Here's what it's like in a polygamous family

I spoke with Joe Darger, husband to three women and father of 25 kids

Alina, Valerie, Joe and Vicki Darger. Credit: Joe Darger

If you enjoy this newsletter, I’d be eternally grateful if you shared it with a friend.

The premise of this newsletter is that the conventional nuclear family concept is not serving everyone well enough. And implicit in that argument is the idea that there must be something better. I suspect that “something” is different for different people, but one of my goals here is to explore alternatives of all shapes and sizes.

And so for this week I’m excited to bring you an interview with Joe Darger. Joe lives along Utah’s Wasatch Front (as do I) with his three wives Alina, Vicki, and Valerie. In total, there are 25 kids in the family.

I first met various members of the Darger family years ago when I was a reporter on the polygamy beat at the Salt Lake Tribune. At the time, members of the family could often be found at the Utah legislature advocating to end laws that criminalized polygamy — an effort that ultimately succeeded. Along the way, the Dargers became well-known for their advocacy and for a book they wrote documenting their lives.

Joe was recently kind enough to take some time out of his day to chat with me on the phone about how his family dynamic works. What follows is a transcript of that conversation that has been edited for length and clarity.

Jim Dalrymple II: So for readers who aren't familiar with your family's story, give me the quick background. 

Joe Darger: Vicki and Alina and I all got married at the same time and we just had our 31st anniversary. And then Valerie came in with five step kids and we'll celebrate our 11th anniversary this year. And then we've had 20 biological children between all of us. 

How many kids are still at home?

It seems to always be changing. Right now there's eight at home. Really small for us. It's kind of weird. The get-togethers are getting bigger, but the day to day is getting smaller. 

Tell me why you chose polygamy, as opposed to monogamy?

So for us it's part of our culture and our religious background and our upbringing. In my family, polygamy goes back six generations. We all came from a fundamentalist break off of the Mormon, or LDS, church. So that's where we came from and why we chose this way¹. 

I wanted to get into the economic and financial side of the family. I know for a lot of people who are in monogamous relationships, a lot of times they don't have support circles. Or they're stressed out because their job took them away from their family. Or childcare is too expensive. So talk to me about how your family supports itself. How do you put bread on the table?

For us, it’s an economic coop really. We're to the point now where there's fewer kids at home and now Valerie is working full time. And Alina has worked full time for a number of years. We've always had a number of businesses. I’m an entrepreneur so I've had a lot of businesses that I do, so I'm the primary bread winner. And Vicki is kind of the stay at home mom. She's the one with the youngest kids and the one that manages the schooling and the kids at home. And she also does some accounting for me, so she'll work part time and do kind of the internal family accounting as well as the accounting for my businesses. 

Valerie has had her own cleaning business for a long time. She now works full time and my teenagers run that cleaning business. A lot of our teenagers have been able to work with our family businesses so that helps. And we feel like it teaches them a good work ethic.

What field of work is Alina in?

She is actually the director of our non-profit, Cherish Families. She used to work full time before that but now that's really a full time job. She's got 16 employees and that organization has just exploded. 

Did having a larger group of partners open any doors? Were there any opportunities anyone was able to pursue because there were more people involved?

Yeah, we were always able to have somebody at home with the children while someone else was working. The other thing it's done is its allowed us in our family business — for example the cleaning business — to cover all the contracts there between everyone rotating. That made a big difference, being able to have interchangeable parts. 

I think a lot of what hurts women in the workplace and why, besides prejudice, women don't get paid the same as men is that they tend to take more time off for child rearing. And that hurts them in their careers.

So I think for us it's kind of been an advantage. So for our cleaning business, we do doctors’ and dentists’ offices. And we're just very consistent. We don't miss because, with the family, it's always covered. 

You were talking a second ago about the wage gap, and it reminded me of the first time I met members of your family when I was a Tribune reporter. At the time, briefly in passing, someone mentioned that polygamy could be almost a more feminist approach. I've always been intrigued by the comment. Talk to me about how that works. 

I think historically, it's no accident that Mormon polygamist women were the earliest suffragists. We weren't the first state, because they wouldn't let us be a state, but we were the first territory to allow women to vote. Victorian ideas of marriage were very much about a contract and a woman losing her rights to property and giving them up to her husband. Early polygamy challenged some of those assumptions. 

I think in today's world it's not unlike that. There's certainly the stereotype, and well earned, of the dominant patriarchal man controlling women, as you see in Warren Jeffs. But I also think in our experience, for many women, it's been much more freeing. 

The thing I think is, it's allowed more freedom to pursue careers. With Valerie, I don't know that she typically would be an entrepreneur type. But being able to have her own business allowed her to grow and interact with clients. As a mother of nine children, I don't know if she typically would have been able to do that. Or she would've been able to, but it would have been more challenging. Whereas now she had multiple women who were partners in that and supported her in that. 

Speaking of the kids, in terms of childcare, structurally how does that work? Do all the kids see themselves as siblings of each other? Do they tend to stick in groups with their biological mothers?

In our family were all in one household. They've been raised so that they say, "hey, we have multiple mothers." But the biological ties are very strong. You don't break those. So everyone knows who their biological mom is but they also know that they have multiple mothers. It's shared child rearing. 

Especially when they get to be teenagers, sometimes it’s the non-biological mom that has more of an influence and is able to kind of break through that separation that teenagers typically go through with their parents. 

I read recently that you’ve added houses to your property. Who lives there and how does that work?

I've started doing tiny homes. So I've been manufacturing tiny homes, really trying to find solutions to this affordable housing thing. I have so many of my kids in their 20s and seeing how hard it is to get into homeownership now, I've tried to create that as a home builder and developer. That's something I'm passionate about.

It also creates some rental income. So they can pay rent to cover the cost of building, but then it goes back into the family and we pay it forward. 

How many are there now?

We have three other residences nearby. And I'm about to acquire my neighbor’s property and create a new subdivision where we'll hopefully get a few more of my kids nearby. 

We affectionately call it the compound, because that's what we always got accused of ². My kids call it the “pound.” All my older kids who have moved out will say, “are we going to have a party at the pound? Are we going meet at the pound?” So that's what our residence is called. 

Long term do you think most of the kids will want to live nearby? 

No. Some of them want to live as far away as they can I think [laughs]. Not really, I say that tongue in cheek. 

But everyone is different. Not all of them are of the same faith as us, which is fine, that's not a problem. But a lot of it has to do with who they end up with as their significant others. 

I know one of my sons who has moved away, part of it is he is pursuing a career. But I think part of it for him was, he wanted to kind of be away from the culture for a while. To experience some time outside of Utah. But then they're talking about having kids and it's interesting and he said, “I think we might come back to the West Coast, if not Utah.”

You mentioned that not everyone has the same opinions or shares the same faith, but also that you're close. How have you cultivated that closeness and prevented rifts from forming? 

I think that need for trust and respect and communication allows us to really keep those relationships. We've had issues with politics, where some of my kids are supporters of Trump and some of them are supporters of Biden. So all the divisive things you see in every family. 

But I think in the end we put it all aside and say family first. And that's been kind of the culture. And I think that has made all the difference. Any time you have a big group of people, they’re going to see the world in all kinds of different ways. And I think it's for the parents to set that tone. If the parents are so set in their ways that their’s is the only right way and everyone else chose the wrong way, I think that starts setting those divisions. 

We learned early on that whoever my kids choose to love and whatever religion they choose to follow, we're going to accept them for that. That's the tone we set and I think they reciprocate that back to us and their siblings. 

I know you get asked about polygamy a lot, and I’m curious what you tell people. Do you recommend it?

No, I don't recommend it. Very few of my kids have followed it. I recommend that people embrace the principles of what relationships can be and that they construct some kind of family and extended community. Maybe that means reaching out to your neighbors and truly having them be a part of the extended family. 

But I think for us, having the religious background and having some context certainly made a difference. And I don't recommend everyone just go try polygamy.

Plural marriage is a magnifier. I don't think it's any worse or easier than monogamy, other than it just multiplies things. So if it's working well, it'll work much better. And if you're having some flaws or faults or things that are a struggle in monogamy, they're certainly going to be magnified in polygamy. 

Sometimes people think it's going to solve their failed ideas of relationships. But it's like, if you can't make monogamy work don't try polygamy. 

But at the same time, I think it's a viable option. People are exploring different kinds of relationships, and being open to deconstructing what you call family is certainly viable. People should be open to that and open to different ways that people are constructing themselves as family.

Thank you for making it to the end of this interview. If you’ve enjoyed Nuclear Meltdown, consider sharing it with a friend.

Also, come join us in discussing these topics further on Facebook.

News to read this week:

What Workism Is Doing to Parents

"From both sides, policies are being hawked to a credulous public as family-friendly, even though persuading people to focus even more on work is a terrible way to help family life.

[…]

Put bluntly, people who value work more have fewer kids. And while some readers may see this as a good thing, the shortfall in births will lead to significant negative economic effects.”

The U.S. Birthrate Has Dropped Again. The Pandemic May Be Accelerating the Decline.

“It could be good news if women feel like they have more control over their fertility,” she said. “But it is not good news if having a child is just becoming harder than it was because jobs are more precarious, and families just can’t make it work in a minimally functional way.”

The Pandemic Prompted Them to Return Home—Now They’re Staying

"Instead of young adults emphasizing independence, jobs and mobility, they experience a renewed need to feel grounded. 'Spending less time in cars and on planes and with distant acquaintances makes us rethink the balance of our lives.'"

1. As I’ve written before, my own ancestors were also Mormon polygamists. The mainstream Mormon church officially disavowed polygamy in 1890, and the practice gradually petered out in the church over the next several decades. However, a number of offshoot branches rejected that disavowal, and eventually started their own churches. The best known of these is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), which for years made headlines for the misdeeds of its leader Warren Jeffs. In some cases, the polygamous women who wear distinctive pastel prairie dresses are affiliated with the FLDS church. But there are numerous other branches, as well as independent families who are not strictly part of a specific congregation. And while the FLDS branch is known for being relatively isolationist, some other modern non-FLDS polygamists who are not — and live otherwise mainstream lives.

2. Though I’ve frequently used the word “compound” in this newsletter, it’s sometimes a more fraught term when applied to polygamous families. I’ve spoken with some polygamists in the past, for example, who chafe at the word because they felt it made them seem more isolationist than they really are. For example, I remember one time when I was in Southern Utah talking to a young woman and mentioned her family’s “compound.” “It’s just a normal house with a normal fence around it,” she corrected me.