I was watching the news the other day and there was a segment that caught me by surprise. It made me realize that I live in a bubble and I am totally unaware of things that going on around me. I don’t think I am alone in being ignorant to issues outside of “traditional” ways of living. I put traditional in quotes because I am not hung up on traditions but I do understand that what is considered a “traditional” family in our society is a heterosexual couple with children.

So this brings me to that news segment that caught my attention. It was a segment on co-parenting matching websites. On these site you are not looking for the end question not to be “Will you marry me?” but “Will you parent with me?”

I knew there are relationship matching websites, but did not know that there are parenting matching websites. If you are single for whatever reason and desiring to have a child but do not want to raise a child alone you can go online and find someone to co-parent with. I like this idea in the fact of having two involved parents in a child’s life.  Even if it is not a romantic relationship I admire that people want to co-parent. Parenting is hard work. When I see a single parent whether male or female I always wonder how they do it.

I do not know exactly how this works but in my mind it goes a little like this:

You sign up and make a profile describing yourself. You list your sex, race, religion (or lack of), sexual orientation, height, weight, etc. Then you describe what you are looking for in a co-parent based on the above categories. You also do a more personal description about you as a person which includes your hobbies, interests, likes, dislikes. When you come across a potential match you message them and begin the process of getting to know one another. Once you feel you have made the perfect co-parent match you set up you plan the process for sperm retrieval and fertilization. I am imagining that you will also need to plan what your living arrangements might be.

Does this work? I don’t know. In no way am I here to judge this lifestyle. I will say that I think it is better then having casual sex with someone you that leads to the birth of a child where one (or both) parent(s) have no desire in having a relationship with them.  We have a lot of children out there being raised by one parent simply because the other parent chooses not be be involved. There are also far too many children being raised caught in the middle fighting parents.

What is your take on co-parenting matching sites? Here are a few of them:

• Modfamily
• Coparents
• FamilyByDesign

~Tricia