Sunday, February 24, 2019

The strangers who have babies together

A fascinating look by the BBC at "platonic parenting".

In 2014, Charly Bourne, a then 43-year-old nurse living with his husband in Philadelphia in the US, started to think seriously about having kids. At first, he considered adoption. But after hearing about ‘platonic parenting’ from a colleague, he decided to set up a profile on Modamily, a website that helps connect people who want to start a family. As traditional notions of family get redefined, people like Charly are choosing to raise children as platonic partners.

See the video here.

Over the last few decades, the constraining straitjackets of gender identity have been progressively loosened.  First came the pill, then came easier divorce, then gay rights, then gay marriage.  Step-by-step the old identities and relationships, which seemed immutable, have shifted and changed.

In my writings, I have bisexual men who love both their women and their men, and at some point, I'm going to have to think how they will parent children, and how it will all work.  But all I know is that things will be different.  Just how, I don't know.  I have talked about this broad topic before, here and here.  And in ElvenSword, DemonThrong and AngelFire, I specifically created a society where these relationships are more complicated and subtler than the heterosexual marriage that the ChrisTaliban insist is the only way.


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