by Ira Woodward

Created on: April 24, 2008

Why shouldn't people be allowed to marry whoever they want to? This is a supposedly free country, after all. It doesn't hurt anyone else for me to marry whoever I want to, so why should they have a say over what I do in my bedroom?

More broadly, the modern institution of nuclear families is a relatively recent phenomenon. Historically, it really did "take a village to raise a child," and in most parts of the world this is still the case. In fact, parents continue to rely on a variety of other people to raise their children, including daycare workers, babysitters, sports coaches and of course schoolteachers. The ideal of two parents, a mother and a father, being the sole caretakers for their children is just thatan ideal. It doesn't exist in reality. All of which leads me to my main pointI see nothing desirable about this ideal.

A modern nuclear family demands far too much from parentstoo much responsibility and too much work. An interesting book titled *Sharing the Children* chronicled a group of women living in a New York City apartment complex in the 1970s. The women had desires to pursue careers, and realized they couldn't do this while burdened with child care duties. They decided to create a rotating schedule in which each mother would care for all of the children on a particular day of the week. They also made efforts to include the available fathers in this arrangement. In this way, the children had the opportunity to learn from more people than just their own parents , and the parents were given more time to pursue schooling and careers. In this case, women who had no blood relation to the children took a substantial role in rearing them.

Presumably, polygamy is another way to solve this problem of sharing children in order to reduce the burden of childcare duties. Personally, I associate it with misogyny and authoritarianism, but I don't see how it's the government's business to get involved in how people choose to relate in their personal affairs. Personal freedom is one of the great traditions in this country, and we ought to extend it wherever possible.

Learn more about this author, Ira Woodward.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.