Hello and seeking terms

[StudentMom]

Hello everyone,
I'm very new here, so I don't know if I should have posted an introductory post somewhere or not. I'm still figuring out the navigation!

By way of introduction, I am here as a college student majoring in Family Life Education. I recently challenged my professor with the bald-faced absence of any discussion of plural marriage as a family form in our curriculum. This is in spite of the fact that we 'have' to learn about homosexual marriages and families as 'normal' and 'healthy', despite their (current) legal un-recognition in our country!

Long story short: my professor encouraged me to include any information I could find (and document) about plural family structure, benefits, and challenges. I'm currently in the information gathering stage.

My question for the group is: what are the 'proper' terms for the family members in a plural marriage? I have heard the terms 'sister-wife' and 'demi-brother' in fictional stories, but obviously works of fiction just don't qualify as 'scientific' sources.

Any help coming my way is greatly appreciated.

If you want to know any more about me, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks!

 

[sweetlissa]

Most of us use the term sisterwife but have shortened it to SW for shorthand. We aren't thrilled with the term but have not yet found the right substitute. I refer to my husband's other wife as my sister or just by her name. On this board I refer to her as T. We have gone to calling Plural Marriage PM. We also refer to Biblical marriage which is not necessarily plural.

SweetLissa

 

[PolyPride]

Hello everyone,
My question for the group is: what are the 'proper' terms for the family members in a plural marriage? I have heard the terms 'sister-wife' and 'demi-brother' in fictional stories, but obviously works of fiction just don't qualify as 'scientific' sources.

Any help coming my way is greatly appreciated.

If you want to know any more about me, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks!

Hi and welcome to the forum, as well. To be honest the only specialized terms for the members in plural marriage is mostly sister-wife (or co-wife), other than that, there's not much of a difference from the terms used in monogamous family structures. As far as scientific sources goes, there's no scientific articles or books that I know of that really goes into detail of a polygamous family structure when it comes to specialized labels for the family members. All of the articles that I've read so far only referenced the social benefits and the evolutionary/biological foundations for non-monogamous behavior (some infer this to relate to polygamy, in some cases rather than just cheating or promiscuity) in man and some animals.

 

[Tlaloc]

There is an older debate about terms at viewtopic.php?f=19&t=907 as to why some people like or dislike the term sisterwife. Usually siblings from different parents would just be 'brother' or 'sister' though the technical term is 'half-brother' and 'half-sister' (as in, that is what kids with one parent the same are actually called no mater the circumstances) When my wife talks about marrying one of our girlfriends she just calls them her wife, and they do the same. With us there is no specialized terminology at all. There are objections to that as well.

To an extent us polygamists are defined by uniqueness anyway, even here Polygyny and core Christian doctrines are really the only things we have in common, our conversations come from many denominations, countries, family setups, and backgrounds. There isn't even much of a unified push to standardize terms as we are all too busy and independent to worry about that kind of thing for too long.