Tatiijana Busic met with Brendan Schulz in a Toronto Cafe sometime in 2014, but theirs was not a traditional date. These parenting partners are singles, but they have decided to have children together and go for co-parenting
Both met through Modamily, an online site for singles who want to meet future parenting partners without romantic strings attached. Some people call this elective parenting.
Busic had been previously married and has a daughter but she wants another child. Schulz is single and gay, but he wants to be a father.
Busic and Shulz are among the almost 2,000 Canadians registered with Modamily for basically the same reason. A similar co-parenting site, known as Family By Design, has 1,000 registrants.
Experts at the Cambridge University's Centre for Family Research said elective parenting is common among gays and lesbians, according to CBC News. Researchers noted that even heterosexual singles are increasingly considering co-parenting arrangements, based on an initial survey involving 102 respondents.
"Co-parenting obviously for us raises a whole new set of questions about the well-being of children," Tabitha Freeman, one of the researchers, said. "The psychological well-being, the social relationships, the social functioning of these children growing up in these families," she added.
New York University professor Andrea O'Reilly said sociologists have identified some social factors for this phenomenon including the delay in adulthood. Marriage and children used to be the norm for people in their mid-20s, but career-centered individuals today are still single at age 35. These are the people who usually resort to unromantic co-parenting arrangements.
Just like same-sex marriage, each state has different laws on elective co-parenting, according to The New York Times. Family By Design has prepared a parenting agreement template on its website to avoid complicated court cases among their members later on, especially when it comes to child support. But in the end, the court will always decide based on the child's best interest.
Jennifer Kolari, a child and family therapist, said co-parenting without romance is not traditional, but children easily adapt, according to The Star. The love they are given in a family is more important to kids than the structure of the family.
