猫咪社区

When I was 15, I liked two boys. One of them went to my church, and the other sat three rows behind me in biology class. My church boyfriend, a traditional kid with a deacon for a grandfather, was clingy. My biology class boo was laid-back, clearly uninterested in monogamy or commitment to anyone but himself. After a few weeks of realizing my feelings were growing for both of them, I decided to reveal the truth. 

鈥淚 think I like someone else,鈥� I told my church boo. His face wrinkled in confusion.

鈥淲hat do you mean?鈥� he asked.

鈥淲ell, there鈥檚 a guy in my biology class, and I want to date him, too. Y鈥檃ll will never meet each other so it shouldn鈥檛 matter,鈥� I said matter of factly. 

He paused for a long while. 鈥淪o, you want to have two boyfriends?鈥� He looked at me incredulously.

鈥淚 mean, yeah. Something like that,鈥� I shrugged. 

鈥淲ell, I鈥檓 not OK with that,鈥� church boo said, definitively. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to share. And if we aren鈥檛 together, I don鈥檛 even want to be friends.鈥�

It鈥檚 been more than two decades since that conversation, and church boo still hasn鈥檛 spoken to me. Our lives have grown in myriad ways, but that teenage decision he made to embrace traditional monogamous courtship as a means to building a nuclear family solidified that, even in adulthood, we could never be in community again.

I realized monogamy and the nuclear family weren鈥檛 for me; they were containers that often required that I deny my own desires to prioritize a romantic partner鈥檚 feelings and needs.

This was the first moment I realized monogamy and the nuclear family weren鈥檛 for me; they were containers that often required that I deny my own desires to prioritize a romantic partner鈥檚 feelings and needs. 

In graduate school, I learned that the 鈥渕odern鈥� family鈥攖wo heterosexual parents raising biologically related children鈥攚as adopted from 18th- and 19th-century England to the shifting labor and agricultural demands of emergent industrialization. Family wasn鈥檛 really about love or marriage as much as it was about efficiency and production. Industrialization meant these families were essentially business units that extended beyond the nuclear household to aunts, cousins, uncles, grandparents, and others invested in preserving the family鈥檚 name and property rights.

I also learned that nuclear families were established to pass down property to children and grandchildren. In the United States, this form of nepotism privileged white, middle- and upper-class landowners who continued to acquire land through nefarious means, like , exploiting immigrant populations, like and Americans, and enslaving Black Americans, to create loopholes transforming slavery into 鈥渋nvoluntary servitude,鈥� language that still exists in some state constitutions .

However, in the last century, the nuclear family . Property ownership has been in , , and other white supremacist and anti-Black systems of exploitation and exclusion. Sustaining large families on one income has become untenable, though popular media continues to promote the myth of stay-at-home moms preparing freshly baked apple pies and meatloaf for their children every night. But the reality is the nuclear family is now a minority.

A reported that just 17.8% of households comprised married parents with children under the age of 18. Many children are being raised by grandparents, extended family members, and other community kin who have stepped in to fight against the ravages of our capitalist family dynamic. COVID-19 taught us that isolation within the nuclear family with regard to care, affection, and attention. Countless people in the United States find themselves 鈥溾�� and alienated by the requirements of a culture that situates the nuclear
family and monogamous coupling as the primary indicator of a good life. 

In this moment, we are called to reimagine what the family might be and embrace the possibilities before us when we release ourselves from the culture of monogamy enforced by patriarchy and capitalism.

I rely on Black queer feminist models of community and kinship to determine how I will raise my children and build community around them. As bell hooks writes in All About Love: New Visions, 鈥淐apitalism and patriarchy together, as structures of domination, have worked overtime to undermine and destroy this larger unit of extended kin.鈥� hooks explains that love and healing can鈥檛 actually exist where domination is present. 

Rather than participate in these dominant, restrictive familial models, I have chosen an expansive model for my children. I鈥檓 polyamorous, meaning I love many people simultaneously and don鈥檛 reserve romantic love for a single person. As a lesbian who is deeply embedded in the queer networks around me, I also curate an environment wherein 鈥渃hosen family,鈥� rather than blood relatives, plays a primary role in rearing and guiding my children. This means that my children have an extended community of elders and parental figures invested in their guidance, care, and development, even when my parental bandwidth
is minimal.

I often reflect on that awkward breakup with my church boo in 1999. I wonder if he knew that I was one of those women who would end up fighting a system he clearly wanted to enforce, even as a teenager. But I never wonder whether or not the nuclear family serves us. It doesn鈥檛. It serves capitalism and has only made us less safe, less protected, and less loving. 

It鈥檚 time to let it go.