Non monogamous lifestyles are on the rise, but how do you navigate this as a parent? As a relationship coach with nearly twenty years’ experience of polyamory, and two young children, it’s a topic I know well. This way of life comes with its challenges, and plenty of stigma from strangers, but it’s a rewarding experience that I wouldn’t change for the world.

My polyamory journey began when I was 19, and a student at McGill university in Canada. I got asked on a coffee date by a young engineer who used to attend the university and was visiting for a lecture. On the date, he asked me ‘have you ever heard of polyamory?’ I said ‘poly-whattery?’ We discussed open relationships, and everything snowballed from there. We were together for almost a year – he had one partner, and I dated around a bit.

Afterwards, I met my ex-husband, who was also polyamorous. He was a theatre person, so the lifestyle went hand in hand with the liberal world he was in. We were non-monogamous for the six and a half years we were together. We ended up getting divorced because he didn’t want children, and I did.

One of my partners at the time, Brian, did want children, so we had a son together. His other partner, Megan, also wanted children, and they had a daughter. I’m the biological parent of our son and Megan is the biological parent of our daughter. We all moved in and raised our children together. In polyamorous terms, the structure of a relationship where both of you share a partner but the two of you aren’t together is called a vee relationship.

Eventually, after five years, Brian and I ended up breaking up as we weren’t as compatible as we first thought, but the three of us do a great job at coparenting our kids, who are now ten and eight. I live separately from Brian and Megan, but the kids have always known they have three parents. I’m mommy, Megan is mama and Brian is daddy. 

When my son was in preschool, they did an ‘all about families’ exercise. He came home and said ‘Mummy, did you know that most people only have one mum? That’s so sad for them. What do they do if one mum is cooking, and the other one can’t hug them?’ I explained that Daddy can hug them too. It was a very three-year-old take on things and felt very sweet.

One of the most common misconceptions people have about polyamorous parents is that they assume something inappropriate is going to happen in front of the children.  They say our relationships must be hypersexual compared to cis relationships and assume that we’re throwing orgies in our sitting room because we’re polyamorous.

But that’s just not true. We have regular relationships, like everybody else. The most the children see is that we get a hug or a kiss from our partners in front of them. Our partners are just someone else we sit next to on the couch and have a cuddle with during a movie. This set up isn’t weird for our kids, because they’ve grown up with it all their lives. They know that we all have other partners, and in their eyes, it’s just more adults who care about them. Some of our partners even have kids who our kids are friends with.

Because I do support work in this area, and have an online presence, the worst stigma comes from people on the internet. People are much unkinder than they would be in person because they can hide behind a screen. Once, I posted a cute series of pictures of us and the kids when they were little, and I got dozens of comments that said things like ‘they’re going to be so messed up’ and ‘those poor children will never understand what a relationship is like.’ Most parents in our local area are really understanding, but you always get some who don’t take the time to get to know you and say things like ‘that’s disgusting there’s three of them watching the soccer match.’

What these people don’t realise is that the children see loving, long-term relationships all the time. I’ve been with my partner Ken for nine years – longer than my daughter has been alive. She’s seen him at least once a week with me, and they have a close bond. Their father has been with one of his partners for seven years, and with Megan since they were born. People have this idea that we’re running lots of people in and out of their lives, but that just isn’t true.

However, I do have boundaries when it comes to introducing new partners. Everyone can make their own choices about how to approach this, but I introduce my children to people I’ve been seeing after six months, maybe closer to a year. For me, that’s the point where I go ‘oh, this is real.’ I now have a girlfriend of two years who is occasionally around at the same time as the kids. But mostly I’d rather have quality time with her, so we usually schedule dates when I don’t have the children.

There was never one specific conversation about mummy and daddy being polyamorous. We told them that most people have families where they only are in love with one other person, and our family has people who love more than one other person in this romantic way. Sometimes they ask things like ‘is this friend a special friend?’ and wink, if Brian or Megan are going out to see someone. I think kids are bright and understand social norms sooner than we give them credit for.

We have to trust our children to have the information we give them and turn it into their understanding of the world, because not every romantic storyline is a boy and a girl riding off into the distance on their white horse. A 2023 study found that 19% of British people identify as polyamorous, while in the US, a 2021 study found that 10.7% of participants had engaged in polyamory at some point in their life. We live in a world where blended families, queer families and co-parenting is becoming more common. Love can take many forms, and our kids know that’s ok.

With many years of experience in this field, I have lots of tips on how to navigate parenting when you’re polyamorous. The first one is to be clear with the people you’re parenting with on what it is that makes additional partners parents or not parents. When you’re dating other people, what tasks are acceptable for them to be doing and why? The most common conflicts people get in are ‘your partner is acting too much like a parent, and it bothers me.’ Think about things like: can they enforce your rules with your children? Can they make their own rules? Can they take your children to the park without you? Setting these boundaries early on are crucial to ensuring the dynamic runs smoothly.

If you don’t have children yet, and you’re hoping to parent in a polyamorous way, think about who is going to be the legal parent of the children, and why. In most places, only two people can be legal parents, and they usually align with the biological parents but not always. The legal presumption of paternity matters, and can override biological parentage, but can also be overcome itself by things like blood tests. That’s why it’s important for polyamorous people to be mindful.

The final tip is to have a good therapist who is aware of polyamory and doesn’t judge you. You are trying to do two things that are already challenging: parenting and having relationships that are non-standard. Each of those are already easier to do with a neutral party on call for when you and your partner are in conflict.

All of us are good communicators, and I’m certain our children will grow up as beautiful individuals with a healthy view of relationships. But even polyamorous people are perfectly capable of having unhealthy communication. We are not models of perfection by any means. Like monogamous people, we’re all just trying to do our best for our children. At the end of the day, isn’t that what being a parent is all about?

Laura Boyle is the author of Monogamy? In this economy?