Peak Guardian: We’re a queer couple looking for co-parents to raise a child with

[RoyalCorgi]

This falls squarely in the "only in the Guardian" category. A special mention to:

"In our experience, co-parenting seems to overwhelmingly appeal to cis women, trans men and non-binary people assigned female at birth."

If only there was a collective word for that group of people.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/13/queer-couple-co-parents-raise-child

it’s just so me, me, me!

Fair point. It’s also all very ‘queer’ and gendery. That language is confusing and stupid when trying to define and iron out a complex problem.

Co parenting can work really well- I know a lesbian couple and a gay couple who brought up two children together, now in their 20s and very well adjusted. The lesbian couple had the main family home and the men lived nearby and were very involved. So more like extra parents really, seemed like a good set up. It’s certainly a more ethical way of parenting as a gay couple than surrogacy.

The annoying thing about this article is the idea that it’s anything new.

Absolutely. Here’s hoping that they lose interest and move on to the next fad before a baby is conceived

Kids need clear boundaries and a certain sense of stability.

It doesn't matter what the circumstances are but having three or more parents who all want parental responsibility from the word go, is going to be much harder than with two. ESPECIALLY if they don't all live at the same address.

A kid who has two homes, is inevitably going to have less stability than one with one home.

And whilst you might want to be inclusive, the problem with setting this up as a 'normal' home situation which others should make a positive choice to adopt is it's just not centring that child. It's centring the parents first.

And unfortunately more adults also increases the safeguarding risk. Not because of sexuality but because there's more to go wrong due to basic maths.

I think this desire to be biological parents over and above all else is part of the problem though.

I know many will think the idea of a male and female parent as discriminatory or dated or overly conservative but actually I don't think you can get away from it being the optimum for kids. Not that it's perfect - there's plenty of terribly abusive families. But the pitfalls of having maybe four parents from the start are huge. What happens if a couple split? How do you split time between four individuals for example? Who loses out?

I find it concerning. Not to the same degree as surrogacy but definitely in need of going into it without a massively naive and idealistic mindset. The idea of living happily ever after that this paints just isn't realistic.

I suspect some of the statistical problems that come with living in two homes are really the hangover from the original break up (and any subsequent/step parent relationships).

I imagine some of the problems can be mitigated by careful planning (rather than adapting to post divorce life) and some problems will be far less likely to occur, simply because there is no soured relationship to overcome.

I agree with Clymene’s point that break down of two parental relationships has the potential of causing a 2x the issues but there are plenty of ex step parents who are fantastic parental figures for way beyond the relationship’s life span

(eg I live a few doors down from my DD’s dad and that has been brilliant for my DD because she can pop in and out of both houses and pick up forgotten things and never feels isolated or left out or ‘sent away’. This would not work for divorced parents who are less peaceful than we are but would potentially be great for a coparenting set up where the parents were never in a romantic relationship at all).

Parenting is messy and break ups happen and not making babies with abusive arseholes (while blinded by infatuation!) is a good start.
If lesbian and gay couples chose co parents carefully then I a) think this is a better option than commercial, anon, donors because the kid knows where they came from and b) no worse (and potentially much better) than her family breakdown.

(I get instant Ick from men who provide sperm outside of medical/clinic settings and can’t think about that scenario rationally)

By all measurable metrics the children of lesbian parents seem to do brilliantly so I can’t fully agree that 1 mam, 1 dad, one household is always best (perhaps because living with men doesn’t seem to be particularly pleasant IME/observing the relationships board! Although I still have a tiny amount of optimism based on a few examples)

Not sure we have the stats for gay male parents yet as up until fairly recently, not many 2 dad households would have zero mother involvement? My instincts says babies/children need female parents or parental
figures/nanna (in the case of mother loss via bereavement or state intervention) but I am willing to adjust that opinion is time and data prove me wrong. Maybe a few decades of difficult child-raising will make gay men more favourable to coparenting rather than surrogacy!

Finding a coparent via swiping online seems to me to be as risky as having a baby very early in a romantic relationship (only without the attraction goggles and perhaps a bit more fiscal sensibility) whereas in the ‘old times’ gay coparenting was usually built on top of a pre existing friendship?

I dunno. The woman in the article seems annoying and unrealistic but I’m not going to throw the coparenting arrangement baby out with the blue-hair-dye-stained-bathwater.

(I’m very anti surrogacy though. It’s luxury baby trafficking).

And why do so many of them write for the guardian? As Hello is to Celebrity self advertisement the Guardian is to earnest lentil weaving parents…….

Where the gender woo talk in that article confused me the most is she refers to herself as Queer. Which I read as her partner is trans but perhaps I made that up? Either a woman living as a trans man or a man living as a trans woman. Just to add to the complexity.

It seems to me that healthy co parenting in this sort of situation could be a blessing for all involved but I know it's difficult. DH and I used to have a male gay couple who were quite keen on a situation like this but were very conscious that it wasn't easy to find.

Eleanor seems to think a child is some kind of Costa del Sol timeshare apartment

Agree with all of that.

Many many children have 'blended' families or live between two households, sometimes more. A lot of the children I know are brought up largely by grandparents.

A couple we know were asking on SM for exactly that. Not one male friend, gay or straight, was interested - not because of not wanting children, being scared of CMS or being tied down, but because of the emotional impact of bringing a child into the world where they could not be 'a proper Dad' to them; the emotional impact both on them and on a child who wouldn't have what they either had themselves as a child or wished they'd had. And because they felt there would be nothing stopping the legal parent from cutting them off once they'd got a baby/new partner/didn't want them around anymore.

Their refusal was because they all felt it wasn't in the interests of either man or child emotionally.

That doesn't surprise me @NeverDropYourMooncup. There are definitely people out there who want to be known donors, as there are social media groups set up for exactly this purpose so potential donors can meet potential recipients. However, it's not for everyone and so it doesn't seem unusual that nobody in a particular person's friendship network would be interested. I imagine those same friends would have no interest in donating sperm in a UK clinic via donor ID-release at 18, but clearly some men out there do.

"In our experience, co-parenting seems to overwhelmingly appeal to cis women, trans men and non-binary people assigned female at birth."

If only there was a collective word for that group of people.

They must have had a word count to hit

'Co-parenting has become fairly common in countries such as the Netherlands and Israel; the former could soon pass legislation allowing more than two people to be named as a child’s legal guardian.'

This let stands out to me the most. Based on examples just on MN, things often go really wrong when 2 parents split. Imagine having 4 parents and they all split and find new partners. Imagine splitting holidays. Imagine both couples never split but they fall out with each other.

It's a mess.

I can see potential advantages to having four parents in the event of fall-outs and splits, too.

Potential for neutral parties. Potential for peace makers. Potential for a safe haven if two parents fall out acrimoniously.

It very often happens that divorced parents subsequently split up from new partners. I don't really see the difference.

In our experience, co-parenting seems to overwhelmingly appeal to cis women, trans men and non-binary people assigned female at birth.

Um... Is that the longest way ever to say "women"? We could ask for more suggestions and award a prize to the most roundabout!

Without any exhaustive studies on this, I can only guess why.

Not very good at guessing is she? Perhaps it has not occured to these hopeful female couples that all they offer a man is a side role in their family instead of a starring role in his own. I do know of a lesbian couple who did something a bit like this (though not through advertising), but very few people actively seek to be the third wheel in someone else's marriage no matter whether the couple want you just for sex or just for parenting. Parenting is as big a thing as sex (maybe they don't know that?) and the emotions are no easier to compartmentalise.

Then again, maybe what these ladies have to offer could suit some of the dads that women complain about on MumsNet. Have they considered advertising on a cycling forum? Or golfing?

Have they considered advertising on a cycling forum? Or golfing?

Indeed.

Advertisement:

Do you want the fun and joy of being a dad without being pressured to be responsible, relieve the mental load of its mother or to sexually commit to a woman?

they felt there would be nothing stopping the legal parent from cutting them off once they'd got a baby/new partner/didn't want them around anymore.

I think there needs to be a new kind of legal agreement template drawn up for this kind of thing, so that kids can still have only two legal parents, but others who are biological or emotionally invested in raising the child can’t just be cut off by them.

The possibility of changing the law to have four (or more?) parents seems the most concerning to me.

But the tendency to just assume whatever odd arrangements that suit adults are fine for kids seems pretty well established among progressive people.

I tend to think that there will always be a limited number of people looking for a scenario like this, because of the potential legal, social, and emotional minefields. Anyone with any maturity can easily imagine all kinds of things going wrong. All the more if they are not people you have a long term friendship with, but randoms.

Becoming roommates with a stranger can be fraught enough, most people would never be willing to go in on purchasing a house with one. Becoming co-parents is that much more of a commitment at every level, at least you can sell a house and never think about it again.

Also - maybe an aside, but having grown up in the era where divorces became very common, most kids who split their time between homes stopped doing so in the teen years. They didn't like it. And that's what I still observe today. Moving between two households is stressful, and often impractical, even when you have good relationships with both parties.

So gay and lesbian people shouldn’t be parents?

This isn’t a new idea, and there’s several decades of research on outcomes from children with lesbian mothers and gay parents, including those in coparenting arrangements. Overall, children in gay and lesbian families are as psychologically well adjusted as children in heterosexual families- there’s no difference. What predicts problems are generic factors like parenting stress, conflict, relationship quality, not the family set up. So that’s why children who’ve been through divorce have worse outcomes overall - they’ve experienced a lot of conflict and poor relationships in the family. There’s zero guarantee with any set up that won’t happen, but being a heterosexual couple rather than a gay or lesbian couple (or coparenting set up) doesn’t make any intrinsic difference for children’s well-being.

That isn't what I'm saying at all.

But carry on.

You said this- “I know many will think the idea of a male and female parent as discriminatory or dated or overly conservative but actually I don't think you can get away from it being the optimum for kids.”

My point was that isn’t true- the quality of family relationships and lack of stress is more important for child adjustment and well-being than being brought up by a heterosexual couple.

My first sentence was perhaps a bit overly dramatic!

And I said they needed to give a lot more thought rather than pretending it was all smiles and I didn't think it was often child centred to add extra people to the mix. And you can argue the same with regards to many step parents too.

What selfish people.

They would be better off with a cat. That could go to a cat hotel while they were on holiday.

Exactly what I was thinking, @Clymene.