[imagesource: Matthew Hamon/The Guardian]

The idea of procreating without the need for marriage isn’t new.

Back in the 1920s, British suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst argued that in order for women to claim economic, social, and sexual freedom, they should be able to procreate outside of the confines of marriage.

This, she said, would abolish the so-called ‘moral’ constraints placed on women advanced by the laws of inheritance.

It would allow them to conduct their lives, and raise their children as they see fit, without the then accepted norms that when a woman married, she served her husband, took his name, and became subject to him.

(Even today, some people are struggling to let go of this way of doing things.)

Fast forward to 2020, and a trend that has been on the rise for the past five or so years, where partners are adopting family structures beyond the nuclear family model.

Per The Guardian, Professor Susan Golombok, author of We Are Family, a new book examining the wellbeing of children in these structures, has been mapping families created via IVF, sperm and egg donation, and surrogacy, as well as lesbian mother families, gay father families, and single mothers by choice.

She and her team are now following 50 families to study the dynamics of this new family model.

She says: “It was a gradual realisation that this was a new phenomenon picking up speed. The main question for us is how does this relationship between parents, where there is no romantic relationship, develop, with each other and the child? Is the relationship breakdown rate higher or lower? Very early findings suggest that how well the parents communicate with each other and collaborate over childcare seems to make a big difference.”

“It is possible, though, that taking away romantic baggage could even make for a more stable environment.”

Apps have even popped up that connect people looking to have children without romantic relationships.

Jenica Anderson and Stephan DuVal (above) met on Modamily, which, according to the app’s description, “empowers [their] members by connecting them to a global community who are all ready to have kids, whether it be in a romantic, co-parenting or known donor relationship”.

Anderson says that when they first met up “it felt like a date”:

“Except we could be totally honest about wanting to have a kid soon, without the goofiness and flirting of a first date. You’re looking to achieve a common goal.”

She wanted the benefits of a two-parent upbringing for her child without the complications of a romantic relationship.

“I really didn’t want a romantic connection; I thought it would convolute things,” she says. “I’d seen the traditional recipe not work out. [Stephan and I] had a shared sense of direction – raising a happy child who makes it through life OK. My ex and I are very amicable co-parents, and that showed me there were real strengths to doing it this way.

I wanted to tap into the stuff that’s good for the kid – a functional dynamic and a stable life. Stephan and I asked ourselves, ‘Can we be allies and ensure that any future kid gets the best?’ If it was just about parenting, we could remain pragmatic. I wanted to grow my family with somebody who wanted to be a doting father and wasn’t just having a baby for me.”

A year after their first meeting, their daughter was born.

Apps like Modamily invest a great deal in moderation to filter out scammers. For example, if a man specifies that he will only help a woman conceive through natural insemination, he is treated with suspicion, and his profile is closed down.

While Anderson and DuVal did end up becoming a couple, a number of users on the site have sustained the co-parenting without romance dynamic.

Unfortunately, people choosing to have children in this way are still treated with contempt by some who are committed to the old way of doing things.

A reminder that divorce often amounts to co-parenting…

You can read more from couples who have chosen to co-parent outside of a relationship here.

[source:guardian]