Dear Prudence, 17 March 2014:

Q. My Sister Is Polyamorous and Pregnant: My sister Julia recently told our family that she and her husband Jake are in a polyamorous triad with their best friend Tony. The three of them have been together for as long as Julia has been with Jake (seven years) and all of their friends know that, essentially, Tony is Julia’s other husband. They decided not to tell our more traditional family (with the exception of our brother) until Julia became pregnant, as she is now. She does not know whether the child is Jake’s or Tony’s, but both men plan to raise the child equally. Our brother claims they’re an amazing set and that Julia has never been this happy. My parents, my husband, and I are more realistic and feel queasy about the arrangement. I cannot imagine how their child will feel, growing up with half siblings (Julia plans to have children by both men) and with their mom sleeping with two men. I don’t know how they will provide the children of this “marriage” with stability. My husband doesn’t want Tony around our children, even though Julia has asked that we now treat him as her husband in addition to Jake. I love Julia but am nauseated by her lifestyle choice. I think eventually it will end disastrously. How can I support this?

Dear My Sister is Polyamorous and Pregnant,

How can anyone know what results child-rearing will yield? I mean, except for you, a person who 100% without a doubt can say that your sister is setting her family up for abject failure?

There’s so much uncertainty these days, except when it comes to your knowledge of how your sister’s familial decisions will negatively impact the children she and her family, and not you, a person nauseated by the slutty sluttitude of your sister, is about to raise. Who knows what might happen in the future? Besides you, of course, the person who knows everything about how people who you aren’t should raise their children.

First, there’s the issue of the fact that your sister is the sole person who has made the “lifestyle choice” of polyamory in this situation, which the two men she is partnered with clearly have not made, as your sister is clearly the strumpetest strumpet of all time, with your opinion not at all being informed by a patriarchal culture of misogyny. Your totally reasonable, well-thought-out ire is rightly directed at her, the Jezebel that puts all other Jezebels to shame, what with her decision to raise a family with a bunch of people who love and appreciate her.

Literally all decent humans have been raised by two monogamous heterosexual parents. No person on earth who has ever achieved success or happiness has been raised otherwise, as is clearly documented by the fact that you are nauseated by your sister’s decision to live her own fucking life the way she chooses.

How can you support this, you ask, as a person who is 100000000000000000000000 percent solely invested in supporting, rather than judging, her gross sister and her heinous awful appalling decisions? Well, you could just treat your sister like an autonomous person who has engaged in building a family with other autonomous humans, but where would that get you? Then you’d probably end up broadening your fucking horizons, and then the world would crumble into tiny, vomitous bits of nobody cares what you think.