Merrywives’ Blog

These comments from J. Wight, and others from the http://www.jonathanturley.org blog were well articulated and we feel it has merit to be shared here on our blog:

J. Wight
1, October 18, 2010 at 4:40 am
I’m a mainstream Mormon and have alway been taught to shun even the appearance of condoning the polygamous lifestyle at all costs. I grew up in Oregon but now I live in the same Utah valley as the participants in this show. I’m an involuntarily-divorced father and over the past years I have come to reconsider the notion of polygamy, though I would never leave my church and will never do anything other than sympathize with many polygamous families. I now know polygamous families personally that are decent, down-to-earth, and loving families. The astounding fact everyone seems to miss is the caring, nurturing, and loving parenting that takes place with the children. This lifestyle is probably not for everyone, but if you think that this lifestyle is somehow deficient for the children involved, compared with neighbors and most families,who put their children in daycare for 10 hours a day, then you are simply deluded. No sober or sane perspective of these people, witnessing it first-hand, can come to this conclusion. The caveat here, of course, is that I’m talking about the non-criminal and/or non-abusive polygamous lifestyle. Everyone knows about the crazy and abusive polygamists, who operate and socio-pathologically thrive on the margins of a disenfranchised or outlawed culture–like so many other sociopaths who operate on so many different fringes of the marginalized populations of our societies. Because they can get away with so much on the un-monitored margins, sociopathic personalities will always be associated with such subcultures. However, you must look beyond the headlines and surface portrayals to understand a cultural choice such as this, just as you would for any alternative lifestyle.

I offer this with the following perspective: I was the primary caregiver for my children before my wife left me and took our children. I fought court battles for two years just to be able to watch my children during the day instead of having them in daycare for more than 10 hours per day. I have never been anything but a loving and completely devoted father to my children, and I live in a state which calls itself a “family values” state. Yet I could not prove to the state in court (or not yet, Mr. Turley, in case you’re reading) that a loving and fit father (with no dispute on this characterization whatsoever) is entitled to care for his children over institutionalized daycare despite the “inconvenience” it causes their mother. Really. That is the reason. I’m not making that up. The judges words were that my daily father care causes “too much shuffling of the children.” I would add that I live less than two miles from their mother. And the daycare is seven miles away. And I had to pay for the daycare, by law, to boot, even as I sat in my home office and yearned and ached for my children in such a way as words cannot describe. That is how entrenched daycare parenting is in our society. Something is wrong in the current state of family law and the presumptions it holds based upon notions of equality for women.

I studied feminist literary criticism in college; this is not feminism, and it never was imagined that real feminist notions of equality would ever lead us to this. Real feminism has been hijacked by bullies and entitlement-mongers and driven little girls away from their most important and essential of protectors–their fathers. I look forward to a progression that involves a truly equal partnering in the most fundamental and important work we have together between the sexes: parenting children. As I see it, the polygamists I know simply have a much healthier concept of this than anything currently in the “mainstream” society of family law or legal reasoning. I realize that many here will not like these words, but they are the truth.

423 Scarecrow
1, October 19, 2010 at 10:26 am
@ J. Wight

That is probably the most powerful statement I have read to date with regard to the care of the children. This has been one of the most ignored arguments for polygamy, and likely the most important. Due to the exceptionally poor quality of public education I consider the public schools nothing more than extended public day care at taxpayer expense.

I hope there will be testimony of this caliber at the hearings in Canada:
http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Dozens+file+affidavits+Supreme+Court+polygamy+case/3682372/story.html

424 Kim
1, October 21, 2010 at 8:42 pm
My feelings on the Browns are that Kody and the wives work and support their family. They are not living off the government so there for the state should stay out of their personal life. Kody states he is only legaaly married to Meri so what law is he breaking. I myself would not in a million years live this lifestyle but they are all consenting adults free to live their life as they want to.
I watched the whole season and will continue to watch them however long TLC will film. Good luck to the family.

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