Taya Hartless
- Taya Hartless is a member of a polyamorous family.
- The family has three incomes and zero childcare costs.
- In the face of the US's childcare shortage, this model is helping her family thrive.
As American parents are struggling to find and afford childcare, one family is using a non-traditional model to get by.
Taya Hartless's family has a ratio of one parent per child. But she's not a single mom, nor does she have two children with her partner.
The 28-year-old Oregon mom is a member of a polyamorous family with four parents and four children under one household. Polyamory is when more than two partners engage in a consensual romantic relationship, and in Hartless's case, they all live under one roof.
The parents have been together for roughly three-and-a-half years. Together, they're caring for their eight- and seven-year-old children, as well as two toddlers aged 22- and 15-months.
Hartless is a stay-at-home mom who cares for the children while providing her 120,000 TikTok followers insight into her polyamorous lifestyle — she began posting videos last April. She says she earns some money from social media but declined to say how much. The other three parents work outside the home as an electrician, security guard, and government worker, which provides the family a unique financial edge: three steady incomes and zero childcare costs.
"Having three incomes as well as a stay-at-home parent helps us not only provide for our family financially, but to feel secure knowing our children are well cared for while we're at work," she said.
In the United States, parents are facing a mountain of childcare challenges. The US is the only industrialized country that doesn't require employers to offer paid parental leave, and as a result, only 25% of workers have access to it. The expanded child tax credit, which offered monthly payments to parents and pulled many children out of poverty, ended at the end of 2021. In 2018, the Center for American Progress found that over half of Americans lived in an area where childcare was sparse, and even when families do find childcare, it's unaffordable almost everywhere in the US.
These obstacles have led many parents to pursue unique solutions, including nanny sharing and co-parenting. And while Hartless and her husband didn't pursue polyamory for childcare reasons, this structure happens to work well for some parents too.
Taya Hartless
The kids "quite literally always have a parent around"
Hartless says she and her husband first met the couple with who they now co-parent through a dating app back in June of 2019.
She says both couples began by only "looking for something purely physical" but "clicked right away" and eventually began dating. They made plans to make the two-hour drive "almost every weekend" to spend more time together.
"We eventually realized it felt like we were much more than friends," she said.
In February 2020, they moved in together.
Taya Hartless
For Hartless, who gave birth to her only biological child in 2021, her entire journey of motherhood has been in a four-parent household. She says she believes there are pros and cons to this model.
"We still have our challenges," she said. "It's harder in the sense that there are four opinions, four parenting styles and lots of communication required to stay on the same page."
Additionally, not all of the grandparents are supportive of their polyamorous lifestyle, which means the children "no longer have them in their lives as active grandparents."
"This is really hard to deal with," she said. "However we feel it's in the best interest of our kids to be surrounded with nothing but unconditional love no matter what lifestyle or relationship they choose.
She also cited "stigma from others," a "lack of positive representation in media and culture," and the absence of "legal protections for polyamorous families" as other challenges.
Despite these obstacles, Hartless says her family has come a "very long way" by focusing on communication and using counseling as a resource. For her, the pros of polyamory far outweigh the cons.
"Our kids have so much love and opportunity with having extra trusting adults to talk to, spend time with, and take them to extra curricular activities," she said. "They quite literally always have a parent around."