(photo credit: Evan Sung for The New York Times)
I wrote about this trend–and a couple of the websites that facilitate it–in One Parent or Five. Reporter Abby Ellin has done a good story on them today:
“I’ve met so many women in this same situation, who aren’t married and feel like they missed the boat,” said Dawn Pieke, 43, a sales and marketing manager in Omaha, Neb., whose daughter, Indigo, was born last October. Ms. Pieke met Indigo’s father, Fabian Blue, on a Facebook page for Co-parents.net in June 2011, not long after the end of her 10-year relationship. She wanted a baby, but feared doing it alone because, she said, “I didn’t grow up with my dad.” Rather than focusing on a love match, she decided to find someone to share both the financial and emotional stresses of child rearing.
Ellin called me up for my point of view:
…Mr. Weil believes this type of parenting arrangement is completely logical. “When you think about the concept of the village, and how the village was part of child rearing for so many cultures for so many thousands of years, it makes total sense,” he said. “The idea that two people — let alone one person — would do it without the village is really nutty.”
But Elizabeth Marquardt, director of the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan advocacy group in New York, vehemently disagrees. “It’s a terrible idea, deliberately consigning a child to be raised in two different worlds, with parents who did not even attempt to form a loving bond with one another,” she wrote in an e-mail. “As children of divorce will tell you, it’s very difficult to grow up in two different worlds, with your parents each pursuing separate love lives that can be increasingly complex over the course of a childhood.”
Categories: The Future of Parenthood
If I had my druthers Elizabeth you would back off of this one. These are two biological parents committed to their offspring and providing what the child has a right to expect to receive. The child has no right to expect a particular living situation or to expect that their parents will be in love. The best a child can hope for is that their parents will cooperate in raising them. There are people who are married that live separate and raise kids I’m one of them and we fight tooth and nail. It’s not the two separate houses that is the problem there its the toxic nature of the parent’s relationship with one another. Really its a fine idea that involves being responsible for their own children and their romantic relationship is nobody’s business however its societies business to make sure parents take care of their children and to make sure that people are not abandoning their kids or selling them etc.
Why do you use the phrase children of divorce. Divorce did not make the child. The parents divorce one another they don’t divorce their children
Even if it is a bad idea how could you possibly stop it? What law could you pass, what social stigma could you attach to prevent it. These people are the child’s biological parents and you can’t force them to do anything.
Plus you have no idea how this is going to impact the children produced. As far as your concerned this situation is identical to a good divorce. But it’s not. The two adults here are completely focused on the child, there is no broken family involved here. No one left anybody.
I would also point out that this flies in the face of the theory marriage is required for a man to stay connected to and interested in supporting his children.
Hi Mont–follow these coparents over time and see how well they get along and how involved the fathers stay. Articles like these always involve babies or theoretical children.
Since we now know that biology doesn’t count for much, hence the need for marriage to coerce straight adults who have unprotected sex to take care of any children they create, I like the idea of people wanting to have a baby first, and then combining the appropriate genetic material.
Abortion, birth control, marriage, adoption, these all seem like poor remediation for unwanted children. Maybe along with a new conversation about marriage, there needs to be a conversation about ground rules for when straight couples should, or shouldn’t, have sex.
This is what jumped out at me:
“The idea that two people — let alone one person — would do it without the village is really nutty.”
It’s probably not what will jump out at most people, but it’s something that gets under my skin. We don’t live in villages because we don’t want to. We (modern Americans) are individualistic and would not put up with the intrusiveness of small town life for a minute.
I think the idea that this couple will manage to stay together and co-raise a baby is extremely unrealistic. It’s hard enough when you are connected and in love.
So let’s say you have a chance to get the promotion you’ve always wanted, but you need to move? Or what if you want to travel?
What if one of you messes up and gets into debt?
How in the world do you resolve parenting disagreements?
How do you handle the in-laws competing for the child’s attention on the holidays?
How do you resolve different values when your kid is being taught a religion you don’t agree with or you want them to go to a different school?
They aren’t starting out with the conflicts of a divorce, but normal parenting is going to bring you some conflicts. They’re easier to resolve if you love each other.
And then there is the issue that the kid won’t live with two people, it will live in two homes. That has stresses of its own. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but it’s crazy to plan things that way.
But when they start to fight and try to figure out how to share custody and financial support, what role will the law play?
The article is full of nonsense.
“Others say she is missing the point that parenting partnerships actually spare a child the future pain of divorce.”
Bull. Unless the parents are promising to swear off love for the rest of their lives, the child will see her parents get into romantic relationships. Either one of them might get married. They have as good a chance as anyone of getting divorced. Though given the difficulty of normal step-parenting, they could easily be more likely to get divorced than to stay married.
Certainly the child can expect to go through some adjustments as her biological parents who aren’t a couple form couples relationships with other people.
“These types of partnerships also encourage people to strategize on a philosophy of child rearing ahead of time, which many traditional couples don’t do.”
Mostly, I think that you can’t really get what your philosophy will be until you’re doing it. You should talk about it, but your best bet is to find a partner who you are good at fighting with. Someone you can work things out with.
However, I am dubious about the idea that they are really strategizing ahead of time. One couple in the article went forward with self-insemination before they had any legal papers drawn up. That’s irresponsible.
The more I think about it, the more this makes the case for one of the points of marriage. People who have never been parents get together and get some guidance from the rest of the world as to what that means and what rights and responsibilities they need to take on.
Having kids with multiple father can’t help the kids. And I am really grossed out by the idea of a married man having a kid with someone else – is he going to co-parent? There are going to be some huge pulls from his real family if he does.
I’m sorry, if you want to do the rational thing for your future unborn children, you won’t pull this kind of garbage.
“But Ms. Hope, who already has two children aged 22 and 4 from previous co-parenting relationships, said she had only met “desirable, accomplished men” while seeking her third, including a married man whose wife did not want another child but gave him her blessing to have one outside the marriage. (This is California, after all.)
Regarding her next partner, she said: “It’s about whether we can relate to each other, but also about being shrewd and making a really logical, rational decision for my future unborn children.””
@Mont D Law “Even if it is a bad idea how could you possibly stop it? What law could you pass, what social stigma could you attach to prevent it.”
Well, I think if you really had social stigma, it might prevent it.
At the very least, you could talk to people and tell them that this is a bad idea and might mess up their future children. As I said above, I think people don’t always know what they are getting into before they have children or how marriage and parenting work.
I would hope that these business arrangements to raise children might be able to talk to some children of divorced parents about what it’s like to grow up in two households.
OK so here is where my friends and people who I wish were my friends (Elizabeth) are going to part company. Being against gamete donation that involves abandonment of one’s child and one’s parental obligations is not an unreasonable position to take because the offspring of the donor lack the same legal protections as other minors when it comes to what they can and cannot expect from their parents and what they can and can’t expect from the government in terms of benefits afforded to members of the same family.
Being against two parents working out a shared custody agreement is meddlesome. I guess, fine be against it but they are not Violating the human rights of the individuals they are raising. Mathematically their child is not loosing any support or loosing any family members and they are not loosing their true identities and being hijacked to live life as the child of their step parents or quasi step parents and they are not being sequestered from their relatives on either side of the family and their medical records are not falsified and nobody sold them or abandoned them or gave them away as a gift. They get to live life as who they really actually are with two parents who have assumed full responsibility for raising them and any partners or spouses the parents may have or may come to have will be appropriately positioned in the childs life as step parents or quasi step parents whose relationships are not binding upon the child for longer than the marriages last. The child has no missing or unknown siblings to worry about trying to avoid dating and hopefully no missing cousins or other relatives so long as the relatives of those kids were honest on the birth records of all their offspring.
When people are blissfully happily married the issue of which grandparents get Christmas and which get Thanksgiving is torturous at best. When you have kids and they are in school you don’t just take a job with a promotion and move across the country anyway if you can at all avoid it. When your separated you really don’t do that because you would never make it difficult for your child to spend time with their other parent. You think about those things and you act accordingly or you move away from your child and pay the consequences.
There are issues worth fighting the good fight over – those where there are genuine human and civil rights abuses deserve everyone’s attention. Then there are issues that are truly a matter of personal preference. When people talk about donor conception just being another way to form a family and that its wrong to speak out against it they are high someone had to fail their child in order for a third person to get to raise the kid. In instances like this nobody is trying to take the other parent away nobody is trying to thwart their attempts to support their child or have contact with their child nobody is trying to sequester the child. Its not picket fence ideal but its not like they are doing something that costs the child their dignity or identity.
This is one of those things where I’d say raise an eyebrow OK but please don’t group these children or their parents into the same boat as non marital children who suffer real loss of family real loss of identity real loss of physical and financial support real loss of accurate medical records and a sense of authentic existence. Please don’t group these kids with those that feel inadequate for not really being the child their mother wanted to have with her husband or for not being the child that she made alone all by herself. What happens to them is a deep crime and the fact that there are laws that allow people to be treated that way keeps me up at night.
I worry much less about children whose parents think they are valuable just as they are regardless of them not being married to the other parent. I don’t worry so much about kids whose parents like who their kid is and are not ashamed that they are not the child of their spouse, that they are fine just the way they are. I just hope nobody gets side tracked with thinking that these people are doing something that should be against the law. For single people who are running out of time to become parents and don’t have a partner finding someone to have a child with who really wants children is a much better option than a donor. For married people quite frankly that don’t want to adopt and cannot have their own this is a much better option than a donor. Gasp!
Yes. Until we get over the idea that married people deserve to have children that are all their own, we will continue to have people that psychologically cannot wrap their head around letting a spouse have a baby with another man if he sticks around to raise it – but its totally cool if he abandons the baby and then we can lie about who the father really is. All that secrecy and loss just so it looks like married people had a baby is twisted. If your gonna do it then do it in a way the child won’t loose their identity or any of their family. Crazy talk I know. Authenticity is a real fur ball.
Diane Diane stigma? Stigma? For Pete sake your a very smart sharp person did you really just say lets whip up a good old fashioned batch of social stigma to shame people into feeling bad that they don’t live with the other parent of their child?
When people say would I rather that donor offspring were just never born at all I get mad at that trickery. Its just fine that they exist. The problem was not their conception its how they were treated by their parents at birth and how the law treated them thereafter. I’m not trying to ban donor reproduction, I’m trying to make sure that every person born is treated equally upon their arrival by the law and by the people that put them here.
So are children born to parents in the situations the artical describes being treated unfairly that a cause should be taken up to protect them once they exist? If so define the ways in which they are being denied equal protection under the law and I’ll join the campaign to make them equally situated with the rest of the people born.
Non marital children are often treated very unfairly and their causes whether its adoption or donor conception or paternity fraud are all worthy of our attention to make sure the abuses stop now. Shame and stigma is exactly how come people like ‘using’ anonymous gamete donors – they get to pretend that the child is a different person’s kid or just their kid who has no other parent or family. Shaming and stigma about marriage being the best and only place for children to be created is what gives married couples this whacked sense of entitlement to other people’s kids. Just be mindful that shame and sigma can become fuel for the fire you want to put out. I know what y’all want is for only married people in love to get pregnant and have kids but reality is when they can’t they turn to unmarried people for their unwanted children because the children of unmarried parents are not really their children they are only offspring, the parents are the married couple that wants to raise them. Do you see how going too gung ho on marriage being the only way to have kids causes society to think donors are not really parents? Just a wee bit? Just a little? Kinda? For me, try to see there is logic there?
“Even if it is a bad idea how could you possibly stop it? What law could you pass?”
It could be prohibited with a law against intentional unmarried conception that shuts down sperm banks and arrangements like this, where the couple was public about their intent to conceive. The punishment should be pretty scary and threaten to take the resulting children away, to deter people from doing it.
Marilynn, I’m tried but could not see how prohibiting donor conception and affirming that marriage is the only right way to have kids causes people to think donors are not really parents, not even a little bit. I think we should get rid of the social stigma of not having chidren for your parents and friends to goo goo over and brag about, and allowing donor conception makes people feel like they ought to please all those people, it would let them all down to just accept not having children.
Diane M writes:
“There are going to be some huge pulls from his real family if he does.”
REAL family? I fully understand what you are saying, support and are concerned about. But “real family” is a serious problem phrase (like “sperm/egg donor” and “surrogate”). I don’t think I need to explain why I think it is a problem phrase with you, you are obviously smart and in tuned with reality …
Diane M writes:
“At the very least, you could talk to people and tell them that this is a bad idea and might mess up their future children. As I said above, I think people don’t always know what they are getting into before they have children or how marriage and parenting work.”
YES YES AND YES!!!!! Which goes hand in hand with stigma – like with the tobacco industry.
Here’s a link to podcast out of Melbourne on the issue – It is not at all stigmatizing and leans toward normalizing (I’m not a fan) BUT there is a biological sperm “donor” father who is interviewed who at least helps to humanize the practice and sheds a wee little bit of light on the problems and consequences. His name is Ian
I’m surprised no one here has mentioned the obvious: (1) all the men featured in this article are gay, and (2) all the women are “older”, in terms of having biological children (and a couple of them have had children from previous relationships—the last woman mentioned had a child from a previous marriage).
So, the idea that “stigma” is going to reduce instances of this type of arrangement is ridiculous—”stigma” hasn’t stopped the men from being gay, nor has it stopped them from wanting to be fathers (structurally, “stigma” has put obstacles in the way for adoption—which one of the men mentioned). “Stigma” hasn’t stopped the women from being single mothers (again—this isn’t their first rodeo).
This isn’t going to be a growing arrangement among people in their early twenties and thirties. But for those in their late thirties, early forties? Yep. It will. These are people who already have a good handle on who they are, they already have careers—and they’ve already given up on their preferred ideal (which is finding a partner to have children with) and rationally come to the conclusion that at their age, they are unlikely to find both partner and children in the same package.
Elizabeth, you advocated in a previous thread for “sucking it up” and sticking it out in a loveless marriage (a marriage in which at least one of the partners has no love for the other). This is the rational equivalent to the loveless marriage—albeit one in which there is no expectation that there will ever be that love.
Marilyn here is where I see this as similar to donor conception: the parents are setting up on purpose a situation that is bad for kids. Many kids grow up with divorced parents, but that was not what the parents planned.
These kids are not growing up in the equivalent of an arranged marriage or an unhappy marriage, they are growing up in the equivalent of a divorced family. Sometimes a divorced family is better for the kids then their actual family staying together, but in general being in a divorced family is stressful for kids. It’s not something you should do on purpose before you have even gotten pregnant.
Here is the difference: the child is not guaranteed to lose contact with one biological parent. They will not suffer that. But there are other things that children suffer from and blame their parents for. Having to go between two families all the time is one of them. So is having to adjust to multiple new families down the road. Again, if the child sees a reason for it like my parents fight all the time they are less likely to be mad about it just as an adopted child may feel a loss but understand why their biological parent gave them up more easily than a donor conceived child would.
However I said the child is not guaranteed to lose contact with their bio parent. Like Elizabeth Marquardt, I think there is a high chance that they will. Divorced parent and unmarried parents often lose contact with their children. It’s not going to be any easier for two people with nothing in common to negotiate the conflicts and be noble about the other parents right to see their child.
Karen, I am coming from the point of view of a married person. As far as I am concerned we are my husbands family. If an outside child appeared they would not be part of our family. I am not that noble and self-sacrificing (and I think being that noble may not work well). There would be a bio connection and an obligation, but they would not be part of his family.
I think biology matters, but I think other things do too. Things like who you bring up and who lives together. So although it is unfair to the child and mean to say it, some children aren’t part of their bio parents families.
In this particular case, I suspect that the bio father is not going to include the child in his family. The article doesn’t say, but the man’s wife does not want more children. Is she really going to let her husband’s kid come live with her on the weekends? Is she even going to want him to give his kid money or take it kite flying? I suspect the guy has really agreed to be a known sperm donor.
About stigma. I would not want kids to be stigmatized. In general I do nit like the idea of stigma and perhaps it was the wrong word.
On the other hand I do not think it is helpful when we accept everything as just another way to make a family or try to defend bad choices. I think we need to explain why this is a bad idea. Dropping out of school is unwise. So is this.
I also think we need to focus attention on the children and what is rational for them not for their parents. This isn’t just going to be hard on the parents.
Diane, I disagree with you about the notion that unmarried co-parents will somehow be as or more like than divorced parents to argue over parenting rules and regulations. You clearly are not a child of divorce, as I am.
Divorced parents use the kids as pawns in their war on each other. There is a great deal of animosity between divorced parents. They have already shown they don’t care enough about their kids to NOT get divorced in the first place. As the DOMA legal briefs from the anti-gays show, sexually active straight couples don’t really want children much of the time, they want to have sex, which leads to children. Hence the need for marriage, to compel them to take care of their children together.
There is much to be said for two people who WANT to be parents, compared to two people who want to have sex, which results in a child they don’t want.
To make the distinction between starting out as unmarried parents, and married parents who eventually divorce, is frivolous. No couple is compelled to get divorced; you speak as if it happens against the wishes of the married couple. They choose to divorce, a conscious choice, even if there are minor-aged children in the household.
People who oppose same-sex marriage who keep talking about marriage as if it’s child-centered are lying and/or living in a fantasy world. No one questions the right of adults to get divorced if there are minor-aged children in the household. Ergo, hence, therefore, marriage is NOT about children!
no different than the thousands of other people having babies out of wedlock daily… i see no reason to treat it any differently.
Diane wrote:
“We don’t live in villages because we don’t want to. We (modern Americans) are individualistic and would not put up with the intrusiveness of small town life for a minute.”
This response needs to be examined. This may be the heart of the marriage problem (not speaking about ssm). When marriage ‘seemed’ to be in a better state, we did live in villages and small towns. Parents could rely on the neighbor next door, down the street, in Main Street to have the watchful eyes and ears for their children. The extended family, or pieces of it, lived in the same home or within earshot of one another.
The older adults throughout the town or village modeled being a mature adult, a sacrificing parent, a thoughtful neighbor. The town or village wrapped its arms around one another and provided nurturing and security for all. It was “chicken soup for the soul”, sometimes literally, always spiritually. And, best of all there was work for all.
An airy-fairy world, mythical world; perhaps, but it sure had its grand, good points. As a possible future President said sometime ago … “It takes a village to raise a child”. That’s not ‘liberal speak’. It was what life was like for decades here in America; and, for centuries everywhere; and, some places still is.
So glad Karen caught that “real” family thing in Diane’s comment. You know that killed me to read that. One pretty darn famous donor offspring was hanging out with me looking for their dad after already finding their sibling and was really adamant that they were not looking for their father but for their donor and were really worried about disrupting his real family. Details about some of his relatives were peculiar enough to be critical in the search they were very googleable and they had no problem referring to his mother as their grandmother but they could not utter the word father because they said fathers father their children they raise them. I came to think that it was not he they felt was undeserving of the familial title but rather them – they had not EARNED a spot in HIS FAMILY. They were so adament that they were not looking for a father figure they were looking for their donor just for information but I never saw a person put more furious energy and effort into anything in my life. This was my introduction to helping donor offspring, hell bent on finding someone they would not refer to as their father, and were staunch advocates of donor reproduction. I’d go on my little tirades and they’d put up with me because well, I’m free help and I really care I wanted them to understand they were his real child/children. It pained me to think in their heart/s they felt like they would be intruding on his life to ring the phone and say hello. It was gutwrenching to think they felt he might wonder why the hell these strangers would bother contacting him why on earth would he bother talking to them they were not his real children he did not love them so therefore they were not real. Oh I would get so mad I would dream of kicking his theoretical (at that time) ass. He’d better be nice when they contact him I thought. He was nice. And he wanted to know all about them and was very impressed with some aspects of their lives and said so. And then I got pulled aside and told that now they know they were looking for their father and they felt so good to hear that he was proud of them and that they could see that they were looking for their father’s recognition not a donor. They wanted to be good enough for their dad to be proud of. They said they refer to him as their father now but not in public for the mothers sake and for the sake of other political reasons which I’ll never fully understand but its pandemic in that community.
Your worthy of love because your real not worthy of being real because your loved.
I say “they” and “their” and “them” instead of him her she he etc so that its difficult to figure out who I’m talking about sorry if its confusing to read.
And I have to give a somewhat grudging hat tip to Maggie Gallagher for articulating the fact the biological parents are “iffy” about their interest in their offspring, and that marriage forces the issue of taking care of those offspring. This is a watershed moment for marriage and family, in my opinion. We can stop pretending that biological connections automatically contain some degree of caring.
The implications are far-reaching. We can stop defining families based on biology, and more on mutual caring and support. Couples who don’t want children can feel less burdened by any sense of guilt or shame for being uninterested in their offspring. Children can stop longing for the approval and affection from their biological parents, and focus more on adults in their lives who demonstrate an interest in them. Adults who actually WANT to raise children can be given more prominence, compared to adults capable of creating children. Birth control and abortion make a lot more sense, in order to avoid unwanted children. Basically we can unshackle the chains of biology. That’s a good thing!
Kevin said:
“This is a watershed moment for marriage and family, in my opinion. We can stop pretending that biological connections automatically contain some degree of caring.”
Is what Kevin just stated here, a ‘man only’ problem?
Again, Kevin:
“The implications are far-reaching. We can stop defining families based on biology, and more on mutual caring and support.”
I’m not sure how this would work; but, ‘ideas have legs’ … and, I’m really intrigued by this one.
Family Scholars, could we have another Post addressing this idea? Y’all are looking for ways to save marriage/family … we live in radical times; perhaps, radical solutions are called for.
Diane ah good OK so I see nothing wrong with getting people to focus their energies on doing things the best way which is make babies with someone you are in love with and want to be married to once your out of school and have an established career. I’m totally down with encouraging people to use birth control if they don’t want kids. I’m pro choice for pete sake so yes absolutely don’t bring kids into the world when your not prepared to raise them. If that is what you guys are worried about preventing births in less than ideal situations I think educating people on birth control and other options is fine and I’m not worried about all the people who never existed because family planning efforts caused people not to get pregnant.
But there will always be people who do end up being born in less than ideal circumstances and it is important to be sure that they have equal protection under the law and are not regarded as second class citizens because their parents are unmarried. The UPA of 1973 was suppose to provide equal protection to the children of unmarried parents but it fails to protect all children of unmarried parents. Non marital children can have their identity and records altered in order to make them appear to have been born to married parents or appear to only have one parent. That misidentification impacts an entire family’s ability to make informed decisions about who they date and have sex with and leaves them with less information to make informed medical decisions and that compromised position goes on for generations. So I am very concerned about how we treat people once they are born
Marilynn:
“Diane ah good OK so I see nothing wrong with getting people to focus their energies on doing things the best way which is make babies with someone you are in love with and want to be married to once your out of school and have an established career.”
Here lies an important issue. If there’s anything that those of us who are in the lower class, or spent the better part of our lives in … it’s knowing hypocrisy. Nothing you wrote, Marilynn … it’s the elitist hypocrisy buried in the … we’ll cohabit with multiple partners, use abortion if we haven’t reached that oh so perfect career, and then marry, limit that family to the perfect gender composition and size; and, if it doesn’t come ‘naturally’, we’ll use every means at our disposal to get it … and then call that the State of Marriage we all aspire to. And, we call it what we’re working toward, because they stay together.
Can I tell you how much this bothers me. Bothers me, because every social prohibition of just 50 years ago has been jettisoned, has been trespassed, has been violated; to create the oh so perfect marriage. And, it’s now considered the model family … because they stay together.
OK, so maybe I need to get my head out of the sand, and join the real world. Is ‘staying together’, after heavens knows what behavior preceded that, what procreative means to get those 2.1 children involve, the bottom line for marriage … ?
We (modern Americans) are individualistic and would not put up with the intrusiveness of small town life for a minute.
Wow. You think there are no small towns in America? No neighborhoods or co-housing or planned communities or dorms where people do actually know each other’s business?
Diane writes:
“There would be a bio connection and an obligation, but they would not be part of his family.”
Would you really prevent your husband from embracing and loving a child of HIS that you did not have a part in creating? Do you know how that sounds? Yes, I get that you are being honest and many women would behave the same way as you would but do you have any idea how hurtful those words are to so so so many children and people? Any clue? This his too close to home for me. Bio connection = obligation = being a part of a family.
Kevin writes:
“Basically we can unshackle the chains of biology”
There is simply NO way that that is going to happen no matter what we do with the law.
So if you need more people and a more stable network to raise a child, why would you start off by automatically excluding one parent from the mix? That’s like saying, “People need to eat a wide variety of foods to be healthy – let’s ban fruits and vegetables!”
Totally illogical.
Also, it irks me when parents decide that their “right” to create new human life trumps the right of those babies to live in a good environment. Yes, there’s always some self-interest in child-rearing, but society has usually told parents to at least pretend to put their children’s well-being ahead of their own.
I really like what bridget says about the connection between being part of a village and making commitments to a marriage partner.
@mythago – Of course I know that there are small towns out there. However, they are a very small percentage of where Americans live and American are generally moving away from them. Over the past 50 years, community ties in general in America have become weaker.
Co-housing and planned communities are not a huge proportion of where people choose to live. Most of them have a reasonable amount of turnover unlike traditional villages.
I would actually like to live in a community rather than a neighborhood, but I recognize that I might not really want to put in the time and effort that requires.
We would probably all be better off if we lived in communities, but my point is that in America in general we don’t and we are choosing that. We don’t live in the same towns as our families. We don’t live with our parents when we grow up and we don’t want to if we can’t help it. We don’t want to move in with our children when we get old. We don’t belong to neighborhood organizations. We belong to religious communities less than ever before.
So why are do we talk about wanting a village to take care of us when we do so much to resist being part of communities we could be part of?
@Kevin – you are right, many, if not most divorced parents act out their conflicts and hurt their children further.
However, some of what Elizabeth Marquardt has written about is the children of parents who had better divorces and didn’t do that. They still found it difficult in some ways.
So if these couples manage to act like parents who had better divorces, the children will still face a lot of stress and difficulties.
I also have a pessimistic streak that makes me think that two people with no connection other than making a baby together might turn into two people fighting each other bitterly and doing things that were bad for the child.
There could be terrible things that go wrong and affect their relationship: the child has a disability or a parent loses a job or becomes disabled.
There could be normal things that go wrong and affect their relationship: a child falls out of a tree and breaks an arm or a parent’s job requires moving.
There could even be good things that affect their relationship like one partner falling in love and marrying or having more kids.
And there could be issues they have to work out related to rules. It’s nearly impossible to prepare 100% on this. If my husband and I had sat down and come up with a set of parenting principles before we had kids, there would have been nothing on them about the Internet. And really, there would probably have been some unrealistic ones about how our children would never watch TV or eat sugar.
For me things that have helped us become a team as parents are:
shared values, trust, similar backgrounds and education, compatible religious beliefs, loving each other, and years and years of practice at conflict resolution before we had kids.
I think it would be hard for a not-a-couple pair of parenting partners to do those things.
@Karen – I think if you focus on biology, you have to be remember that the man’s wife is not biologically related to the child. And if she has children of her own, she is biologically related to them and wants what is best for them.
For a non-biologically related woman to accept the kids and want to make them part of her family, she has to go beyond biology and just love people.
I think that is a good thing to do, but I think it’s important to recognize that when we do this, we are putting something above biological connections.
I am not sure how you are thinking, but to me being part of someone’s family is more than just acknowledging them or paying child support. When you are part of a family, you spend time together and maybe live together. You do things for them.
I think it’s too much to expect of people to think that they should take in a child that is not theirs, but is their partners. I also think that in many cases there is a potential that the parents’ partner would resent them and this would not be good for the child.
Anyhow, this is why I think it’s bad for someone to make a child with someone else’s husband, whether or not the wife gives permission. I don’t think the man will really be able to act as a father to the child. It’s wrong to deliberately set up that kind of situation for the kid.
@Kevin – easier said than done:
“We can stop defining families based on biology, and more on mutual caring and support. Couples who don’t want children can feel less burdened by any sense of guilt or shame for being uninterested in their offspring. Children can stop longing for the approval and affection from their biological parents, and focus more on adults in their lives who demonstrate an interest in them.”
How would you choose who the parents were supposed to be? What if there aren’t any people stepping forward for a particular baby?
And children tend to want their parents approval.
There are many people who like kids but aren’t going to be willing to do everything it takes to raise them.
The thing about biology is that everyone starts out with two people who are biological related to them. In almost all cases, the two people made some decision that resulted in the baby being created. Making those two people responsible for the child makes sense.
I also think that while biology isn’t everything, it does play a role in bonding. Some of it has to do with pregnancy and birth and nursing. Some of it has to do with being with the baby and raising it.
People also like having their biological children and the connection they feel from that.
Not all parents will bond to their biological children, but it probably gives you a headstart in many cases.
The funny thing is, if they just got married to each other–agreeing not only to care for the child but the mother (and father) of the child in one home, one family–this would be highly traditional thing to do. Rather more French than American but. . . . Wanting to raise a family is not a second best reason to get married, it’s a first rate reason–and as these people discover, changes the way you think about your partner. Would that married couples thought hard about –would this be a good mother/father for my child.
Diane, I see what you’re saying, but as our understanding that biological connections are often weak, we can better decisions about creating babies and raising them. Right now, we have a bunch of “band aids,” for the widespread issue of unwanted biological babies: birth control, abortion, and marriage being the most prominent.
Birth control: “I know in advance that I don’t want a baby”
Abortion: “I guess I never really thought about whether I want a baby but now that there’s one on the way, I realize I don’t want it”
Marriage: “Ok, there’s a baby here and even though I don’t really want it, I guess I have to take care of it”
Divorce: “I didn’t want these kids in the first place but I played along with society’s expectations. Now these kids have bonded with me and won’t go away!”
Knowing that being able to engage in procreative sex doesn’t mean you necessarily want a baby, and that when a baby arrives it is not necessarily wanted, we can de-couple procreative sex from raising children. We can put more value on someone who actually wants to raise a child, regardless of where the child came from biologically.
I think it is unfair to a child to force someone to raise that child who doesn’t want to. This is very stressful for adult and child alike. There is an enormous benefit to expanding access to birth control, to avoid this very situation. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, as they say.
And I think there is an enormous opportunity to create a social understanding that there is a big difference between creating a baby and wanting it raise it to adulthood. Marriage may be the best band-aid we’ve got but it is obviously inadequate.
why do you assume most people who have children don’t want them???
(most people btw want their own children a heck of a lot more than they want someone elses)
“Wanting to raise a family is not a second best reason to get married, it’s a first rate reason”
But I thought that marriage was to get otherwise uninterested straight couples to raise a family they don’t want? That’s why marriage isn’t applicable to same-sex couples: they don’t have unwanted children, only wanted children; they don’t create babies as an unintended consequence of sexual relations.
Are you now saying, Ms. Gallagher, that marriage is NOT to provide cover for unwanted bio-babies, but for providing a secure environment for children? Wouldn’t that apply to same-sex couples raising children?
I’m confused!
non-biological connections are successful insofar as they model biological connection.
An example of this is adoption. Most adoptions are successful as they model after the immanent, irreversible, biological connection.
If you take away the biological model, you have nothing after which to model these exceptions-to-the-rule. 3 or 4 parents? sure. parenthood by contract? why not? rotating parenthood? no problem.
In anycase people aren’t going to stop having sex anytime soon so the vast majority of babies will continue to be born the old fashioned way.
i don’t get where you get this strange idea from kevin
maggie what do you mean by “if they would have gotten married?”
how do you define married?
legally married?
or actually living as married- cohabiting and not having other romantic relationships?
Ki Sarita
I meant: Agreed to a conventional married life, living together and being financially and emotionally responsible for one another.
For me and for most Americans fidelity is core to this bargain. For a lot men in traditional societies, side romances that don’t affect the primacy of the marital home were expected if not endorsed. I’m not saying I’m good with this, I’m just saying: how much are you willing to sacrifice for the good of your child?
So my question is: what do they hope to accomplish by living apart? Probably the ability to pursue romantic relationships–but of course the fortysomething mother living with her baby is probably not going to find this very possible.
Why are they doing this? Because the woman despairs of combining sex, love, marriage and parenting?
Given you despair, what’s the next best alternative? Not answering, just asking.
Kevin tongue in the cheek aside – it is not wrong for children to be raised by people who are not their parents, there is just no ethical way to make a baby specifically to be raised by other people without the parent and the adoptive parent treating the child like something to be manufactured for sale or as a gift. Creating children for the sole purpose of giving them to people who want them is manufacturing people and it does not matter if they are manufactured for people who really want them or that they are manufactured for people who will do the best job ever of raising a kid – the way someone obtains custody of someone else’s offspring must be ethical or the act of commodification will undermine every effort those people make trying to raise the child because they will have had a hand in destroying the child’s family in order to obtain custody of them .
Kevin is being sarcastic everyone. He’s using Maggie G’s words against her to prove a point. He does not actually believe that marriage is for making people who don’t want their bio children stay and be responsible for them. Nobody has a sense of irony? Its not a bad point, he’s grabbed onto it like a pit bull though and won’t let it go. Being no stranger to that myself I cut much slack. I also don’t think he’s serious about unbundeling biology and parenthood. Under there somewhere I think he’s got a balanced opinion he’s just real bent about kids being the basis for not liking the SSM thing.
I think I’m reading him right. Maybe not. Maybe what I think is sarcasm is not that at all
Why are they doing this? Because two people want to have a kid together and they end up making one. They don’t feel like getting married but remain committed to taking care of their kid. Yawn. I mean clap clap clap and yawn. Good for them take care of their kid. That’s all society has a right to expect of them. Its not like the rest of us have our acts so together in the love and romance department.
For my own sense of security having aligned my way-left self with some very nice way-right folks here…please tell me that children with parents who are not married like these kids, do, in your minds, deserve to have their real parents taking care of them, cooperating for their benefit. Please tell me that it would not be your preference that these children be given up for adoption to nice married people who want them. Nice married people of any persuasion I mean I need to know that ya’ll don’t think children deserve married people raising them more than they deserve their own parents raising them. That is to say when it is not going to happen that the child’s parents are going to get married.
Now I’ll agree that we can do much to encourage people to avoid having children with people they don’t love enough to marry. But I can’t get behind the idea that if they do have children with people who are not their spouses that they should just chuck those kids and give them to married people.
The only alternative to donor conception that I see which could be planned out that would not objectify the kid is a situation where people who are not in relationships who want to have children join websites like match.com only for baby making purposes. That they would be matched to a single or to a married couple and that they would have a baby with someone and if either parent has a spouse that spouse is the step parent and the kid splits time with the two parents. No it is not ideal but the child is not objectified or abandoned and everyone plays themselves in the big play of life. The child born individual has not lost anything in order for the family to be formed.
Not ideal at all but the allegiance to marriage is so strong that right now we have the identical thing going on only the parent hides out and the the step parent pretends to be the parent. The only thing stopping the parents from cooperating in raising their child is the idea that children born outside of marriage are not good enough to raise as they are. They think they must be turned into their spouses child to be kept
Interesting question, Maggie Gallagher. Why would doing this seem like a better choice than trying to find a husband.
Do they think that finding a lifelong mate takes longer than finding a co-parent and they don’t have time to find one?
Do they think there are no good husbands out there, but plenty of good fathers?
Do they think no one would want to marry them but that they are good co- parent material?
Do they think it will be easier to co-parent with someone if you don’t care about them too much or if you live apart?
You can all probably guess that I think those are crazy ideas. I am not sure how clearly these couples are thinking. I wonder if they are really planning to co- parent?