The rise of platonic co-parenting
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
If you want to criticize Judeo-Christian values, I suggest you start from a modern Jewish or Christian understanding of the values or scriptures in question.
Look you can cherry pick all you want. But I've wasted a few decades trying to work through the inconsistencies and woo. Give me some scientific evidence instead of appealing to authority and nostalgia.
The comment about polygamy is along the same lines -- where it occurs in scriptural narrative, it is not condoned, merely reported truthfully. Modern Jews and Christians don't understand scripture (in whole or in part) to be condoning the practice at all
> Give me some scientific evidence instead of appealing to authority and nostalgia.
I have appealed to neither authority nor nostalgia, unless you want to call talking about scripture an appeal to authority. The veracity of scripture is a basic assumption in Jewish and Christian belief, and I'll leave it at that. This thread isn't a good place to debate that topic.
In fact they demand women submit to husbands unconditionally, never teach men, not speak up during gatherings, rarely inherit property, and from time to time act as the spoils of war.
Modern Christian understanding varies, but even the most progressive is still founded on appeals to an authority who claims should not be tested.
We even consider it "tradition" to have a woman's father walk her down the isle during a wedding ceremony to "give her away" - representing a transfer of property from father to husband.
The fact that someone is getting financial advantage from that does not make it not forced if one of partners does not want it.
I think back in the days kids immaturity was just too dangerous to let them marry whoever at the risk of destroying the family. I've seen that even today, when people are free there are long term costs. 1000 years ago it seems obvious that this was a matter of life and death and picking who will your kids marry was both logical and emotional optimum.
I doubt you're a father of a daughter you love dearly, or I think you'd see it differently. Have you ever heard a dad half-joking about how reluctant he felt to let his daughter go out on her first date? (Or jokes fathers sometimes tell about cleaning guns when first meeting her new boyfriend, etc.)
There is a "letting go" involved, and especially so when she gets married: someone else will be the first man in her life now. "Giving her away" in the wedding ceremony symbolizes that "letting go" that the dad does--hopefully willingly, joyfully, and knowing the man she's marrying will love her dearly.
You're arguing against yourself here. That this trope exists for daughters and not for sons only reinforces the concept of women-as-property.
A more logical conclusion is that you feel protective because you recognize a threat (either real or perceived) to their safety and you have accepted responsibility for protecting them.
As a guy on dating sites it is apparent that love is already transactional and has always been.
Height, baldness, race, nationality seem to be the primary checkboxes for most women, shockingly even your education, work or usefulness to society rank pretty low.
It's definitely a possibility, let's see if it works out.
I'm neither aromantic nor asexual and I like the idea of procreating.
Creating partial copies of myself and such things sounds interesting. But I can't bear the idea of actually raising a child. That responsibility...
At least my sister is up and about to get at least four kids, so maybe I can get a partial taste, haha.
Did I regret having them? If you asked me in that 5 minutes - I my have said yes. It complicates your life, makes things harder introduces additional stress into what could otherwise be a simple, uncomplicated life. It makes you worry more about - say - the outcome of elections.
Overall though? I share a house with two teenagers who I love deeply, who are lots of fun and I can't imagine being without.
Citation needed. Psychological research clearly shows otherwise. Plenty of parents show symptoms of resentfulness, guilt and depression.
I did regret it for some time. I still regret it many, many times in a day. Other times the kids save my life and it all looks somewhat worth it. But I just don’t see it as some mystical experience, on balance. It’s probably different for mothers though.
Condoms+pill, condoms+IUD, vasectomy+condoms, etc.
https://www.bustle.com/p/should-i-use-more-than-one-birth-co...
The point is, IUDs aren't foolproof.
Condoms + vasectomy. Jesus. I'd rather eat nothing but kale the rest of my life than get a vasectomy and continue to use condoms with my wife.
Most people are like this. When you see friends with kids you realize it isn't rocket science.
It isn't hard to do, it's exceedingly hard to do consistently and well.
That being said, all of the headaches are outweighed by watching a hot weirdo develop out of the tiny baby you made. It is amazingly funny to watch children figure out the world.
We hardly even agree on what that means. An ISIS terrorist grown of a family of ISIS terrorists would be “job well done” from the parents’ perspective.
Still today, the degree of conformity enforced on kids, that you see in many cultures, makes it extremely difficult to find a common definition of “good parenting”. Would a “good parent” force you to fast from sunrise to sunset for a month, or encourage you to join an organization that requires permanent celibacy? What about pushing you to prominently display your faith in everyday situations, despite the real possibility of physical violence against you? Or inviting you to mate inside the same ethnic community as your parents, “to keep traditions alive”? Or even just pushing you to follow fitness regimes, because “healthy”, even though you hate sports and exercise? Is that good or bad? These are very big questions and I don’t think we’re anywhere near finding common answers for them.
Children aren't clay you can mold to your liking. They are born with their own temper, their own aptitudes, their own limits, and it's the environment that does more than your conscious parenting to finish them as a person.
Virtually every adult in the world has children. You dont have to do it consistently or well.
I don't know how old you are, but that's how I was up until my mid 20's. When I "dated" in college and in my 20s, I was mostly looking for companionship. Something clicked when I turned 30, and then I found my wife.
Anyway, makes me wonder if there's a niche for aromantic and asexual "dating?" I used to hear stories of couples who didn't have a lot of sex and were just in it for the friendship.
What niche? It's called "being friends", right?
"a sexual orientation on the asexual spectrum defined as someone who does not experience sexual attraction until they have formed a deep emotional connection with someone."
I am deeply skeptical of claims of a platonic relationship in which the couple is having sex to conceive (per the article). It seems almost by definition not platonic at that point.
It think the "platonic" schema is what binds the couple. A couple where the members are saying they don't want romance etc but are having sex and raising children over the long haul might just be expressing a mutual interest in a form of relational style, just like other couples that express a desire for a different relational style. If you have two people who don't want to admit they want a relationship, or want some basics but not the warm and fuzzies most people are looking for, you'd end up with something like this.
"Contrary to what has been widely believed, long-term romantic love (with intensity, sexual interest, and engagement, but without the obsessive element common in new relationships), appears to be a real phenomenon that may be enhancing to individuals’ lives—positively associated with marital satisfaction, mental health, and overall well-being. [...] long-term marriage does not necessarily kill the romance in one's relationship"
Then, maybe all of this anomie is a disease of affluence. The other thing that united my parents was that, well, they had to fight for survival and for the means if giving us kids a decent childhood experience. Maybe that alone works like continuous shared trauma, us-two-against-the-world.
It's a large and sprawling field of research. Why don't you dig into it yourself?
Don’t think they skipped the sex step.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-passion-paradox/....
Anecdotally many are in unhappy marriages but we also have no-fault divorce. So you can end it if need be. I suspect you are wrong though. If everyone has an exit to take and everyone wants to take the exit, aside from a cohort that cannot take the exit, why don’t they?
And it was not parenting then. Parenting comes later. And this seems to be without sex by design. (even though I would assume it still happens with some "couples")
I know less about the children side but I know a few gay men who have adopted, single or as part of a couple, and they described the process as rigorous but not unduly so. I guess this depends where you live, I'm in Scotland, which is supposedly the least homophobic country in the world (an extremely depressing fact) so maybe it's easier for gay men to adopt here.
I always thought that was a stereotype?
Rather dystopian.
It also reads as if the people in the article optimized their lives for money and then realized in mid life that they neglected the core parts of forming deep personal romantic connections. It casts the forming of deep romantic bonds as "wasting time" and as something that can be purchased later on.
[1]: https://www.modamily.com/about-us
Sounds like a platform for spinsters.
Long term relationships are different then short term ones and changing habits is hard.
It's amazing to me that western democracies seem to facilitate single parenting and divorce, instead of discouraging it.
Because alternative is often quite a lot of suffering of one or both parties.
Even beyond abusive/controlling/openly hostile relationships, you have people who completely checked out of marriage long before divorce. Their partners finally calling end to it are just putting paper on what was reality before.
The thing about traditional marriages with low divorces is that abuse whether physical or verbal was a fact of life in many families. It also often meant alcoholic or gambling partner for years, it meant couples that looked down at each other. Nowdays alcohol was replaced by gaming all the time in some couples, which is milder, but still fully understandable.
And porn.
I mean, even divorced parents tend to try to live close to each other. Why wouldn't amicably arranged co-parents not opt for the same if that means easier parenting and living costs?
I don't know, but it just doesn't feel right to me.
> “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.”
Here's a crazy idea: IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW YOU MEET PEOPLE! If both are willing, then that's that! It sounds like they are ready to raise a family and commit because literally YOLO. There are plenty of people who are old and haven't found someone they organically vibe with. In my opinion, this isn't any different than an arranged marriage, so I feel like your fear/discomfort makes little sense here.
But many people object to arranged marriages. I actually think most people in the world would object to arranged marriages.
The romantic period was about strong emotions in general, solitude, beauty of nature and host of other love unrelated things. Suicide implies stronger emotions then kiss. Love or passion was just one thing.
Romance as genre is something different.
I'd be much happier with this if it was platonic co-adoption.
Maniac eros Maniac ludus Maniac storge Agapic eros Agapic ludus Agapic storge Pragmatic eros Pragmatic ludus Pragmatic storge
I don’t think people argued that eros lasted a lifetime, but others fill the gap as one matures and life circumstances change. If one is lucky enough to achieve this, it makes for a very happy life (according to self-satisfaction surveys over the decades).
I thought this article would be highlighting the economic shift towards coliving with friends, which we've seen to be getting more popular, and therefore the rise of platonic parenting. But I think the same causes can explain the article's subject.
Sure they can. It just means the family can afford a 1920 level of material wealth: a room for the boys, a room for the girls, the parents sleep in the living room, the kids wear hand-me-downs and read books from the library for entertainment, the other partner knows how to cook and cooks breakfast, lunch and dinner, the family has chicken once a week and meat on special occasions.
Should there be more government support for families that want to try this with one parent at home? Singapore is paying $10k, so they are starting to understand the economic impact of having well educated citizens:
I get that a lot of humans like to believe they aren't animals, though.
My parents had a terrible divorce, but I remember shuttling between two homes, two beds, two sets of clothes being the worst part.
I mostly like who I am as a person, but some things got messed up along the way.
He’s a legendary school teacher where I live, so it’s real fun when people come up to us and ask me what it was like having such an amazing dad.
He always tried to frame it as a time problem. "I can't take both kids, I don't have the time. If you want me to care more for the kids, give me the girl!"
My mother wouldn't have it. She told him he should take us both or none of us. So he took none of us.
While he didn't take much care of any of us, he showed up at my sisters doorstep once every few years and gifted her expensive stuff.
I never understood him...
Took then over a decade of therapy to get over the emotional damage and abuse.
"the decision to have a child with someone you are not romantically involved with and, in most cases, choose not to live with"
I can understand that a lot of divorced marriages end up in a similar state - this just sounds like getting to that state more quickly - what outcomes does that bring for the child/ren?
I don’t know what’s “platonic” here. Sounds like regular ass family formation to me. I must have missed the point.
The rise of it is probably caused by people living farther away and working overly long hours, so the standard random dating no longer works.
Personally I don't need the flirting and dating and romance and all that stuff. What I need is someone who shares my values and is willing to enter into a marriage as a social contract. Being married has a ton of personal and social benefits, and having a spouse who brings in as much income as you works like an insurance policy of sorts in a number of life situations (e.g. long-term job loss).
Obviously there needs to be chemistry if both parties are interested in a monogamic sexual relationship being part of their marriage. But if both parties are willing to dispense with all the dating rituals, that can be determined in seconds.
Damn, how do I turn this into an article and get my money!
I sort of envision a writer's table where we people brainstorm ways of repackaging pretty obvious things in ways that sound new and exciting so as to get paid. Maybe this is a business model waiting to happen.
on edit: fixed error
By the time a couple that was formed under regular circumstances (whatever they are), decides to have children (1/2 years after the beginning of a relationship), hormones are long gone.
And propinquity is not a disadvantage; at least people know each other. Deciding to have children after spending a weekend together ("it felt like a date") is foolish, and a recipe for a disaster, in my opinion.
The article (and overall, the idea) is also dangerously ambiguous about the logistics:
- the decision to have a child with someone [...] in most cases, choose not to live with
In real world, this equates to parents choosing other partners in the mid/long term.
This is therefore radically different than an arranged marriage.
I'd define this as an arranged patchwork family. Whether this is better or not than an arranged marriage (in an extended sense, e.g. two people staying together only because of the children), it's pretty much impossible to say.
Affection?
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Turkey%20Bas...
Obviously it can have other non-kitchen uses (transferring semen).
Why use the word “platonic” when it doesn’t really apply to this situation?
And just like most things on the internet, it’s not like this is a new phenomenon. People have been marrying and having kids for centuries without being “in love”.
Solution: Help psychopaths to have children together.
Outcome: Breeds more psychopaths so that there are even more of them.
Next problem: Too many psychopathic murderers.
Next solution: Co-parenting service for serial killers.
Outcome: ...
Humanity terrifies me.
Its known as cuckoldry. Why would a guy want to voluntarily raise another man's child and not even get sex with the mom as part of the deal? That takes it to a whole new level.
Would you see it as a similar arrangement, if a woman agreed to raise a child that wasn’t her own?
A cynical way to see the woman in the article is that she went and had a good time with the wrong guy - whom she was attracted to - and now is literally looking for a "nice guy" to help raise her kid. The absurd part is that she doesn't even want to bring anything to the table in return and thinks that's perfectly normal.
I already see enough single mothers on Tinder, I just unmatch when I find it out, as I'm looking for a girlfriend without children.
Thanks, I somehow forgot about that aspect of the internet for a minute. Now the whole thing makes sense. Men=>AshleyMadison like Women=>ThisSite. Both are mostly selling a fantasy.
I know many people reading this are thinking I am crazy or paranoid, but as someone who knew a pedophile as a small child (he was a bus driver, and no I wasn't molested by him, but he did go on to rape another student) I can tell you they will find any job or volunteer duty that allows them to molest kids, even if it destroys their lives. They are constantly scanning any avenues to pursue their aims and are willing to totally alter their careers and lifestyle to fake their way into a position of authority around children. Just a warning to those out their who would think "he just like kids, I can trust this <teacher, priest, etc.>" don't, you still must supervise and listen to your child. I and other bus passengers warned our parents that this man was acting suspiciously and we were ignored.
No?
I'm just saying this website should have a warning because I can 100% guarantee pedophiles are trawling it looking for access to children, like they would any other kid based online forum.
This is not how it works.
And we should never shame someone if they have a mental illness that they cannot help having, and if they've never acted on the urges.