Ignoring morality and legality and assuming everyone involved is a consenting adult, do you think group marriages involving N males and N females are workable? That is, can people have stable, healthy intimate relationships with multiple people in the same house? Is this healthy or unhealthy for the children involved? My guess is that this is so difficult, it is unworkable. However, I wouldn't stop anyone from trying.
I doubt that it's unhealthy for them. For decades, many Israeli kibbutzes (collective farms) have had all of their children stay in communal living quarters supervised by child-care professionals during the week, and reunited with their biological parents on the weekends. In effect, they have several parents of both sexes. They have tracked these children into adulthood--some into their 40s--and found them to be well-balanced, well-socialized and successful in their personal and private lives, in fact on the average more so than the general population. I have a friend who works with children's charities in the USA and he says they have been watching the Israeli model closely for years. Many of them are beginning to adopt it in their foster homes. One of its greatest advantages is that if one "parent" leaves, he or she does not comprise one-half of the children's parents! There might be five or six left, providing tremendous continuity and emotional security. Furthermore, it's a lot easier for a group of professional child-care experts to hire a replacement for the one who left, than it is for a divorced or widowed parent to replace the missing spouse, so the vacancy will not last long. An interesting side effect of the Israeli experiment was unexpected. Children raised in the communal quarters "imprinted" on each other as siblings. The rate of marriage between children raised together is extremely low. It's our instinct to avoid incest; there's a name for this effect but I haven't got it on this computer.
OK, that seems like good evidence that kids can be raised successfully (maybe even better) by multiple parents. It's always taken everything I've got to maintain one stable, healthy intimate relationship. I can't imagine being able to do it successfully with more than one person. OTOH, that may just be me. So, the question remains: Can a group of people maintain stable, healthy, intimate relationships?
Maybe...but I could not. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It is hard enough to deal with one female...I don't think I could handle any more than that at one time. The wife more than fills this role in my life. My son couldn't get into it either. I think he enjoys being the center, with just 2 parents and a dog. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
You're overlooking the fact that the relationships between all of the "spouses" (or whatever the term might be) of both genders will be intimate. This would resemble the pack structure of life in the Paleolithic Era, when people lived in small extended family units and they had all known each other intimately since birth. What child wouldn't enjoy having a larger number of adults who love him, even if they also love each other and his (presumably larger number of) siblings? For starters, there would nearly always be one around, which would better fulfill the needs of both generations.
