.
#20
I have a friend who grew up with 7 moms. He's 22 now, and the moment he turned 18 he ran away from home to the city, where I ended up meeting him. Apparently he knew about 4 of his moms having affairs, not because anybody did anything wrong, but simply because his dad had a hard time balancing all his wives.
edit: Affair was the wrong word to use; I just used it because the dad had no idea. If he ever found out that his wives were bumping it with other guys, I don't think he'd have much say, and I don't think he'd really be mad either.
#21
I had a friend who was, and he enjoyed it as he could snag a ride almost any-day of the week, or borrow cash and no one thought he did it too often. he said the only bad part was that if he yelled mom, 8 people responding made it difficult to know where the one you need is.
#22
This is coming as a bit of a surprise to me. As a child of a polygamist family, I never expected to see this much curiosity towards my situation. That being said, I'm seeing a lot of negative answers. But I've decided to give not only some positive looks into the situation, but honest.
First of all, let me say that my upbringing was not only good, but amazing. My mother did a lot of the raising of her children, but during the time my dad was around, he was amazing at teaching all of us the values we needed in life, and I respect and admire my father and his wives for raising us as well as they did. Now that I'm older, I can see all of the problems that come with this situation, and the problems all of my parents must have went through. They didn't keep that bottled inside, they talked about it, and made it work. They didn't let the problems that had been created by their marriage affect their children's lives.
My particular family has 1 Dad, 5 Moms, 36 children, and many pets, including 5 dogs, 6 cats, 3 goldfish, and 2 hamsters.
I am the 8th child out of 10 from my mother. I went to a private school until 6th grade. The school consisted mainly of children from polygamist families, but still had some children from outside of our community attend.
7th to 10th grade I went to a public school. This is where I learned that it was not normal to have multiple mothers, but I didn't receive any negative feelings from my schoolmates because of it. Most of my school (including the teachers) were just curious about my situation, and were befuddled that I had over 30 siblings and could name every single one of them when they could barely remember their second cousin's name.
When I made it to high school, I had 2 brothers in 11th grade when I was in 9th. 1 brother was a shy type, and was in choir and was part of the school Speech and Debate team, and the other was more popular, and he was not only in Choir and part of the Speech team, but also joined the Track and Cross Country team. I wanted to be like both of my older brothers, so I joined all of the above as well. I was a normal high school student. Most everybody liked me (though I wasn't necessarily popular), and I didn't hate anybody.
It was about this time I realized that everyone had different beliefs. But I was raised to respect everyone I met, so I inquired about the many different beliefs at my school, mostly consisting of Christians, Baptists, and some Catholics and Atheists. I went to some of the churches and found most of the speakers to be quoting the same bible and, for the most part, the same ideals as the Church that I went to regularly.
I don't really know what else you guys would like to know about, so I guess I'll just list some random facts that come to mind. My mother is the 3rd wife, and we all lived in the same state until a few years ago, when my mom and one other wife moved to the state we are now. All of my fathers' wives are still married to him, we just live in different states, so it's quite a unique situation, one of the consequences is my father having to drive about 1000 miles round trip to see all of his children and wives. My family lives all over the country now, from Denver to California and anywhere in between. So not so many states, I guess. Most of my siblings don't associate themselves with Polygamism anymore, but some of them do.
Now, I'm not trying to paint a perfect picture here. This is just my childhood and how I was raised. I'm sure some of my other siblings can paint a very different picture depending on the mother they had, since all of the wives raised their children very differently. But my mother did a fantastic job at raising us. You know those different faces you pass on the street belonging to a person who has a different lifestyle than you? I know most of those types of people. All different types of people have came from my family. I've got Atheists siblings, Baptist siblings, vegetarian siblings, gay siblings, all sorts of people in my family. But they're still my family, and I love them like siblings no matter what lifestyle they choose.
I might have bored you with my comment, but again, this is just my childhood from my view. It is not perfect, and honestly, I'm probably one of the lucky ones, because most of the people I see raised in this type of situation are ..."scarred" one way or another. If any of you want to ask me questions of any sort, I'll be more than happy to answer them. And if there's a lot of different types of questions, maybe an AMA. As for now, it's bedtime, so I won't get to your questions until tomorrow.
Thank you for your time, guys. Have a nice day.
Eastendbird 3 hours ago
Love that his idea of different faiths is just flavours of Christianity.
#23
Sorry for being late. but as a 16 year old living with a polygamous family in which i have 2 moms, I think my father has done a good job keeping the family happy from each side. You see, maintaining a polygamous family requires lots of work from the father. Don't try running a polygamous family unless you are rich ( and yes I am an arab and I am happy with my situation).
#24
I live in a polygamist family at 17 years old. I go to a private high-school with about 120 kids and the vast majority are plig kids as well. My dad had 5 wives, one of them left. My dad has exactly 30 kids.
There are many advantages to growing up in a polygamist family compared to a monogamist from what I have observed. All of my mothers look out for me just as much as my biological mother and love me dearly. It is hard to express how grateful I am sometimes to have them there. If I need a shirt pressed and my biological mother is gone or too busy to do it ( or if I am too lazy/too busy to do it myself) I know I can go to another mother and she will gladly help me out.
The other thing is, with 3 mothers living in the same house, (one of my dad's current wives lives in a separate house) managing kids works very well. If one of the mothers wants to have a night out, or is gone for work vacation etc, they don't even think about babysitters, and know they can trust that if they are gone from the house, they have someone else there who can take on the responsibility of watching their children. Those are just a few advantages out of many.
There are also disadvantages. With so many children living in a house, it's hard to keep your peace of mind. Often times there is so much confusion in the house from children playing and whatever will take place, I have a very hard time handling myself. Sometimes I wish I could just go live in a house with my own room and just enjoy some quiet time. I would say that's the biggest thing that bothers me. Just the confusion that can happen with such a big home and so many kids.
I do love having the siblings that I do have, and I consider every one of my dads kids my brother and sister, and I try to show them the same love that I would for my biological brother or sister. I feel like I am so blessed to have as much family as I do.
I often think what it would be like to grow up in a typical family and I just can't imagine how lonely I would feel without the constant companionship I have with every one of my siblings.
My dad's house is very large, I'm not sure the exact square footage, but it's fairly big. We have two full kitchens, two washers and dryers, a tv room, 2 family rooms, a play room for kids, 15 bedrooms, (if I counted right) and a dining room. Recently my dad finished the house and pretty much built himself a mancave. He built the house in 3 phases, the first with the dining room, a kitchen, a family room, and about 4 bedrooms. This phase is a two story with a basement. The second phase is the biggest one, with a third floor on the top, containing a second kitchen in the basement, a tv room, a few bedrooms in the basement, about 5 bedrooms in the upper floor, one bedroom on the main, and a library/office. The last phase contains my dad's master bedroom, and a living kitchen area on the upper floor, with 2 bedrooms on the main and a garage, and no basement.
As far as living arrangements go currently, there are two mothers with the majority of the kids. One has 9, and the other 12. My dad's first wife has 4 kids but they are all moved out. The other 2 had previous marriages before they married my dad. One lives in another house as I said, with one kid born to my dad, and the other left, having 3 kids with my dad, and only one still currently living in my dad's house. Each mother has her own room, and it is in the same general area of her kids rooms. Each mother takes care of their childrens laundry etc. They are responsible for their rooms to be clean, that area of the house to be clean, and they are the primary person to pretty much raise their children.
However, I feel like the other mothers have taught me a great deal in my life as well. Each mother has their own night to spend with my dad, and it rotates on a weekly bases. The mothers fight sometimes, and do have a hard time dealing with each other. But for the most part, every one in the family get's along with each other well, and I can say that we are all happy to be in our situation. I feel like polygamy can be such a blessing if you are willing to put the time and effort into it that it takes. It requires every person to put our their own pride and ego, and their jealousies and insecurities. It is a ton of work just as child, and I can't imagine what it would be like to be a parent. I would not have it any other way though. Living in a polygamist family I feel has blessed my life in ways that I can't express.
Sorry if this post was confusing. Just tried to get everything I could in about the lifestyle. Ask me any questions you have and I will feel free to answer.
#25
I guess you could say my granddad was a polygamist. He has 10 children all by different women. 5 of the women live together still. My grandma was the second wife.
It's quite weird that one of my aunts is only 10.
#26
My grandfather was married to 2 wives, he recently passed away. It was obvious he liked his second wife more than his first, but it was different kind of love because he had feelings for the first (who is my original grandmother) as well. The family treated both wives almost equally, the first received more attention then the second. I see my aunts and uncles as from the same grandfather, not from 2 grandmothers. When I see my grandmothers I treat them equally. Second grandfather is Hispanic so communication is a bit different. Both wives lived together. Family reunions are massive and normal.
#27
Worked pretty well for my dad, 2/3 - I think he'd do it again the randy old codger.
It was a pretty enriching environment for me, really, nice to have the different opinions and points of view and the support structure.
My Biologigical mother eventually went her own way, but that was just sort of the natural evolution of things...she left when I was about 16 - I have always maintained a close relationship with her, and she still participates in family gatherings.
My Dad had married my mother first, then my first "stepmom" , and in a few more years another "stepmom".
There wasn't any religious foundation for this, More just a really handsome, super intelligent man that had a way with the ladies, and was bad with birth control, evidently. In each case, he decided it was best to take his girlfriends in and raise their children in a family environment rather than leave them as single mothers.
In all, I have 9 siblings, and everyone is pretty well adjusted, with a high degree of education and or success.
(my siblings mostly have masters degrees or higher, two are professional athletes, and one is involved in national (entertainment) media, another is a researcher with a PHD in physics specializing in solar energy) One is crazy (happy crazy, but suffers from a birth defect that affects his perception of reality - really too bad, as he is an actual genius otherwise) and others are all at least moderately successful in their chosen fields.
In our community there was no ostracization or negative stigma from anyone who actually knew my father, as he was very well liked and well known over the entire state.
Occasionally, religious fanatics would glance askew, but it really was a non issue mostly. Kids in my high-school just basically thought my dad was "big pimpin" , and I got a little bit of positive notoriety from that.
I am thankful for the cultural flexibility that it gave me, growing up with an intimate understanding that there are widely disparate points of view about almost all social paradigms, both from the intellectual diversity of my mothers, and from our existence at the fringes of the social norm. This has been very useful to me in my travels, as I find it very easy to integrate into different cultures around the globe.
Negative things for me included my school vice principle, who would give any girl that was going out with me ISS for dating me....but that really helped my bad-boy image in the end. There were also some awkward interviews for a very, very thorough background investigation that I underwent as part of a contracting requirement.
In all, I am quite happy with the circumstances of my upbringing.
I think it probably influenced my romantic predilections, as all my long term relationships have been with women who were on the far end of the Bi-spectrum (does that make me a lesbian trapped in a man's body?), and I have had mostly LTR arrangements with multiple female partners in cohabitation...
My first wife wasn't really that happy as she felt threatened (no good reason, I would never have left her) by my significantly younger partners, so she recently went her own way in an amicable separation. Almost an eerily similar situation to my father. I do not think this is coincidence. I think it is very hard for the first. The second enters into a situation where cooperation is the stable norm, and later additions are much more comfortably accommodated. My partners tell me that they think it is a good deal for them, because they enjoy both male and female companionship, and because it is very difficult for them to find males that they consider intellectually suitable to father their children. (not for lack of applicants) . This brings me to another minor side point - Women in my experience are terrifyingly practical when it comes to these things, hardly the wispy creatures of whim as they are frequently portrayed.
I have several children, some of them grown. They are all well adjusted, and are (so far) academically successful, with my oldest now involved with spacecraft engineering from the software side.
I think, done right, with intellectually mature relationships and open, honest communication and expectations, Polygamy / polyamory is very workable - but I have seen a lot more examples of what not to do than positive ones, but also thats what makes the news, I suspect.
#28
My great uncle had two wives. There's an insane story behind it as well.
We live in Ireland so this kinda thing just doesn't happen to often. My uncle left his first family and ran away to England leaving his wife and kids alone and poor. He left for another women who he then married under a false name.
About 15 years later the his son goes looking for him. He presumes he's passed or far away so goes to the an office where they have all the records and such. He goes up to the man at the desk and asks for my uncle by his name also saying he's his father - hoping to find some information. The man turns around and said 'I didn't know he had a son your age! I'm afraid he's left already for the weekend'. So it turns out his father is actually working at the office.
The craziest part of the story is that weekend my uncle was driving to his home with his second family when the car crashed and they all passed bur one young girl. His son never got to meet him again and the story was heard all over Ireland and about the scandal of a man with two wives.
We still receive Christmas letters from the family of the girl who survived ...
#29
I grew up in a village where several villagers had 2 and 3 wives. Marrying more than one wife used to be fairly common in rural Nepal until early 1990s when the first wave of democratic reforms, that prohibited polygamy, were introduced. One family particularly comes to my mind. Because they were poor, they would fight over who got more food. So the hubby had an easy solution: he would serve all the food in the house.
#30
Not me, but my mom did. She had 11 siblings and 2 mothers (her biological passed away and her father married another later). Now, they lived in Baghdad at the time so the housing they were in was quite small, which required them to have two separate houses. Other than that, from what I gathered my mother loved it. She's still in contact with all her siblings and whenever she tells me stories of her childhood it sounded like it worked out pretty well.
But like I said before, they lived in Baghdad where polygamy wasn't necessarily taboo, therefore it might have been normal for her, making it "easier".
#31
I was born into a family with a very rich history in polygamy/Mormonism. My father never had more than one wife (thank God) but he was definitely pressured by his father (my grandpa) and everyone else in the community to pick up a couple more. Being a male and having a wedding ring was no reason to stop dating and looking for more women to marry. My dad was a little more of a rebel though, and my mother, bless her heart, told my dad that if he were to ever pick up another wife, she'd leave him. He always jokes that it was the easiest decision of his life, being that he had no intention of living in a polygamist lifestyle. Although I have never experienced having multiple mothers first hand, I have grown up with it my entire life and my experience has, for the most part, been very positive. But like most fundamentalist religions, skeletons are always hiding in the closet.
I have jealousy ruin lives. Ladies, think about it. You have to share your husband, and everything attached to him, with other women. And women who grow up in polygamist households are more than willing, excited even, to take the plunge and be #3 or #4.
It may seem like a dream world for us guys, being with multiple women and all; but from what I've personally heard from several of my uncles is that it is extremely stressful to be an emotional support system for multiple women. There isn't a lion-tamer in the circus that can compare to some of the men I've met. They are definitely masters in the art of juggling women's emotions. I can't even handle one woman let alone three or four.
Both of my grandfathers practice polygamy and a large handful of my uncles do as well. My grandfather's other wives were treated with the same respect as my biological grandmother, although the bond between generations was much stronger in my ACTUAL grandmother versus her sister wives (yes, that's what they're called and yes, I do know the Brown family from the show on TLC). Family functions are huge, and continue to grow. Polygamist families are tight-knit and respect for other families is a top priority.
Here are a couple basic, unspoken rules as to how it all comes together:
1) Men are on a schedule as far as sleeping arrangements are concerned. Ex: If Man A has three wives, Wife A, Wife B, and Wife C, he spends the night with each wife. See below:
Monday - Wife A
Tuesday - Wife B
Wednesday - Wife C
Thursday - Wife A
Friday - Wife B
Saturday - Wife C
Sunday - Wife A
and so on down the line
2) Siblings who share the same father, but are from different mothers, are regarded as full brother and sister. It is actually very neat to see the bond that siblings have in polygamist settings.
3) The 1st wife to marry is usually, but not always, thought of as the "queen bee" in the relationship and are typically treated better than the other wives.
4) If it can work financially, the whole family will live under one roof. If not, then the separate houses will be in very close proximity to one another.
5) Most men are tradesmen, working in things such as construction, plumbing, cabinet work, concrete, etc.
6) Most newlyweds are encouraged to have children as soon as possible.
Obviously, this is only scratching the surface of the unspoken rules.
One thing that I have seen in polygamist relationships is that jealously can tear through a marriage like a meat hook. It may sound gruesome, but that's really the only way I can describe it. I've seen jealously rip through the strongest of marriages.
I hope this helped! If anyone needs any sort of clarification or specifics, I am glad to do a Q&A/AMA type session with my fellow redditors.
#32
So I'm suuuper late, but when I was four my birth mom and father, both married at the time, had my sister and "married" my second mom (they were in a triad, not exactly polygamous). All three are pagan of various sorts so I grew up in a different household for more reasons than one. They considered themselves polyamarous, not polygamous. My dad also has a girlfriend that lives in Boston so we don't see her much. It wasn't weird to me I guess, I'd never known anything else. It was however extremely weird to explain and made get mocked and awkward questions. It got better once we moved out of the suburbs.
As for how it worked, It all seemed very turn-based. They had two bedrooms and switched off sleeping together/ alone. Washing dishes was a point of contention, especially after my birth mom started working again. She always wanted to do them and everyone else was always trying to do them, it's quite funny thinking about it now. Other than all the rotational stuff it was pretty much normal, besides not being able to relate to most fictional families. My birth mom and my farther got divorced last year so now I don't have to worry about explaining it,.
#33
This is my short and botched answer.
I grew up in a polygamist family; my dad has 2 wives(although they never got along). My mother has 16 children, my father has 24. My dad's wives have always lived in separate homes and moved around a lot because nobody was ever happy with the current situation.
My grandfather had 4 wives. After he passed away his oldest son took on one of his wives because she was still able to have children; this is common in the group. The group doesn't live on a compound like many other polygamist groups in Utah. They live all over the state (and spreading) and for the most part blend in with the population.
All of my dad's sons are no longer part of the group, some of his daughters married and are still part of it. We were taught to keep everything a secret as kids going to public school and were discouraged from making friends at school.
The group normally did not take in new members unless they brought women in by marriage. "They have to grow from within to be successful". Some of the leaders have 20+ wives and hundreds of children(8-20 children per wife). Most girls are married by 18 and having kids asap.
There are lots of cousins marrying cousins, uncles marrying nieces, some half siblings marrying one another, older men marrying younger women.
As for my dad's family it didn't work out so great because it created lots of drama and despise between the two families.
#34
In my experience it's something that
Just isn't talked about. My dad was married before he met my mother. 20 years later he is still with his wife and my mother. He goes weeks were he will spend a lot of time with us than I'll go weeks without seeing him. This hurts my mother every time yet for some reason she still stays with him. His family has chosen to have nothing to do with me and blames me for my dad's actions. Growing up this was very difficult and I was often made fun of at school. One thing I've learned from this is that Is definitely not something I want my children to go through.
#35
My grandpa had 7 wife's (the forth being my grandmother). my dad has around 27 brothers and sisters. i wouldn't say i was born into a polygamist family considering that i had only one mom and dad, but i was (sorta still am) around it quite often. i find it funny how most people on this this thread are freaking out at 32 siblings. that's a little bit. a few of my friends belong to the same family of 46, there dad having 3 wife's(4 at one point but divorced only two kids with her). that's also not even the most. theirs one man from the town that has a total of 65+ kids. unfortunately i don't know how many wife's he had. i saw a joke people were making that it would suck to have 6 "moms" because they would tell you to clean your room six times, well that would never happen for two reasons . one being you cant have more that one mom. you have your mom and 5 aunts. second being every wife gets there own house. I've never seen them living in the same house. back in the day there used to be a lot more polygamist in the town but now the newer generation is seeing that its a very hard life to live so only a few are still doing it. another thing interesting is that its a polygamist town of white people that moved to mexico so even though there are many Mexican available for dating a lot of the the people rather keep it in the family by dating cousins. this is considered very normal but not all resident agree with it. if you guys have any questions i'm open to answering. i tried my best at spelling and grammar, my bad. also the lady with the most kids has 20. all from her.
#36
Well, my family lives in Hurricane, UT, which is very close to a polygamous compound. At least it was before the whole Warren Jeffs fiasco, I think a lot of them have since left. What I can comment on is that the boys in those families often get kicked out around age 13 or 14, so that there is less competition for the females, and the girls feel they have no choice but to marry an elder 30 or so years older than her. The little boys I've met who've been abandoned usually miss their families very dearly, but reject Mormonism and polygamy in the end.
#37
Hope I'm not too late!
My parents are in a polyamorous relationship with another couple I've known my whole life. They have been in this relationship for a few years, but I only found out a few months ago, and the other couple moved in with us about a month ago. It took me a little while to get used to the idea that my parents are seeing other people but I know that they are all consenting adults so I'm okay with it. They are all noticeably happier not having to hide it. Some points:
-their lifestyle did not rub off on me. I could never see myself in a relationship with multiple people. I'm totally okay with others doing it but I could never share a man :p
-what makes their relationship work out is honesty and communication. Since there are multiple people, they have to work at it harder to prevent drama. But they put a lot of effort into communication so they're good.
-in my opinion, any relationship between consenting legal adults where nobody is getting hurt is fine. Whatever floats your goat.
I'd be happy to answer any questions you have!
#38
My dad was a fundamentalist Mormon who fathered 19 kids, 12 with his first wife and 7 with his second. I was really young when he married his second wife, so it wasn't hard to adjust to having two moms. Having a lot of siblings was great, but there were *always* fights.
We weren't wealthy, made due with around 20k a year (in rural Missouri) and a 5 bedroom house, later, dad bought a trailer for his second wife. We were all home-schooled and didn't have social security numbers or birth certificates. This was mostly because polygamy is illegal, but they also wanted to shelter us from the world as much as possible.
My second mom left my dad after about 10 years of marriage. She started sending her kids to public school in spite of Dad's objections, and after a year, my mom decided to follow suit so we could be in the same school. I started in 8th grade, so you can imagine how bad that was, coming from a household as sheltered as ours. High school wasn't much better.
I don't resent growing up in a polygamist family, but there's no way I would want to be in a polygamist marriage, and I think most of my siblings feel the same way.
#39
Well, my parents are polyamorous.
They started out monogamous, but when I was maybe 6 or so, my mom really liked my best friend's dad, in addition to my dad (her husband), so they talked about it for a very long time, and basically decided to be polyamorous.
The man she liked, "Albert", was polyamorous, and had a wife, "Betsy" who had two husbands, Albert and "Cyril". And now, maybe 12 years later, those relationships are all still intact (although Cyril now has a girlfriend in addition to his wife, now) And my dad has never shown any interest in anyone other than my mom.
It really hasn't ever bothered me. I figure you can love whoever you want to love, regardless of race, gender, or quantity. It's really none of my business to dictate who you love.
But something happened early on between my mom and Betsy, so there's a lot of resentment there, and my god, it's complicated, and I honestly don't know why my mother puts up with all of it just to stay with her boyfriend, but I guess it's worth it for her.
I'm personally not very interested in polyamory for myself, although I'm not opposed to it. I've seen many people do it, and sometimes it works out, but oftentimes not (that's just what I've seen, don't use my own generalizations as evidence!). It seems to work out better for really casual relationships rather than lifelong relationships. And I'm not really the casual type, so all that, combined with just how much more work and communication is needed, makes me not very interested in it. But if I ever meet someone I like who wants to be polyamorous, I would try it out at least.
Feel free to ask me any other questions you have!
#40
I've spent time with (and babysat for) a polygamist family. A mom, two dads, and three kids. They are one of the happiest families I've ever met. The three parents clearly love each other (I'm not sure of the exact logistics of it, but from what another person has told me, it sounds like they are all involved with each other), and the kids, though a little bit wild, have a lot of love and fun to share. They're really open to new things, and really like other people. I've never had issues with the kids' behavior. They don't know which guy biologically fathered which child, so they call one Dad and the other 'Dad' in a different language. The kids are still young, so it's hard to say what kind of impact this will have on their life as they get older, but so far they seem well adjusted to a non-standard family life.
#41
I'm using a throwaway for this.
I'm Muslim, female, and born to the first wife (of three). I have loads of brothers and sisters, ages ranging from toddler to 30's. We get along fairly well and so do our moms, although it did take some getting used to in the beginning.
Being in the US means that we rarely mention our step-moms to others. We just say that we have half siblings and let people guess at how that came to be. Those of us who married plan to remain monogamous, I don't know about the little ones yet.
It used to bother me when I was a teenager because I knew my mom hated seeing her co-wives. After years of urging her to leave, I finally came to terms with the fact that she would rather be in a comfortable place where she had financial security and a husband every third day than to have to rely on herself (or be a "burden" on other relatives). So I quit bugging her to leave him and just tune her out when she complains.
Some people are asking how there will be enough women to go around if men have multiple wives. All the women that I know who married already-married men had left their previous husbands who did not treat them well and/or couldn't provide for them adequately. So yes, that would leave plenty of men without wives, but mostly those who couldn't manage having one.
Personally, I don't care if people are polygamous. Live and let live. I have no sympathy for wives who complain about it though. NO ONE is forcing them to stay. Any idiot who whines that a religious authority isn't allowing a women to get divorced should simply walk out. There are plenty of other reasonable Imams to grant divorces.
Tinkershark 5 hours ago
The end part seems a callous response to people facing lifelong religious pressure and being unhappy. "I don't feel bad for you, just go, even though a religious authority has told you you can't, go shop around for another one". Many people (frankly especially women raised in more patriarchal cultures/faiths) would not feel comfortable doing that and would feel trapped. It often isn't as simple or even safe as "simply walk out". It reflects poorly on someone's human empathy to sneer at and disregard that
#42
Not me but a good friend. He (we) are Muslim. His dad was married to his first wife, friend's bio mom, for about four years and hadn't yet had any children. Mom 1 took it upon herself to find wife No. 2. Dad had a child with wife No. 2 and lo and behold wife No. 1's ovaries kick in and she begins to have kids, too. In the end, wife 1 had six kids and wife 2 had four. They all lived in one compound, moms took turns with chores and kids. Kids called both ladies mom and it seems to have worked out ok. Currently iwfe 1 is still alive and lives with a daughter from wife 2. As far as I can tell they were all treated equally and no messed up kids. Friend would like to have multiple wives but not so easy to do in the US.
I personally suggested to my ex that he take on a second wife because I simply couldnt keep up with school work kid and him. He thought I was nuts as I wasn't Muslim then. It also is uncommon in his family and we don't know of any polygamy in the family for six or seven generations back.
#43
I was raised in a Polygamous family for most of my formative years. My grandfather had 9 wives while I was around, they were essentially my great aunts or something analogous to that. My dad only had one wife, my mom. None of my Grandfathers wives were mormon, non of them were born into that lifestyle and a few of them had college educations.
Its wasn't a cult so much as an alternative to what was viewed as a very corrupt and wasteful rest of the country/world. They homesteaded in the desert of southern Utah until the feds came and destroyed their houses, and after that they started the town that I grew up in.
I feel really lucky. I grew up around a large group of people who loved and supported me in their own way. Some of my uncles are my best friends and some of the most interesting, well adjusted, productive and responsible people that I know. We all learned how to play musical instruments, how to work hard and do right by the people that loved us, which are things that are unfortunately rare in todays world.
Many of my friends from outside the family have visited my hometown and all of them left with a more than positive impression. Some of my friends even consider themselves part of my family because of what my parents did for them, such as encouraging them to graduate high school or giving them food and shelter when they needed it.
Polygamy gets a bad rap because of the places like Colorado City and the injustices of the Mormon Church, but coming from a place of love it can be a wonderful thing.
I'm not interested in the lifestyle of polygamy, but almost everything else my family did, from the family music circles, the big family dinners, the shared childrearing, the midwives and the fruit trees seems beautiful to me now that I am out here in the "real" world.
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What do you think ?
WindySwede 4 hours ago
Sounds more and more like cultists men like to have more than one wife, and occasionally brainwash everybody into misery?
S Mi 39 minutes ago (edited)
Biggest problem with make only polygamy is it only really works in societies where many men parish early and regulaly, like in war. Out birth rate is roughly 50/50, so if men are regularly taking extra wives, there literally aren't enough. There is a polygamist cult in British Colombia, Canada that regularly ejects young men with zero skills for minor offenses. They often end up in streets in Vancouver.
WindySwede 4 hours ago
Sounds more and more like cultists men like to have more than one wife, and occasionally brainwash everybody into misery?
S Mi 39 minutes ago (edited)
Biggest problem with make only polygamy is it only really works in societies where many men parish early and regulaly, like in war. Out birth rate is roughly 50/50, so if men are regularly taking extra wives, there literally aren't enough. There is a polygamist cult in British Colombia, Canada that regularly ejects young men with zero skills for minor offenses. They often end up in streets in Vancouver.
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