In this brand new world of Covid, there has been a rise in something called “platonic parenting” or “co-parenting”.
This when two people who are not married or even romantically attached decide to have a child together. “If you are single man or woman (regardless of your own sexual orientation) and you want to have a child and share parenting duties co-parenting could well be for you,” says UK-based co-parenting matchmaking website Pollentree.com. “People frequently fail to find the perfect partner with whom to have a child, but the need to have a child remains strong.”
During the first lockdown, these matchmaking sites reported traffic surges of between 30 and 50 per cent as men and women in their 30s and 40s began to lose hope of ever getting to know someone in time to fall in love, marry and have children with them.
Over the past decade, tens of thousands of men and women have signed up to these sites, paying between £100 and £10,000 a year for membership. Coparents.co.uk, which launched in Europe in 2008, has 120,000 members. Modamily, which launched in LA in 2012, has 30,000 international members, 2,000 of whom are British, while UK-based PollenTree.com has 53,000 members, split 60/40 women to men, most of whom are UK-based. Once a couple, or sometimes even three co-parents (!), are matched with each other, the child is then conceived either through artificial insemination or naturally.
During the first lockdown, these matchmaking sites reported traffic surges of between 30 and 50 per cent as men and women in their 30s and 40s began to lose hope of ever getting to know someone in time to fall in love, marry and have children with them. As social distancing continues and subsequent lockdowns are enforced, these sites have never been busier.
In principle, a matchmaking website for people who want to have children is an excellent idea, and much closer to the Christian ideal than Tinder or Hinge or Bumble – apps which seem to be more about finding someone to have sex with. But co-parenting is more clinical than that: the production of the child comes first, while romance, if considered at all, is secondary. Marriage is not even mentioned.
The concept of platonic co-parenting seems horrifying to me from my fortunate position.
I do understand what it means to want to have a child desperately. The desire to have children was something my husband and I discussed very early on. Aged almost 30 when I met him, I wasn’t prepared to waste time on someone who wasn’t sure whether or not they wanted a family. While the concept of platonic co-parenting seems horrifying to me from my fortunate position – married with two children – I cannot say how I would feel now if I were still single and childless with the prospect of meeting someone having been reduced to zero. It is really awful to think that those on the hunt for a partner will have lost a year and possibly more time in which to meet someone new. A friend in her mid-thirties, who finally managed to extricate herself from a difficult and dead-end relationship earlier this year, is now in despair that her time is running out while Covid is not going away.
Furthermore, there have been times when my husband and I have communicated badly on the subject of childcare, which has lead to frustration and arguments. In these moments, platonic co-parenting might have seemed the easier option. When I hear girlfriends say that when their baby is born the plan is to split childcare in half with their husbands, I have to hold my tongue. I am sure there are couples who achieve this, but I am also confident that they are the exception. Co-parenting though would be more like a business deal, with the rules laid out in stone. You do this feed, I do this one. Everything would be split 50 50. How perfect.
Mothering is probably the most difficult thing a woman will do in her life, no matter how helpful her husband is.
But it simply isn’t like that. Mothering is probably the most difficult thing a woman will do in her life, no matter how helpful her husband is (and mine is helpful). And so the importance of doing it with someone who has promised to love you “in sickness and in health” cannot be underestimated. Because there are moments, especially in the first few months after the baby is born, not to mention during pregnancy, when you, the mother, are really sick. Sick from the barbaric ordeal that is childbirth, sick with exhaustion, sick with shock. If my husband had not promised, in the presence of God, to love me until his dying day, I’m not sure we would still be married, let alone have gone on to have a second child (I will spare you the details, but let’s just say I’m not great company when I haven’t slept). Furthermore, it is in the most difficult times, when your toddler wakes up for 10 times in the night for the 10th night running screaming blue murder but can’t explain what is wrong and you are running on empty, where the only thing that makes it better is knowing that you are really, deeply in this together, not just with your husband but also with God. Given the choice, you would not want to do it alone.
Olenka Hamilton is a freelance journalist and supplements editor at the Catholic Herald.
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