A 19th-century utopian religious community built around founder John Humphrey Noyes's doctrine of "complex marriage," communal property, and collective child-rearing.
John Humphrey Noyes founded the Oneida Community in upstate New York in 1848, built on his religious belief in “Perfectionism” — that individuals could become free of sin in this life. The community practiced “complex marriage,” in which all members were considered married to one another, along with communal ownership of property and shared responsibility for raising children.
The community also practiced “stirpiculture,” a selective breeding program Noyes directed personally, and required young members to be sexually initiated by older, post-menopausal members — practices that later scholarship has scrutinized as coercive given the age and power dynamics involved. Facing internal dissent and outside pressure, Noyes fled to Canada in 1879 to avoid prosecution, and the community formally dissolved in 1881, reorganizing as the joint-stock company that became Oneida Limited.