383 - Non-Monogamy Research Roundup Pt 2
Research roundup, concluded
Following our previous research roundup, this week’s part 2 covers non-monogamy and its effect on mental and sexual health, as well as the health of children who are brought up in polyamorous families.
During this episode we discuss the following studies, which can be found along with the ones from part 1 here:
2012 - Conley and Moors
“Unfaithful Individuals are Less Likely to Practice Safer Sex Than Openly Nonmonogamous Individuals”
Published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine2019 - Rodrigues, Lopes, & Conley
”Non-monogamy agreements and safer sex behaviors: The role of perceived sexual self-control”
Published in Psychology & Sexuality2018 - Conley, Piedmont, Gusakova, & Rubin
”Sexual satisfaction among individuals in monogamous and consensually non-monogamous relationships”
Published in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships2021 - Manley & Goldberg
”Consensually nonmonogamous parent relationships during COVID-19”
Published in Sexualities2021 - Landry, Samantha; Arseneau, Erika; Darling, Elizabeth
"It's a Little Bit Tricky:" Results from the POLYamorous Childbearing and Birth Experiences Study (POLYBABES)
Published in Archives of Sexual Behavior2020 meta-analysis of existing research by Pallotta-Chiarolli, Sheff, Mountford, Goldberg, & Allen
”Polyamorous Parenting in Contemporary Research”
Published in the book LGBTQ-Parent Families: Innovations in Research and Implications for Practice2019 meta-analysis of existing research by Christian Cless
”Polyamorous Parenting: Stigma, Social Regulation, and Queer Bonds of Resistance”
Sociological Research Online
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we are continuing our review of some of the latest research from the past few years about polyamory and consensual non-monogamy. Last week, we looked at some studies about the demographics of who's doing non-monogamy, reasons why people are pursuing it, as well as looking at measures of the health of some of those relationships and different types of non-monogamous relationships.
This week, we're going to be continuing by talking about a few more really important topics, such as mental health and non-monogamy, sexual health and non-monogamy, and the health of children and adults in non-monogamous families.
Dedeker: This episode is going to be all research all the time, baby. We're going to go through one study at a time. I'm going to give the same caveats as we gave in part one, which is that we're going to be very careful to clarify correlation versus causation. Sometimes when people are talking about studies, that doesn't necessarily get included and just to clarify that correlation means that we're observing two different factors and we're noticing a particular pattern that may be as one increases, we notice a decrease in the other factor, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the increase in one factor caused the decrease of the other factor.
Just something to be careful there that sometimes people get a little bit too excited and jump to saying, "Oh clearly, something empirically causes this thing," when maybe the research doesn't actually make that clear.
Jase: Another thing worth mentioning in this is that, as we've pointed out many, many, many times throughout many episodes on this show, the research on relationships in general, but especially about non-monogamy, just does not have a lot of diversity in it yet, researchers are still trying to figure out how to diversify their samples, things like that.
Anyway, just to understand that these studies tend to be primarily White people, tend to be cisgender, but that's hopefully something that is continuing to change over time. Anyway, just as a general caveat for all of these that is still an issue with a lot of research just in general but especially on this topic.
Dedeker: It's super exciting to be presenting all of this relatively new research. Bear in mind that in a few years' time, some of this may become irrelevant or new research may come out that shows contradictory results or contradictory suggestions, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. The whole point of research and creating new studies is to keep refining and keep expanding our understanding of different topics and different phenomena.
Remember that science and studies don't prove anything, be suspicious if anyone ways a study in your face and tries to say, "Oh, this clearly scientifically proves such and such fact." That's not really the purpose of science.
Jase: All right. I think something worth noting too is when a study comes out and shows something, generally some correlation between, okay, we've noticed that when this thing's higher, this other thing's also higher for people who knows correlation. Then someone else will have another study that again the headline is like, "This new study came out that disproved this other one," and again, it's like that's missing the mark of the way that research works too. That really it's about, okay, we did a study a little bit differently maybe trying to be similar to this other one, or maybe just related that got results that seemed to be the opposite, or we didn't get any results, why is that?
It's all just leading to more questions of, okay, well, how can we continue to refine this to figure out where these answers are? Was there a problem in the first study? Was there a problem in the second one? Do they both have different problems? That that's why studies will try to do the same thing or related things to other studies because that's how we develop that knowledge, not by just studying something once and it's like yes, proven moving on to the next.
All right. With that, let's hop into our first topic here, which is Non-monogamy and Mental Health. I'm just going to quickly talk first about a study that did not make it into this episode that seemed so promising, and this study was called Mental Well-being in Polyamorous and Monogamous Relationship.
This was published in the journal of Indian Psychology. In this one, the researchers were looking at individuals in polyamorous and monogamous relationships, and trying to see if there was any difference in mental health. Specifically, their hypothesis was that there would be no difference, and in their study, they actually found that the non-monogamous people, the polyamorous people showed higher markers of mental health than the monogamous ones.
However, their study was very small, it was only 60 individuals and that they were only looking at their well-being over the past two weeks, which is really not that indicative of your overall mental health and it was all self-reporting. It's just enough problems with it that we're like, this just really isn't rigorous enough to-- maybe it's interesting and something for future research, but on its own it's a good example of something that's, okay, this is cool. Something interesting to think about, let's design some more studies. But by itself is not even enough to be worth really talking about and entertaining in this episode.
Emily: The study that we do want to talk about that is on non-monogamy and mental health was published in 2021 by our friend Ryan Witherspoon, who actually came on the show way back in Episode 125 to talk about this study when it was in the works. It's amazing how long it takes to get a study together and then to finally publish it, that's really extraordinary. It's called Exploring Minority Stress and Resilience in a Polyamorous Sample. It was published in the archives of sexual behavior.
The background of this is that they wanted to look at what factors make non-monogamous people more resilient to the everyday stress and discrimination they experience based on their consensually non-monogamous identity. The convenient sample was 1,246 US adults, they filled out an online survey. The mean age was 37. There were about twice as many women as men as well as 125 trans or non-binary participants, and 55.7% of the participants identified as bisexual. If overall, they were trying to figure out what factors make non-monogamous people more resilient, they had to ask specific questions to try to determine that.
One of the bullet points was, they were trying to figure out how to determine minority stress, and looked at things like discrimination. They asked some yes or no questions, which included things like, "Have you ever been demoted or denied a promotion because you are consensually non-monogamous, or have you ever lost custody of a child because you were consensually non-monogamous, or have you ever been stereotyped by a mental health provider due to consensual non-monogamy?" That's really interesting one. I think those other ones look at much bigger things that might be happening in someone's life, but that's stereotyped by a mental health provider that can be a little bit more nuance in specific.
Jase: That they're just looking overall at a bunch of different types such as these. It is funny how big a difference there is between one another.
Emily: They looked at social stigma on perhaps like at scale, so my family and friends approve of my relationship. Put a number between one and five, or I believe that most other persons whom I do not know who generally disapprove of my relationships. Look at how prevalent that is and their life or not. They also looked at things like outness, how out or not a person was, and also specifically looked at five traits of mindfulness. This is interesting. They were looking specifically at how mindful a person was.
Jase: This one's just general mindfulness, because that was part of the idea was they're trying to determine how much discrimination and minority stress do these people experience, but then also, what other factors might they have that could help them combat that? They were looking at things like outness, mindfulness, and this one was from a pretty well-established mindfulness scale that's already been established that divides mindfulness into five separate sub-categories of mindfulness, which I actually thought was pretty interesting to look at the way that this has been divided up in research.
Emily: I'm not sure if we've discussed these five traits before, but they include things like observing. Like I notice the smells and aroma of things, Describing, essentially saying I'm good at finding words to describe my feelings, which we've talked about a lot on this show on most recently on Episode 348, which was Transforming Feelings into Words, also acting with awareness.
I find myself doing things without paying attention. If you said something along those lines, then you were negatively scored things like that, or how aware are you of what you're doing and how you respond or act? Also, non-judging, that's a characteristic or a trait of mindfulness. Questioning like, I tell myself I shouldn't be feeling the way that I'm feeling. If you do that, then you're negatively scored as well.
Also non-reactivity, so I watch my feelings without getting carried away by them. I guess that makes sense, especially looking at, if you get emotionally charged by something, are you going to react negatively to that? What are you outwardly doing based on whatever emotion you're feeling at that moment?
Also, they looked at how connected they were to a supportive consensually non-monogamous community, and overall general psychological stress was measured with previously validated questions about both depression and anxiety. Potentially, how depressed or anxious a person was, they measured general psychological stress based on their answers to those things.
Jase: Then that general psychological stress was the main metric of, this is how much stress this person's experiencing, and then they're looking at how does that relate to how much discrimination they experience and then also what other factors they have like outness or mindfulness or a community? Is there a connection between these? Which ones affect which? What makes people more resilient and better able to handle that while experiencing less of that psychological stress?
Emily: Their overall findings included 61.6% reported experiencing at least one type of anti-CNM discrimination, at least one that makes sense.
Dedeker: Seems to track.
Emily: 44.5% reported experiencing at least two types, and minority stress was correlated with psychological stress.
Jase: They showed the more discrimination you experienced, the more psychological stress. That makes sense.
Emily: Also, increased mindfulness was shown to decrease the amount of psychological stress experienced for the same level of minority stress. I think we talk about that a lot on this show how mindful or not you are, and obviously, that's perhaps a behavior that is learned or that you can develop over time. Some people are really good at it immediately and some people need to understand and develop that, but that makes sense that it would reduce psychological stress. Having a positive self-identity with polyamory did not have a correlation with stress. That's really interesting.
Dedeker: Yes. That is really fascinating. I feel like in part one we were talking about people's ability to self-identify and their reasons for self-identifying and what motivated that. I guess it would be easy to come to the conclusion that if you do have a positive self-identity attached to polyamory, maybe that would help you become less stressed or be more resilient, but it's interesting they don't show a correlation necessarily.
Jase: Exactly. That was the hypothesis, was that that would show up, at least in this study, which again, in this study
Emily: It doesn't necessarily mean anything specific, but yes. Also being connected to a polyamorous community did help reduce stress, but only by a little bit. I know most people out there will say like, "Go find a community, that'll help," but interesting-
Jase: It does.
Emily: -specifically, it can but not maybe as much as you might think. Overall mindfulness, specifically, the describing scale, the acting with awareness, the non-judging, one's inner experience, and non-reactivity were found to be the most important aspects associated with resilience to stress in the face of discrimination. That aligns with similar studies on lesbian, gay, and bisexual participants as well.
Jase: That the mindfulness was a mitigating factor. What I thought was really interesting about this one was just how important mindfulness is and that in reading this paper, it was cool because Ryan talked about, I had this whole hypothesis, I put all these variables into the system, and it wouldn't resolve, it wouldn't compute. I was like, well, that didn't protect it the way I thought it did.
I had to go back, tweak some things, and through adjusting that is where he came to these findings of what actually did have an effect and what didn't. It was interesting to see in the paper him talking about, yes I had this hypothesis, but it wasn't supported by this data, but then this thing that was part of my hypothesis ended up being the main important part, the mindfulness.
Emily: The mindfulness specifically.
Jase: The community was the other one that did correlate, but just not as strong as mindfulness. Those were the two main ones that did correlate in the study. I just thought that was neat to see that process of, huh, I'd love to do more research and see how can we refine this more. Because one thing he points out is they looked at, have you experienced discrimination or not? But it wasn't about how many times, how severe, they weren't looking at that, or like how ongoing is it, how recent has it been?
That would be something for future research to get a little more nuanced in looking at what type of discrimination and to what degree people are experiencing it, and whether that also correlates to some of these mitigating factors.
Emily: I do think mindfulness as a term and as an idea has very much come into the cultural zeitgeist recently. I do wonder if that is going to be a thing that if this study were to be redone or expanded upon in a few years or in 10 years or whatever, if those findings would be similar or not just because mindfulness seems to be having a moment at this particular time.
Jase: Sure.
Emily: Who knows what'll happen in the next decade or so?
Dedeker: Or what'll be the next trend?
Emily: Exactly.
Dedeker: Mental healthcare.
Jase: I think it is at least comforting to know that yes, it's a trend and we talk about it a lot, but there is research, not just this one, but several other studies this was based on that do back up that that is important. There's something there at least.
Dedeker: We're going to switch gears and now we're going to be looking at studies that focus on non-monogamy and sexual health in particular. Where we're going to start out is actually looking at a 2012 study which is older than all the research that we've been talking about so far. This is a study that we have referenced in passing on the podcast a number of times, we thought it would be good to just set the scene and give more details about this particular study.
This was conducted by Conley and Moors. It's titled Unfaithful Individuals are Less Likely to Practice Safer Sex Than Openly Non-monogamous Individuals. It's published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. I feel like I don't even need to say anything for this study. It's like the title just says it right there.
To give a little bit more context, basically the study aimed to compare the safer sex strategies of partners in, and this is interesting I think because it's a slightly older study they have slightly different terminology than what we see ,so they call it "negotiated non-monogamous relationships" or NN relationships.
Emily: Consensual essentially.
Dedeker: I feel like now you probably say CNN, but that's what they--
Emily: That was negotiated. That's fascinating.
Dedeker: That's what they said back in 2012. Looking at people in NN relationships versus sexually unfaithful partners in monogamous relationships. The way that they defined these things, so they defined sexual unfaithfulness as having vaginal or anal sex along with genital stimulation or using sex toys with someone other than the primary partner. They made it very clearly about some kind of penetrative act, I suppose.
Jase: Or genital stimulation too, and not just penetration.
Dedeker: Something involving more
Emily: Interesting.
Dedeker: Then they define negotiated non-monogamy as having an open agreement with a primary romantic partner to have sex outside of the primary relationship. That's also a very particular definition as well. That could cover a lot of different situations. Basically for the study, they recruited 800 individuals. They ended up with specifically 308 sexually unfaithful individuals, and 493 non-monogamous individuals that made it to the survey stage. They asked people questions about their safer sex strategies, including frequency of condom and barrier use during intercourse, frequency of covering or sterilizing sex toys prior to sexual interactions, which I love that they included that because I feel like that's one that a lot of people just don't even think about. They asked about their use of alcohol or drugs during their most recent extradyadic sexual encounter. They asked whether or not they had even discussed STI testing and sexual history with their other partner, and also asked about disclosure to their primary partner.
What they found was that sexually unfaithful individuals were less likely than the non-monogamous individuals to have used barriers of any kind for sex, or to have sanitized or covered sex toys. They also found that specifically basically the people who were cheating were more likely to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. They were also less likely to have discussed STI testing or sexual history and they were significantly less likely to use barriers during intercourse. This probably seems fairly obvious, much less likely to have told their primary partner about the encounter. It's the definition of them cheating, I suppose.
Here's an interesting quote directly from the study, "The current research provides suggestive evidence that people who are unfaithful to their monogamous romantic partners are perhaps riskier than prior research has ascertained. That is, the participants were not merely risky by virtue of being non-monogamous, but actually are riskier than those who participate in negotiated non-monogamy because of their lack of safer sex behaviors." This one is an interesting one. Again, we need to talk about the limitations here that this was all self-reported data. It's not as accurate as if we, for instance, actually checked STI testing results or collected data.
Emily: Actually, watched the sex.
Jase: Doing it.
Dedeker: Watch them doing it to see what exactly they were doing, or what conversations they had. We didn't look at this data over time to see if there were other patterns. Those are the things that are limiting this. It is interesting that the researchers were trying to figure out why unfaithful people would engage in these risky behaviors. One reason that came up was that it could be about just the definition of monogamy itself, that perhaps, as they call sexually infidelitas individuals, may still consider themselves and their relationships to be monogamous. Because there is this cultural assumption that monogamy is just inherently safer, there may be some part of their brain that's able to justify their behavior by thinking that, "Oh, I'm not the type of person who needs to use condoms."
That sounds silly. When I say it with my mouth, it sounds really silly, but then when I think about my lived experience, I'm like, "People do that all the time." We're really bad at objective risk assessment as human beings and we're really motivated by our emotions. I have seen a lot of people and I've also been one of those people who make decisions about sexual health just based on, "Does this seem like a trustworthy person?" Like, "Oh, this seems like a nice person. They probably aren't lying to me about their sexual health status."
We do all these weird things, especially when we're caught up in the moment, and especially, I think if you're in the context of like, "I'm potentially cheating on someone." I talk about "crime of passion," where yes, I do think that our emotions can get in the way and just make this fuzzier.
Jase: Absolutely.
Emily: This is the gold standard that we use or that we talk about in non-monogamy to tell people like, "No, actually, those who are non-monogamous tend to be safer than people who are just cheating on a partner." I feel like this is the one that many people will go back to. Again, I would be really interested with the updated terminology to go back and do a study like this today, when I think perceptions have changed.
Dedeker: Who knows? It would be really interesting to get an update on this data.
Jase: It's funny you ask, because I have another study for you here from 2019.
Emily: Wow. Interesting.
Dedeker: Wow. Look at you.
Jase: It's funny. The same Conley from Conley and Moors that did-
Dedeker: Of course.
Jase: -that one is involved in this one, which is by Rodrigues, Lopes, and Conley, called Non-Monogamy Agreements and Safer Sex Behaviors: The Role of Perceived Sexual Self-Control. This was published in Psychology and Sexuality.
Emily: Perceived sexual self-control.
Jase: Exactly.
Emily: That’s good.
Jase: Let's define that. Let's talk about it. Basically, for this, to start out, they wanted to look specifically at condom use for this because of all of the safer sex practices out there. Generally, the research has shown that condom use is the most bang for the buck in a way, that it's one of the most effective ways in sex that involves penises. That condoms are the most effective versus least amount of effort way to have safer sex and still be able to have sex. We're leaving out just things like abstinence or whatever, and we're just going to focus on this one thing. That was the first piece, is they wanted to focus on that.
Second is, they wanted to look at, what are the circumstances where people engage in using condoms with their sex partners, and do more positive attitudes toward condom use associate with more frequent, actual use of them and better negotiation about them?
Emily: Interesting. Not thinking that it's going to deter from the feelings involved in sex or whatever, or the sensation.
Dedeker: Or the intimacy.
Jase: They didn't exactly specify this in the parts that I read, but I think also the idea of like, "Oh, if I see using a condom in general as a positive thing," just of like, "Oh, that's a good positive trait. I should do that." That also make me more likely to do it. Then to go to Emily's question of what is perceived sexual self-control?
For this study, what that means is how much that person feels like they are empowered to engage in behaviors that are less risky. Or to put it another way like, how much do they feel in control of how much risk they're taking when it comes to their sexual health. We'll look at that a little bit when we get to the questions section. Also, just for reference, this is a study that was all Portuguese users, 49 and under, from a dating website in Portugal. It's 512 people that were in this study and all under 49. A lot of them were men in this particular study, which is interesting because a lot of our other studies are predominantly women.
In any case, to get into the questions here. They asked things like, "During your life, how many different partners have you had sex with only once?" Basically, how many one-night stands have you had, is what they were getting at.
Emily: One-night stands.
Jase: Another one was, how often do you experience sexual arousal when you're in contact with someone that you're not in a committed relationship with? Just being like, how into casual sex are you? How much do you have a desire for it? How do you feel about condom use using it every time you have casual sex? Again, trying to get those attitudes about condom use. Then to get to that question of perceived sexual self-control, a question like, I find it easy to turn down unsafe sex. Agree or disagree? A scale of one to seven, or something like that. It's about that.
How empowered did they feel to be able to make decisions to influence their sexual health? Then also things like, how often did you discuss using condoms with casual partners in the last three months? Just looking at all this stuff about attitudes, actual use, number of sexual partners, things like that. Here's some of their findings. First is that the lifetime number of casual partners and their desire for casual sex were positively associated with each other. No surprise there.
Dedeker: Makes sense.
Jase: The more into casual sex a person was, the more that they had had.
Emily: The more likely they were to do it.
Jase: They also found that having more casual sex partners and being more into casual sex was negatively associated with perceived sexual control. Those people were less likely, for example, to answer, "I find it easy to say no to sex that seems unsafe to me." They did find that, which fit with their hypotheses. They did find that perceived sexual control was positively associated with attitudes toward condoms and safer sex practices, both with the casual partners and with their primary partners. That overall, they had higher feelings of sexual self-control if they had better attitudes toward condoms. That again supports their hypothesis, but it's a good one to notice. Then, they also looked at the difference between the people in the study who are in consensually non-monogamous relationships and one who are in non-consensually non-monogamous relationships. Like that last study looking at cheating versus pre-negotiated, consensual non-monogamy.
Again, tracking with the other study, they found that for consensually non-monogamous people, attitudes toward condom use were associated with higher sexual self-control. More generally, they found that for non-consensually non-monogamous people, more positive attitudes toward condoms, also associated with more sexual self-control, but less so. Which reinforces that idea from the previous study of, well, if I'm being illicit about this, even if I think condoms are good, I might be less likely to use it, because then involves more premeditation, or I can't justify it as much as like, oh, it's just in the moment, or something like that.
Emily: How much am I going to lie to myself for not? I don't know. Like the cognitive dissonance. If I don't put a condom in my pocket, then perhaps I won't use it, or perhaps I won't have sex with someone illicitly.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. That was also part of what they looked at in this was part of that sexual self-control was things like bringing a condom with you, is kind of that planning ahead to a feeling like, I'm empowered to make decisions for this. That absolutely tracks. They found that, for the consensually non-monogamous people, the one little extra facet is that the people who had higher perceived self-control about sex, also, were more likely to use condoms with their primary partner, or at least have those negotiations and conversations with them.
Which also makes sense to me anecdotally, and tracks with my own life. It is interesting that just that they noticed that in this particular study, seeing that they're. No real quick, some limitations. One is that, all of these are correlations, there's not causation, and this study did not take into account the influence of the other partner. Was there condom use? Because the other partner insisted it or was because they wanted to.
Dedeker: That would change things.
Jase: That would change things. They didn't measure that. Then they also found that the single people in the study, in general, felt like they had less sexual self-control over their risk than people who were in relationships. That it was regardless of if they used condoms, the same amount, as the people in relationships that generally the single people perceived that they had less control over their sexual health or less ability to say no or to prepare ahead of time for things, which was also just an interesting piece. They threw in there at the end. I'm like, "Do more studies on that. What do you want?"
Dedeker: It's all just like human perception. Which again, is another reason why studies are not fact because you're dealing with emotions here. That is not truth. Really it just is.
Emily: Something interesting to talk about, but that's it.
Jase: Trying to find facts to help understand our feelings. They're entwined, that you can't just separate them from each other. We're not all robots who just work by the numbers. Before we go on to another study about sexual health, and then talk about non-monogamy and families and parenting, we're going to take a quick break to talk about some ways that you can support this show, and to help us keep all of this information, which hopefully is helpful to all of you out there, to help keep this coming to everyone in the world for free on the podcast. We really appreciate your support.
Please take a moment to check them out. If there's any sponsors that seem interesting to you, maybe give them a visit using our links.
Emily: Already, we're going to continue on with another sex study. This one is made by Conley yet again. My goodness, it's a 2018 study by Conley, Piedmont, Gusakova, is that right? It sounds like a rush-only thing.
Jase: I'd probably say Gusakova.
Emily: Gusakova and Rubin called it Sexual Satisfaction Among Individuals in Monogamous and Consensually Non-Monogamous Relationships, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. This city engages with this broad cultural assumption that so many people have out there, that monogamous relationships are not only emotionally superior to CNM ones, but they are also more sexually satisfying and they pose less risk of STI transmission.
I am shocked by the amount of people out there who I listened to on more "normal podcasts" that essentially say this thing. They're like, "Yes, I've heard of polyamory or non-monogamy, but it doesn't work. It's not something that the people actually do." I love that they did a study on this. The lay perceptions of consensual non-monogamy reveal certain stereotypes around why people may engage in consensual non-monogamy, largely that people are not sexually satisfied by their primary partner and therefore seek non-monogamy. That's very interesting. Yes, definitely from something variable.
Dedeker: From part one, it was like that was one potential reason that people found why people might choose that.
Emily: It's a lot more nuanced
Jase: Definitely. Well, it was one of the reasons but also in those previous studies, it was like an interest in more varied sex or something like that came up a lot. I think that a lot of people assume there's this implication of also then the sex you're having is not satisfying. That's why you're seeking it out. I think that's a little bit of a nuance there that I think they were trying to examine in this study.
Emily: Also, just people being like, "Oh, well, you just don't want to settle down." How many people say that? Alrighty. Across two separate studies, researchers considered three kinds of consensual non-monogamy. They considered swinging, they considered open relationships and also polyamory, in their analysis and their comparison to monogamy. Participants were recruited on websites and listservs to participate in an anonymous online survey, which included questions about sexual satisfaction, and sexual frequency. There were two studies.
In the second study, researchers used a non-targeted sample of consensual non-monogamy participants to test for any bias in study one. That people who are recruited specifically for their CNM identity may feel pressured to report a positive image of their relationship to researchers. That's something I think is understandable completely and a potential bias for a lot of these studies, maybe that, oh, I have to make this look really good because otherwise, people are going to look down upon it. Only CNM participants that reported having a primary partner were included in the study largely to have a fair comparison with monogamous couples.
I guess that makes sense, even though as we know, this includes a lot of the different nuances, not just people with primary partners. Again, there were two studies, the first one included 1,507 monogamous people, and 617 CNM people. Among those CNM participants, 51% were polyamorous, 25% were in a swinging relationship, and then 25% were in an open relationship. This first study that participants had been in their relationships for an average of 10 years, it's a long time. Also, the second study included 1,177 monogamous people and 510 consensually non-monogamous people.
In this study, of the participants who were consensually non-monogamous, 52% were polyamorous, 30% were in open relationships, and 18% are swingers and the average relationship there was about five years, which is interesting.
Jase: Yes, it is interesting that overall of the non-monogamous people half in both studies were polyamorous, and then swinging and open together made up the other half.
Emily: Very interesting.
Jase: Probably having to do with recruitment or maybe just how people identify. It's an interesting question.
Emily: The main research question of this was, do people in consensually non-monogamous relationships experience similar sexual satisfaction to those in monogamous relationships? Participants rated their satisfaction on a seven-point scale, about the following four dimensions of their sexual experience with their partner and those included how frequently they had sex with their partner, how much physical pleasure they experienced during their sexual encounters, how much physical pleasure their partner experiences? That's interesting.
I wonder, that's just like perceived, I'm assuming, and then how they feel after the sexual encounter. They also responded to prompts about the last encounter they had with their partner whether or not they had an orgasm during that last encounter and the frequency of sex and an average week. Study one and two used the same set of questions. In the first study they found that consensually non-monogamous individuals reported higher levels of sexual satisfaction on various measures which included sexual satisfaction overall, the sexual satisfaction in their last encounter, and also the fact that they had an orgasm but not in sexual frequency. That's interesting. They may have a similar amount of sexual frequency as those who were monogamous in the study.
Jase: Yes, and I think that they were asking specifically about with their primary partner in this. This was about-
Emily: This was similar perhaps to a monogamous relationship in that facet. Polyamorous people reported significantly higher sexual satisfaction overall as well as higher sexual satisfaction after the most recent sexual encounter than the monogamous individuals did. They also reported orgasm in their last encounter 84% of the time, more than monogamous people which reported 72%. Oh, interesting people in open relationships and monogamous people reported equivalent levels of sexual satisfaction but more people in open relationships reported orgasming during their last encounter.
Swingers reported greater sexual satisfaction both with their sex lives overall and in their most recent encounter than monogamous people. I think mostly, the findings say that it's higher sexual satisfaction overall and it looks like study two replicated some of the findings of study one essentially, that the non-monogamous participants had higher levels of sexual satisfaction. They also had the presence of orgasm and they had more frequent sex than monogamous participants.
Jase: Interesting because the first one, it didn't say it was more but then in the second study, it was a little bit more than the monogamous participants.
Emily: The first one, I think was specifically about polyamorous people. This seems to lump everyone together here.
Jase: They do say that especially swingers had sex a lot more often
Emily: That makes sense, I guess. They're seeking it out specifically, perhaps. It's important to note that monogamous people didn't appear to be dissatisfied with their sex lives simply that they had slightly lower levels of sexual satisfaction. That's good to clarify that there.
Dedeker: Yes, but it doesn't necessarily mean that all the monogamous people are hating their sexual partners.
Emily: Exactly. There is a quick quote right here which I found interesting. The most straightforward possibility is that CNM people are less subject to normal habituation processes that occur in the sexual relationships of monogamous people. Perhaps the introduction of additional partners provides enough variety and effects higher levels of satisfaction in the primary relationship. Essentially, it's just I think saying, maybe the fact that more or different people come around sexually, then that means that overall you're going to be more satisfied.
Jase: Yes, that it keeps things newer, so you're following into the same pattern or things like that.
Emily: They asked that question, can the addition of partner sometimes revive a struggling sexual partnership? Perhaps, and some people definitely introduce additional partners for that very reason.
Jase: I do think this is a cool study that it does point out that idea of if you think people are non-monogamous because they're not having good sex in their primary relationship and they need to get it somewhere else, that actually, the data doesn't back that up. That they may be having better sex with that primary partner or at least as good but basically saying the assumption is the opposite of what the evidence seems to suggest. I do think that's really interesting.
Dedeker: Now we're going to switch gears once again and talk about all of these studies on non-monogamy and parenting. Really fascinating stuff. This first one I'm going to dive into is from 2021 conducted by Manley and Goldberg titled Consensually Non-monogamous Parent Relationships During COVID-19. Super great. This was published in the Journal of Sexualities. This specific study was focused on how parents who are in consensually non-monogamous relationships proceed in negotiated risk, how they describe the pandemic's impact on their relationships and well-being, and also how parents' behavioral responses to the pandemic resisted or reproduced heteronormativity.
Super interesting stuff. The framework for understanding these relationships and also the family configurations was queer theory. To clarify that a little bit basically, queer families according to this framework are those that resist binaries of gender, sexuality, and also just our common definitions of family or nuclear families in general. This is what they said in the study, "parents who engage in consensually non-monogamous queer family when they include members who are not biologically or legally connected and they queer sexuality when they form relationships with more than one person, disentangle romantic, sexual, and co-parenting relationships and include same-gender partners."
This is, I think, the more sciency jargony version of a lot of the stuff we talk about on the show which could include, for instance, relationship, anarchist relationships, queerplatonic relationships, alternate family structures. Maybe choosing to co-parent with someone who's not necessarily romantic or sexual partner or choosing to co-parent with multiple partners. It sounds like they're trying to include all of that within this particular framework. Basically, the participants in this study, there were 70 total. A relatively smaller sample size than what we've been looking at.
They just completed a 60-minute online survey. Interestingly, in the demographic breakdown, actually a majority, 66% were cis women. Then also specifically, they noted that this was a relatively affluent group that ended up participating here. The mean household income was $97,882. Some of the questions that they asked included, how has COVID-19 and guidelines around social distancing impacted your intimate relationships and family life? Do you spend more or less time with romantic or sexual partners with co-parents or with your children and how has your family been affected by the COVID-19 situation?
Now, this is really interesting because I don't know, I feel like I also conducted my little one-person study just through my coaching practice. Not only for myself but through my coaching clients. I get a lot of people who are both parents and queer and non-monogamous, and all those things. I know, I could definitely see some particular anecdotal trends. Let's see what this particular study found. They found that there was a decline in physical contact with non-nested partners which seems to make sense.
I think we saw a lot of that in the non-monogamous community, especially in the early days of the pandemic where specifically they found that parents who lived alone appeared to suffer more from isolation whereas those who lived in multi-adult households were more likely to discuss the strain of sharing time and space and also a desire for more alone time.
I feel like those are the two camps that I saw almost right away was--
Emily: Please get out of my face or I have no one to connect to at all.
Dedeker: Yes, completely. They also noticed that people had to create some interesting strategies for being able to connect with people over a distance including virtual dates, including things like quarantining for two weeks before and after seeing other partners. I saw all kinds of really creative and sometimes very complex solutions that people came up with. They found that there was increased parenting responsibility. Again, makes sense when all your kids are suddenly having to be at home all of the time.
They noticed that there was an increase in negotiating risk which often included things like choosing to not date new people or navigating the tensions that emerge from having different risk tolerance profiles. I swear to God, this was just everything that I was seeing in my own coaching practice. All the stuff that people were facing. Then interestingly enough, they also noticed a lot of changing dynamics and configurations at home. Things like partners moving in together during quarantine. The nuclear family home is being challenged by having more than two parents in the same home or people who created multi-household quarantine pods.
Here's an interesting quote from the study. "These pods often contain more individuals than just partners and children including neighbors, other relatives, other housemates, and friends." They also noticed that basically, active communication, especially about negotiating risk tolerance was a central feature of CNM relationships which facilitated the process of navigating relationships during the pandemic. Then lastly, they found that in some cases, parents had to choose to create more distance from their children.
For instance, parents decided to have their children temporarily stay with other caretakers, especially if the parents were frontline workers, or if the parent desired for the child to spend time with other family members, or the other co-parent.
Jase: I feel like a lot of this-
Emily: It seems ideal. Meaning all of this, the opportunity to have more people in your sphere during this really challenging time, especially at the beginning.
Jase: This gets echoed in this next study that's not specifically about the pandemic. This next one is a 2021 study by Landry, Arseneau, and Darling. It's called "It's a Little Bit Tricky:" Results from the POLYamorous Childbearing and Birth Experiences Study (POLYBABES).
Emily: Polybabes.
Dedeker: Polybabes. That was great. So far they win the award for-
Jase: For titling
Dedeker: -titling. Yes.
Jase: This was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The main objective of this study was to look at the differences in the experiences of polyamorous people in Canada, during pregnancy, and birth. Basically, saying there's almost no literature about this at all, so let's start making some. This one similar to the last one is a relatively small qualitative study. This just had 24 participants who were interviewed. That include 11 birthing people and 13 partners of birthing people.
The mean age was 34, in those prime childbearing years, I guess. Basically, they had two main questions that guided the interview, but it was a qualitative study, so it depended what they talked about, what sorts of questions they asked. The main one was, tell us about your relationship structure now, and during your pregnancy, and the birth, and then two, tell us about your pregnancy, and birth experience.
Then from there, they would ask to follow-up questions, things about disclosure, things about their experiences with healthcare providers whether they intend to get pregnant again in the future, or what they might do differently, and then various definitions of terms that they brought up during their explanations. Overall what they found was that overall, there was a lot of conscientiousness about family planning among these polyamorous participants.
They reported having lots of discussions about roles and parenting and to what extent different partners are going to co-parent or not. That there were a lot of these conversations in advance. Also, a lot of thoughtful planning around sexual health as some partners intentionally tried to get pregnant with one partner, but not another, which makes sense. Maybe this one wants to be pregnant or have a kid with this one, but not this other, and so they had to be very intentional about how do you manage that? How do you make sure that happens?
In general, all of the participants reported feeling more supported through their pregnancy and childbirth because of having more partners. Basically, everyone reported having partners with different skill sets was a big benefit and that just overall time and labor constraints were better, were easier having more partners as an asset. A little quote from that study here is that the participants described planning pregnancies, parenting on purpose, and spending quality time with their children.
In cases where participants had older children already, they described these kids as well-adjusted, open-minded, and effective communicators. Overall, the impact of being polyamorous, and potentially of having multiple partners was a positive one on fetuses, babies, and children . Anyway, I just thought that one was a cool overall look at that. Again, has more to do, more to be done here.
Emily: Our final two studies are actually meta-analyses. This first one is a 2020 meta-analysis of existing research by Pallotta-Chiarolli, Sheff, who I believe is the one and only Eli.
Jase: Eli Sheff.
Emily: Mountford, Goldberg, and Allen called Polyamorous Parenting in Contemporary Research, published in the book, LGBTQ-Parent Families: Innovations in Research and Implications for Practice. Now, the four issues that frame the academic, and social conversations around poly families include first, the erasure of poly families in academic discourse.
That continues to reflect and influence the similar ignorance of poly families in social, legal, health, and educational realms.
Also, exclusion by inclusion and the gap in theorizing in data about poly families is sometimes addressed by utilizing research about the experiences of children from same-sex parent families. This is problematic because the experiences of children in poly families are unique, and not all of them are of the same sex.
Jase: You can just substitute one minority group for another, and say, "Oh yes, it's the same."
Emily: Also, absence of intersectionality, which happens all over the place here. Most participants in poly-family research continue to be White middle-class college-educated individuals who identify as cis-gendered male or female, and who have high levels of cyber literacy, which allows them to participate in social and support groups, and thereby find themselves participating in our research. I appreciate that they looked at that and that they realized that, and talked about it.
Also, there is a lack of longitudinal research, and "erasure and exclusion is the absence of the perspectives, experiences, and insights of children, and adults who have grown up in poly families, as well as the ways in which growing up in polyamorous household affect children's wellbeing, later relationships, and education." Now, we know that Eli Sheff is the only person or one of the only people doing longitudinal studies on poly families.
Jase: Right, and that all of hers is more sociological qualitative, just like getting to know the families over many years. It's a different type of study, but yes, she's the only one doing that particular type of research that I love.
Emily: We'll talk about the longitudinal polyamorous family studies. She interviewed 206 people in polyamorous families, and 37 of those people were children. Some of the results included "indicate these parents tend to employ a free-range parenting style, sustain permeable family boundaries, and use flexibility to create resilience over time." Also, Sheff's emerging findings continue to indicate that polyamorous families while not perfect, can be positive environments that support adults across the lifespan, and raise confident, healthy children.
Jase: Which we've talked to her about before on the show, but basically, just overall that people are flexible, and raise good kids in polyamorous families.
Emily: We appreciate all of the work that she's doing for sure. In addition to the Eli Sheff study, they also looked at a variety of other studies. Some of them included this one called Polyvicks study and that one was the one by Pallota-Chiarolli in 2013, and also the woman with bisexual male partners study. From all of these studies, they were able to identify common trends in the cumulative findings, both inside polyamorous families, and the pressures they face in the external world. Findings internal to families indicate a free-range parenting style.
That's something that Eli Sheff talked about. Collaborative parenting and permeable family boundaries with the extended chosen kinship. Issues external to poly families include disclosure and exposure, impacts of coming out to children, and also interactions with health, welfare, legal systems, and media. Essentially, it just feels like disclosure is tough potentially, but within the poly families, they have specific things like free-range parenting style, collaborative parenting, and stuff like that, that seem to permeate across most of the families that they talk to in these studies.
Jase: Yes, and that this was published within a book about LGBTQ parent families, and talking about-
Emily: Which is fascinating considering that that was one of the things that they looked at initially that sometimes poly families were lumped in with same-sex couples.
Jase: I think that was part of their point of putting it in this book because this is a book for researchers. It's saying, "Hey, if you're a researcher in this area,-
Emily: Don't do that.
Jase: -this is an area that's separate, and is worth taking a closer look at, and here's some stuff we've noticed, but there needs to be more research. I do think that's interesting to look at it as almost more of a guide for other researchers rather than, "We've really found a lot," it's more like, "Here are some trends, go learn more about it." Then this last one here is a 2019 meta-analysis of existing research by Christian Cless. This is called Polyamorous Parenting: Stigma, Social Regulation, and Queer Bonds of Resistance. This was published in Sociological Research Online. Basically looking at the overall data, again, was just trying to look at the existing study and trying to focus on what are we finding, we're looking at the parenting practices, we're looking at social and legal discrimination. Then we're looking at the parental response to that stigmatization. Overall, they're arguing for just stronger incorporation of queer perspectives within the guiding frameworks for research. We're starting to see more of that, as we've mentioned in some of our previous studies, but basically just saying, "Hey, this is a big area that's lacking here."
They then went and broke it down by a few different categories overall. First one was about parenting practices. The findings from this meta-analysis were that in the existing research, the most common form of poly family seems to be an open couple with children. Then this constellation of people around them. Other partners, some biological, some chosen family, all of that, that that seems to be the most common arrangement. While some of the poly families consider their parenting a form of resistance to gender normative regimes, that generally in practice, they still tend to perpetuate a lot of the sort of gender divisions of labor in their care networks and things like that.
Emily: Interesting. That was what the researchers said about their findings or their observation of these people, or was that self-reported?
Jase: Their observations about what they noticed in looking at all these different existing studies of what's out there currently. They found that the parenting strategies tend to reflect the values of polyamory, which includes, radical honesty, consent, self-knowledge, self-possession, integrity. They found that those tended to show up in parenting as well and that non-sexual relationships showed up as an important designation of a type of chosen kin. Which I do think is cool that people tend to focus so much on the sex with non-monogamy. It's like once you unlock that idea that relationships can look different ways, also opens up these other non-sexual relationships, too.
The next category they looked at was the benefits. What are the benefits of polyamory and parenting? Enhanced potential for intimacy with children, I think because of that increased level of honesty, that like we're not pretending. We're just going to be real with you. Better ability to meet the challenges of child-rearing, by sharing work, sharing skills, sharing money, other resources, that's something that came up before as well. Multiple incomes can also help in times of crisis, or times when someone needs to take a timeout, such as just getting burned out, or a mental health issue, or an illness or a disability, something like that.
That generally, the adults felt less isolated when they were taking care of the kids because there were just more other adults around to help out and that there were more role models for the children. Those overall from the studies were the benefits that they noticed. Then challenges or problems with polyamory and parenting. One is that children are affected by breakups, especially if they have a close bond with long-term parenting type partner, which makes a lot of sense. This also shows up in monogamous relationships, too. I guess the idea is maybe it would happen more often or at least has the potential to if there's just more partners.
Household crowding, which I'm like, "Yes." I noticed that this especially came up with teenagers who want privacy, and it's just too many adults around.
Dedeker: Oh, yes, I hear that.
Jase: Yes, jealousy among siblings. They said this was particularly in blended and mixed parentage situations. Maybe if there's some jealousy about which parents pay more attention to certain kids or something I imagine. The kids having to adjust to different parenting styles at different times. I know as a kid growing up in a divorced family, you deal with that too like, "Oh, okay, here's the rules at dad's place, and here's the rules at mom's place." A little different.
Emily: That’s pretty intense, yeah.
Jase: Just in general, family complexity, just that there's more networks and certain things that happen can have ripples across more different relationships. They mentioned adult drama that can happen, which again, I think could happen in any relationship, but just that there were situations where all the extra communication and just relational intensity, translated to more frequent arguments. Then also, of course, negative reactions from their extended family or their family of origin, if one of their parents is from a divorced, monogamous marriage previously or something like that.
Then stigma, kids being stigmatized in school or things like that. The last couple of sections in this meta-analysis, we're looking at the social and legal problems, and then how people managed stigma. Under the social and legal problems, again, is just the socio-legal precarity of poly families is the term that they used, which basically just means there's no protections at all for this type of family. That's something that we've talked about a lot that sucks.
There's this bias toward couple-based two-person legal unions and just that there's no sorts of protections and even in some states laws that could be interpreted to be directly against consensual non-monogamy. Which were meant to be anti-bigamy laws, but could be used against people in consensually non-monogamous relationships. Also, the risk of losing custody of children if an ex-spouse or some family member decides to try to press that or use that against you.
Then also talking about how racism can show up and be amplified by non-monogamy that already existing racist ideas about responsibility or commitment or sexuality or something like that can get essentially enhanced when used against people who are in polyamorous families. Then when it comes to stigma management, this was looking at specifically passing. The ability for families to just pass as not being anything different from just a normal nuclear family. Then bordering and polluting were the other terms they talked about. Let's talk about that here.
Emily: Yes, what is that?
Jase: In this context, passing means just not revealing the polyamorous aspect of the family constellation, by not emphasizing the amorous or sexual part of the adult relationships, or by disguising multiple parenthood. It's disguising the fact that maybe different kids in this household have different parents. This is generally regarded as the most suitable response to protect a family unit and the well-being of the younger children was what they found in this meta-analysis. Then bordering, which was described as mediating carefully the different behavioral requirements and/or possibilities of different public and private spheres.
Dedeker: The idea of this is what we can talk about at school, this is what we can talk about at home. This is what we can talk about when we go to mee-maw's house.
Jase: Yes, exactly.
Emily: Good old mee-maw.
Jase: That careful balancing and negotiation of shapeshifting and calculated acts of risk-taking, resulting in temporary relief and emergence of spaces for self-expression. That push-pull between here's where we can be ourselves and here's where we've got to cover things up.
Emily: That's tougher for kids I'm sure. Just tough for people in general, but added layer when you're a small child.
Jase: I feel like I had to do that for so long with some of my grandparents about how frequently we went to church or not, that they were already things that had to be a little bit hidden. This is taking it to another level. Then polluting. Here's a quote from the study. Other families take a more radical or militant approach of polluting that includes acts of self-assertion, non-compliance, or transgression aimed at politicizing public environments. This is the opposite is polluting is coming in and making it clear, like "No, we're going to cause some trouble. We're going to show that this is what we're doing.
We're going to transgress some of these rules in these public environments, like schools, social services, and local authorities about being polyamorous and bringing those things up." That's interesting the passing side, or what they call the polluting side are the two extremes.
Dedeker: You couldn't come up with a better term than polluting?
Jase: Polluting. I know it's not great.
Emily: Yes, that's not great.
Dedeker: I get what they're going for, but surely something more positive exists.
Jase: Anyway, it's just interesting that passing's on the one side where you just like, "Let's just hide this completely." Polluting is we're like, "No, we're going to-
Emily: We're going to tell the world.
Jase: -make this clear and we're going to tell the world and we're going to try to make some social change." Then bordering which is this mix of "We're going to hide it in some places, and we're going to be open about it and others." Really interesting looking at all this and clearly an area where a lot more research could be done because that was the takeaway with all these meta-analyses is we're just scratching the surface, so there's a lot more that needs to be done.
Dedeker: What a big old ball of research we just dove into between these two episodes. That was a lot.
Emily: Look at all the research out there.
Jase: So much more than there was a few years ago.
Dedeker: This is also far from completely inclusive of all the research that does exist. There's dozens and dozens and dozens, and actually really hundreds more studies. It's just these are the most passionate, recent, and interesting ones that we thought we might present to y'all. We hope that this is helpful. Again, as a reminder, if you go to multiamory.com/sources, we're going to be including the summaries of all the studies there. So if you want to take a look or if you want to find the link back to the original study, then that's where you can find them.