it is so important to talk about equality when talking about rearranging society :)

RC, the questions you raise are all ones that I think would absolutely need attention in any reorganizing of family or rewriting of laws pertaining to households and chlidren and property, or in any changing of the culture around intimate, sexual relationships.

It's interesting that the concept of polyamory has developed as an alternative to to the concept of polygamy, not as a new word for polygamy. Part of this must be because of the assumpions about equality that seem to inhere in the discourse around polyamory. But holding those assumptions and actually creating institutional relationships that create equality are hardly the same thing! I don't think polyamory itself solves or exacerbates the problem. I do think that polyamory's assumptions tend to be more in line with creating equality in household and family relationships, than the nuclear monogamous household, though.

...because public space really matters!

Elizabeth