18/02/2024
Mandy Len Catron from the Loneliness Project writes for the Guardian newspaper some thoughts on non-monogamy, as one of her friends embarks on a four way relationship, and with statistics showing, that despite the constant harping of "family values" groups, more people than ever believe that the institution of the heterosexual nuclear family is not meeting the needs of the twenty first century. Catron writes " I saw that a recent study in the UK found that a third of heterosexual men were open to having more than one spouse or long-term partner, along with 11% of women... I am definitely not the first person to feel the limits of the nuclear family. But I continue to be surprised at how insistently thinkers, pundits and policy-makers argue that the two-parent, married family is the solution to any number of social problems – from poverty to happiness. One upcoming book even promises that marriage has the power to “save civilization”. This marks single parents, divorced adults, unmarried cohabiters and non-monogamous folks as a threat to society. No amount of banging the marriage drum seems to work, however. With the exception of a brief post-pandemic boom, marriage rates have consistently declined over the past five decades. Monogamy isn’t on the verge of collapse – it’s still the arrangement most people prefer. But in some very measurable ways, the institutions that go with it – marriage and the nuclear family – are failing us. Those who want to save society by saving marriage might be better served by considering just how fragile these institutions become when we expect them to do the work of an entire community of people. Instead of writing books urging everyone to pair up fast, one might lobby for support systems that actually meet families where they are, by mandating paid parental leave or subsidizing child care".
