Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage (25 page)

Having six kids of my own and another eleven children who come and go from my house is both fun and challenging. Over the years, my sister wives and I have had to figure out how to combine our different parenting styles into a cohesive vision that our kids completely understand. As our kids grow up and mature, we can see the benefits of our many different perspectives, which have all contributed to how well rounded and well adjusted our children are. However, as the kids have gotten older, the difference in my sister wives’ and my parenting styles has grown more apparent.

While all four of our households have more or less the same rules, the enforcement can be quite different! For example, none of us permit jumping on the furniture—but Meri’s couches will last her entire lifetime, while Janelle’s were broken after a month. Mine get really, really dirty, really, really fast, while Robyn’s will remain pristine for a long time.

In the same vein, there’s no eating in the living room—in any of our houses. Meri’s living room is spotless, without a crumb to be found. Janelle has food spots on her carpet and couches, and I find wrappers shoved in between the couch cushions. Occasionally,
I even find plates and forks under my couches. (Robyn is in the “hidden wrapper” camp as well, but not to my extent!)

In many ways, we’re lucky that not all of us react the same way to issues with our children. There are times when it seems impossible for me to connect with my kids, so I really lean on my sister wives for help. Meri has a sweet way of engaging Ysabel. She responds to her lovingly and patiently, and Ysabel is sweet back to her and loves Meri. The other day I picked up Ysabel at Meri’s house and she told me that Meri was her “bestie.” I adore Hunter and he is always welcome in my home. During his difficult adjustment to living in Vegas, he always knew he could come to my house and I would just be there for him. I totally understood why he was feeling troubled—his world was out of his control and he needed Truely time. In the same way, Robyn has been wonderful for Mykelti. She
gets
her, and this has been so important for me because not everyone in the family fully understood her unique outlook. At times, she has really struggled with her identity, and I know it helps her to have family other than Mom to confide in. While all of the wives pitch in to help with the kids however they can, I also go out of my way to interact with my children on a one-to-one basis. I think that individual time is really important in a family as large as ours. We have reading times and time for games—my kids are my favorite hobby.

I regularly organize outings for my group of six, even if they’re simple treats. We get ice cream or rent a movie and all watch together in my room. Back in Utah, we went to my mom’s house every Sunday. I’ve tried to keep the tradition of a Sunday expedition now that we’re in Las Vegas, but since the traffic here is terrible, we often keep it local—one week we drove out to the desert, and another, we all went bowling downtown. And of course we still do things with the whole family. Since we are away from our church, we worship in our homes instead—we have a family service, followed by a family dinner, which gives
us some time to hang out together afterward. In the evenings we usually play games, read, or watch movies—the normal stuff that all families do together.

Since I spend so much time with my kids, I feel that I’m quite tuned into their needs. This allows me to establish realistic punishments on a case-by-case basis. I choose consequences to fit the situation. When Aspyn leaves the car messy, she has to clean it out and vacuum it. When Mykelti wears immodest clothes, I take them away. When Paedon gets bad grades, he doesn’t play Xbox. When Gwendlyn picks on Ysabel, she does Ysabel’s chores, and when Ysabel is a brat, she can’t spend time with me.

One of the major problems I am having these days is with how my older girls, Aspyn and Mykelti, dress. They insist on wearing shirts with low necklines that show an indecent amount of skin. All of the adults agree that even a suggestion of cleavage way oversteps the boundaries of what is appropriate, but the girls keep trying to get away with revealing too much.

If my sister wives and I were to address this problem separately, this is how we would handle it. Meri wouldn’t let the girls buy the shirt in the first place. Janelle wouldn’t notice the low shirt unless it was unbelievably drastic, but then she’d tell them it was inappropriate. Robyn would give them a lecture on purity, while Meri would want them to express themselves while still remaining within the rules of our family. I just look at them, groan, and ask them to change their shirt or pull it up so it covers more skin. Recently, I’ve hidden all of the girls’ shirts with low necklines—but they keep finding new ones. Argh!

The neckline issue is one that we all agree on as a family; we just have different ways of addressing it. But we don’t always see eye-to-eye on other parenting issues. If some of the moms don’t agree with how another sister wife is raising her own kids, we may take the liberty of giving her our two cents’ worth, but this is rare. However, if I have a problem or a concern with one of my
kids and don’t know how to handle it, I usually ask another wife’s opinion. One of the best things about living in a polygamous marriage is that when I’m unsure about how to approach a situation, chances are one of my sister wives has some great advice—or has lived through the same thing!

One of the things we are all working through together as a family is the dating question. We have a lot of teenagers who are testing the boundaries of what is permissible. As adults, we have to band together to give them constructive guidance so the kids can understand the consequences of taking on too much before they are ready.

As a general rule, before they are sixteen, the kids can hang out with friends and go to dances or movies as long as there is nothing romantic going on. If one of the kids is “crushing” on someone and he or she is not sixteen, they can’t go out with that person. Once they are sixteen, the kids can group date. However, they have to wait until they are eighteen for individual couple dates.

As much as we want to strictly enforce these rules, there are always gray areas. When she was fifteen, Mykelti wanted to go to a dance with a friend. She promised that there was nothing romantic at all between this boy and her. They were purely platonic friends. Kody and I agreed to meet him. Then we took her phone from her and read all of her text messages to this boy in order to make sure there was no “crushing” going on. One we were certain that Mykelti and this boy were nothing more than friends, we allowed her to go to the dance.

As it turned out, I had to be out of town for her dance. So I asked Mykelti which of my sister wives she wanted to be her “mom” that night and help her get ready. She chose Robyn. Robyn made sure Mykelti’s makeup was done and that she was dressed modestly and her hair was arranged beautifully. (Robyn is great
with makeup and hair.) She sent me a photo of Mykelti before the dance, too. It was a cute bonding experience for all of us.

We also let our teenagers have access to social media to keep in touch with their friends, but we monitor their online presence—I think it’s brilliant for parenting! It helps all the adults keep tabs on the older kids together, and it’s particularly important now that our children are in the public eye. The kids have their own social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and we have a family YouTube channel and a family Web page. Aspyn even has her own computer, which she bought after working a summer job.

I ask the kids not to go on blogs about the show, because some people have no conscience online and say whatever they feel—and sometimes it has really hurt our kids. Once a lady was wrecking on Robyn, and Aspyn came to her defense, saying, “She is one of my moms and I love her, and you don’t know her. You think you know all of us just from watching us for an hour a week, and you judge us with your small amount of knowledge.” I think we all have to learn to deal with controversy in our lives, and the kids are having to learn that now.

Of course, having four households with different house rules does complicate things for the kids. But the pros of this situation far outweigh the cons. I absolutely love that the kids travel from house to house simply because they want to be with one another—or be with other moms. Janelle’s boys, Hunter and Garrison, seem to be over at my house a lot, while Ysabel is often at Robyn’s or Meri’s.

Once the summer ended and pool season came to a close, my house became the house where all the kids hung out. I love hearing them talk all at once and I love joining in their conversations. I think my baby, Truely, is one of the reasons a lot of the kids come over. She’s such a funny baby and always up to
something crazy that makes everyone laugh. I’ve always wanted to have the “hangout house” and now I do!

I’m a little stricter when it comes to organized family activities at my house rather than casual hanging out. Whenever the entire family is coming over for a game day or potluck, I make my kids clean the house first. When this happens, they always grumble and tell me they’d rather be hanging out at Janelle’s.

Over the years, Janelle and I have developed a symbiotic relationship in which we naturally gravitate toward helping each other out. She works and I take care of the house and kids. In Utah, we either did our shopping together or I’d pick up stuff for her or she’d do the same for me. If I was cooking dinner for her kids and didn’t have something, I felt comfortable raiding her fridge or cabinets for what I needed.

Except for our weekly Friday dinners and our Sunday potluck, there has been less overlap between our households since we moved to Vegas. We eat at our own houses most of the time. We tend to congregate more often in groups of two. So many relationships in our family require one-on-one time to properly develop—it’s not something that only happens when you’re adding a new wife to the family. The kids travel back and forth all the time, but the wives are all busy, so we tend to stick to our own houses and work independently. Our family identity has really changed since the move, and it’s sad to think about how we used to interact more often. Now we talk on the phone or have family meetings, but the spontaneity is gone. We have planned meetings, planned lunches. Planned phone calls, blah, blah, blah, boring. I miss all the hanging out, but can’t seem to get myself out of my home in the evenings.

Looking into the future, I would like to move back into a house with a sister wife. I miss the communal aspect of our plural lifestyle. Recently, Janelle and I have been looking at houses together. We are a good team. She is practical and can take care
of the finance, administration, and bills, while I can take care of cooking, cleaning, and crafts. Our two groups of six children are all close in age and would absolutely love to be under one roof again. The only foreseeable problem we are facing is that we need a house with at least nine bedrooms—a mansion, really! But somehow we will make it work. It helps that both Robyn and Meri like having their own space, and prefer to have their own houses. Some people may think that sister wives are all joined at the hip, but we’re a great example of a family in which some people want more closeness and some want more privacy, and we find a way to accommodate everyone.

There will always be changes to our lifestyle. Our family keeps growing and evolving. Logan, our oldest, is already getting college acceptances, and soon Aspyn and Mariah will be, too. Who knows what will happen then? How will we adapt to a slightly emptier nest? I have no idea. But I’m sure whatever happens will be full of surprises, as always.

Since I am a relative newcomer to the Brown family, I do not share as much collective history as the rest of my sister wives do. I’ve never lived under the same roof with any of them, so I’ve been spared a lot of the conflicts and growing pains that my sister wives went through as they figured out how to raise their children together and integrate their lives with one another.

Although I lived in my own house when I married Kody, I still became part of the Brown family in every way—I helped out with all the kids and contributed my paycheck to the family to help pay all the bills. This cooperative living was new for me; as a single working mom, it was usually up to me to make things work financially. Money was tight, but knowing that we had one another’s backs was wonderful.

Since moving to Nevada, things have changed a lot for us and made us more of a team. We all had to contribute to the expenses to relocate our family, which was difficult for each of us. But now that we have a television show, we are essentially working together as a family on a daily basis and we are a team financially. We split all of our money evenly and help each other out. This
has unified us and evened out any sense of financial inferiority or instability any of us may have had previously. We are all equal.

Obviously, in addition to bringing a greater sense of financial equality between us, the show has been beneficial in allowing us to openly attend all of the children’s school activities. The adults know that all the kids love to have any, if not all, of the parents at their recitals, performances, sporting events, and assemblies. If I could, I would go to every school event! Unfortunately, with so many children, this simply isn’t possible. Each week, all the moms and the kids let the family know about what school events are happening and we try to figure out a way for the most parents to attend the most events. When my son Dayton graduated from elementary school, I invited all the parents. To my surprise and delight, they all came. Christine got there first and texted the rest of us, letting us know where the assembly was and that she was saving seats. When we all sat down and Dayton saw us, he starting waving. Sitting in the audience, I was overwhelmed with pride in both my son and my family.