Exclusive | Im a polyamorous parent Im a better mom now that my kids know the truth about my unrestrictive lifestyle

For Nichole Gonzalez, giving birth to her now one-year-old daughter in late 2023 was a family affair. As she pushed, her husband, Frank, held her left leg — while their girlfriend, Sasha, held the right. “It was important to have both of my partners in the delivery room,” Gonzalez, 29, a stay-at-home mama of two from northern New Jersey, told The Post. As a polyamorous parent to both her little girl and a nine-year-old son, she’s in the growing number of mothers and fathers exploring consensual non-monogamy (CNM). It’s an unrestrictive relationship style that allows couples to pursue sexual and romantic connections beyond the confines of a two-person partnership. The avant-garde arrangement is an everyday setup for roughly one in five adults in both the U.S.and Canada, per a 2024 report from the University of Quebec, which noted, “Among those who practice CNM, many have children.”Investigators interviewed 18 children of polyamorous parents to find that “these children generally appreciated their parents’ partners.”“These adults were seen by our participants as someone who contributed positively to their lives,” wrote study authors, adding that the kids enjoyed fun, fuller lives with mom and/or dad’s supplemental sweetie. However, recent data via Cornell University, notes, “…Polyamorous families can exert positive and negative impacts on their children.” The findings indicate that pups raised in polyamorous families are susceptible to a number of disadvantages, including “the potential loss of [an] adult partner relationships once a romantic relationship terminates and societal stigmatization.”But Gonzalez told The Post she and her partners are poly-parenting for keeps.The holistic healer, said her brood — whose names she chose to omit for privacy — even considers Sasha, 29, a third parent. “My son said, ‘I like her name, but I’d like to call her mom,’” Gonzalez remembered. The tike was seven when she and F...