The Distribution of Care
Uniting romance, family, and friends
Interamory: the practice of stewarding one’s relationships as an interdependent network of care.
Monogamy: the custom that allows a person to be legally married to only one spouse, or only one spouse at a time (serial monogamy).1
Polyamory: having or desiring multiple intimate relationships at the same time with the full knowledge and consent of all parties involved.2
- 1"Monogamy." Encyclopædia Britannica, www.britannica.com/topic/monogamy. Accessed 17 Sept. 2026.
- 2"Polyamory." Encyclopædia Britannica, www.britannica.com/topic/polyamory. Accessed 17 Sept. 2026.
Interamory is not intended to be about romance, though the word might call to mind relational projects like monogamy or polyamory. But because romantic connection is widely discussed and represented in many cultures, it is a familiar starting point for understanding how care moves through you and around you.
Imagine the caring connections that exist between people you know. What forms of care are permitted? What forms are care are expected? What forms of care are taboo? If you imagine monogamy as two people becoming each other's main providers of care, it can demonstrate a distribution of care that is highly centralized. Compared to interactions with other people, monogamy expects most interactions of care to occur between two partners. Polyamory opens up a more distributed model: while particulars will vary, the type and frequency of caring interactions can be more freely shared with others. Interamory is concerned with describing these different distributions within and beyond romantic connections.
The nuclear family is another distribution of care that many people are familiar with. Derived from the latin word for "nut," and especially the inner core of a nut, it is specifically organized as "a group of people who are united by ties of partnership and parenthood and consisting of a pair of adults and their socially recognized children" (Britannica, n.d.). By most conventions, the nuclear family expects care to be more centralized within its defined members than without. I like to contrast this distribution against the idea of a field family, which you can take atomically (as a contrast between atomic nuclei and electromagnetic fields), or agriculturally (juxtaposing the image of a nut with an image of stewarded land):Field family: a group of people who are united by enacted care towards an individual.In the field model, each individual is the source of their own family, and inclusion or exclusion is determined by the attention, support, and consideration that they receive from others. Because this is a subjective model, articulating your felt experience of care becomes an important skill in cultivating stable family relationships. And this is why interamory is organized around care: every relationship framework expects a distribution of care, and interamory is to simply concerned with attending to this distribution explicitly. Doing so will allow you to steward your ecology towards a shape that sustains you.
Imagine the caring connections that exist between people you know. What forms of care are permitted? What forms are care are expected? What forms of care are taboo? If you imagine monogamy as two people becoming each other's main providers of care, it can demonstrate a distribution of care that is highly centralized. Compared to interactions with other people, monogamy expects most interactions of care to occur between two partners. Polyamory opens up a more distributed model: while particulars will vary, the type and frequency of caring interactions can be more freely shared with others. Interamory is concerned with describing these different distributions within and beyond romantic connections.
The nuclear family is another distribution of care that many people are familiar with. Derived from the latin word for "nut," and especially the inner core of a nut, it is specifically organized as "a group of people who are united by ties of partnership and parenthood and consisting of a pair of adults and their socially recognized children" (Britannica, n.d.). By most conventions, the nuclear family expects care to be more centralized within its defined members than without. I like to contrast this distribution against the idea of a field family, which you can take atomically (as a contrast between atomic nuclei and electromagnetic fields), or agriculturally (juxtaposing the image of a nut with an image of stewarded land):Field family: a group of people who are united by enacted care towards an individual.In the field model, each individual is the source of their own family, and inclusion or exclusion is determined by the attention, support, and consideration that they receive from others. Because this is a subjective model, articulating your felt experience of care becomes an important skill in cultivating stable family relationships. And this is why interamory is organized around care: every relationship framework expects a distribution of care, and interamory is to simply concerned with attending to this distribution explicitly. Doing so will allow you to steward your ecology towards a shape that sustains you.