When More Love Means More Parents

By Maria Padhila

While we were all being distracted by the imminent government shutdown, interesting things happened! And this time there were some good things!

If you’re a typical Planet Waves reader (if there is such a thing), you’ve gotten used to thinking of everything that happens as an attempted distraction from something more important that you’re not supposed to be paying attention to (see Trans-Pacific Partnership).

But this time, it was a law in California that could have interesting results for poly families and for families of all kinds. Governor Jerry Brown of California signed a bill permitting a child to have more than two parents. There’s not another law like it in any state. Occasionally, according to gay and lesbian family law expert Nancy Polikioff, there can be a third-parent adoption in special cases, but this is the first time there has been a flat-out law permitting it. In her blog, “Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage, Polikoff writes:

This statutory authorization, however, is most likely to impact heterosexuals, given how much divorce and remarriage there is. The provision will mean that if both the custodial and the noncustodial parent agree, then the custodial parent’s new husband will be able to adopt the child without terminating the rights of the noncustodial parent. I have been advocating such a possibility for years, but this is the first law explicitly sanctioning such arrangements. The divorce rate of second marriages is at least as high as that of first marriages, which means that down the road we will be looking at multiple parent custody and visitation arrangements on a regular basis.

That could be a little sad. But it beats the alternative, of a child having to leave behind someone who was important to her. Polikoff goes on to write:

“Among LGBT families, I expect to see four-parent adoptions as well. If a gay male couple and a lesbian couple want to raise a child, the new statute will allow the partners of both biological parents to become adoptive parents.”

Ooops. Somehow I don’t think these were the outcomes conservatives were hoping for.

I don’t know if it was the distraction or if they’re just really embarrassed, but the rabid right didn’t appear to have much to say about this one. I found a few references out there to “Governor Moonbeam” and “Linda Ronstadt’s ex-boyfriend,” both of which seem less insulting than something to high-five over.

As Slate’s Amanda Marcotte put it in the blog post “Conservatives: Your Plan Backfired, it was pretty quiet out there. Maybe too quiet. Most of the Christian bloggers and “news” organizations contented themselves to quote “Brad Dacus, the president of the conservative Pacific Justice Institute, who told the LA Times, ‘The ones who are going to pay the price are not the activists, but it’s going to be children, who will see greater conflict and indecision over matters involving their well-being.’”

Marcotte continues:

By Dacus’ logic, the ideal number of parents is one, because then there’s no chance for conflict when it comes to child-rearing decisions. But that argument — that more parents mean more problems for the child — directly contradicts the conservative claim that single mothers are ruining the children of America.

You can see the problem here. As Hanna Rosin pointed out in Slate when the bill was first drafted, conservative emphasis on the dangers of raising a child by yourself created the context for this law. What the reaction to this law signals may be a sea change in how ‘the family’ is discussed in the public sphere. The long-standing conservative argument that holds that two parents are better than one hasn’t done much to stem the tide of single motherhood, but it has been used to advance important items in the progressive agenda, such as legalizing gay marriage and this new law in California that makes it easier for people to create stability in their non-traditional families.

Maybe conservatives have been relatively quiet on this new law because they are brainstorming a different strategy to argue against any family that isn’t the male-led nuclear one of their dreams. Or maybe they have nowhere else to go but to come around.

Better a poly mom(s) than a single mom? You know, I’m not going to let a couple right-wingers who can’t even get it up for a protest over this one throw us into a cat fight. There are lots of great single moms, and lots of great poly moms, and a few bad parents of every conceivable configuration. It’s not about whether you’re single, married, engaged or in a pod. It’s about what kind of parent you’re committed to being, and how you get that done every day.

The law is the result of what looks to be some bad parenting: two moms and a dad, all of whom seem to get into trouble with drugs and the law and abusive significant others. (None of the abusers have parental rights. They just were boyfriends and girlfriends of the parents involved.) It’s such an icky case that it makes me not even want to trumpet the law, but as lawyer Joanna L. Grossman writes in Justia.com Verdict:

There’s an old adage that says ‘Bad facts make bad law,’ a reference to the sometimes tortured precedents that result when courts apply law to very unusual situations. But could this be a case in which bad facts have actually led to good law? … [T]here may well be other children whose lives fit the legislature’s image — who are conceived and raised in situations in which a two-parent cap is the source of harm and deprivation. While the very existence of such families may seem novel, or even scary to the traditionalists, they are a reality of modern life. And children should not suffer due to the law’s desire to cling to the past.

Emphasis mine, by the way. What little “Christian” commentary there was tried to get an argumentative footing on the slippery slope, without much success: “Children are put at risk due to the instability and poor decisions of the adults in their lives,” groused The Christian Post. “But aside from the prospect of getting more birthday presents, children gain little from this legislation. That’s not the purpose of it. Rather, the law furthers the strident effort to normalize and accommodate relationships of choice.”

As one commenter on Gawker put it: “It’s weird because didn’t Jesus have two daddies and one mommy?” (Another knockout comment: “If you let a child have three parents, what’s to stop that child from having three dogs, or three horses?”)

Other commenters around the Internets are applauding the law as a step toward being able to legally adopt or be adopted by stepparents, without having to ask one parent to fully give up parental rights. This would mean, for instance, that a child of a couple who split up and married others could be adopted by the other partners — and could conceivably have four parents.

I don’t like the idea of children being passed around and experiencing instability in their living arrangements at all. I mean, we don’t even have a pet because I can’t guarantee that it would get all it needs — we’re too busy meeting each other’s needs. People know I spend most nights home with my daughter, Tobi (home, or driving her to her dance classes and shows, a 15-hour a week gig). It’s what she wants, and as long as she’s happy, healthy, has some time for her friends and hits the marks we’ve established at school, I’m down to make it happen. That’s how it works.

But I’ve had enough late meetings and big scares that turned out to be twisted ankles to be glad this only child has a big network of trusted and trustworthy adults who can pitch in. I like to take it slow when it comes to bringing new people into our child’s life, and Isaac, her father, gets absolute say at every step. I knew Chris for at least three months before he even met Tobi, and for months after that, he rarely saw her. He helped me paint her room while she was away at camp, but still hardly knew her.

Slowly and naturally, we built up these deep friendships and connections, and now both she and Isaac know he’s someone they can count on. It was after we’d been going out for almost a year that he fished her out of the river during our fateful family tubing trip (followed the next day with my emergency appendectomy and Isaac taking our single-mom friend to the hospital to have her baby).

I know from experience that crazy can happen to anyone — and when it does, it’s pretty great to have more than one heart and two hands.