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Raemon comments on Poly marriage? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Adapting the law on man-woman unions to also cover man-man unions does not involve any technical hurdles on the legal side, it's just applying existing laws in a slightly different context.
Marriage with more than two people, however, would require many changes to the text of the law (except in places where the law already covers polygamy).
This. Poly marriage is also more complicated because of child custody (in particular given the increased instability of a relationship the more people who are part of it). Also significant is that there are multiple kinds of poly arrangements and covering them all in a useful legal way is difficult.
I say this as someone generally supportive of poly relationships. Eventually it'll be a fight worth having, but I'd wait for the current struggles over gay marriage to die down (I give that about 20-30 years)
It has died some time ago in more socially progressive countries, but none recognize a group marriage, so, I agree, clearly social mores are not the only or even the main issue.
My guess would be that, just like in Physics, in Law the general n-body problem (ahem) is much less tractable than the two body problem. I suspect that there are many relevant legal issues that have not been even touched and will have to be addressed, before a reasonable group marriage framework can be constructed. Child custody/support/rights, potential for spousal abuse are some of those.
On general grounds, one would also expect the stability of such a union be much less than that of a 2-person one, thus reducing the need for legal protection. Most polys freely admit that they have a "primary" and one or more secondaries, who are not in an equal position. Again, the analogy with orbital motion is quite interesting, but I will not push it further.
I don't have statistics on poly relationships, and I doubt that anyone has good statistics.
Still, so far as raising children is concerned, I think you're conflating two situations. A poly relationship might be considered unstable if one or more people leaves, but if a core group remains raising children, it might be more stable for children than a couple that breaks up.