“Hi, do you need sperm? I have a supply ;) When do you want to meet?” This isn’t a message from somewhere deep within my hidden requests folder on Instagram. This seedy correspondence – in the most literal sense – is just one example of the kinds of messages my partner and I have been receiving over the past year in our search to find a couple or single person to co-parent with.
For us, the ideal parenting setup would consist of three or four of us sharing responsibility for a child (the others involved would also be responsible for providing the sperm). The way we see it, why not use the implicit obstacles we face as a same-sex couple to become parents in a way that works for us and redefines the family unit completely?
There are a number of different matching services out there for those looking to find someone to raise a child with: PollenTree, CoParents, Just a Baby and others. We haven’t been impressed by the design of the websites or in some cases their charges, and some of them harbour some distinct creepiness. From men sending unsolicited offers of sperm, to those messaging us with elaborate fantasies about watching one of us give birth to their child, we’ve run into a number of what I suppose can only be called “procreation freaks”.
Scrolling through the apps can be a jarring experience in itself when you’re not planning on sleeping with the person pictured. Some of them let you swipe – Tinder-style – through the faces of potential dads, as if what you’re looking for is attraction, rather than someone who’s going to do their fair share of nappy changing. So far, we’ve been on a few “dates” with potential fathers. None have gone horribly and we’ve met some really thoughtful people, but we’re yet to find anyone we fully gel with.
Because there are no norms for these kinds of meetups, we’re having to make up a lot as we go along. Ghosting might have become the norm in romantic dating, but we’ve been doing our best to avoid this on our co-parenting dates, as the stakes are so much higher. It’s vital to us that we build a friendship with whoever we decide to commit to, before moving on to the actual, mildly frightening procreation side of things. Call me old-fashioned but if I’m going to have any contact with someone’s sperm, I’d really prefer it if we were friends first.
Co-parenting has become fairly common in countries such as the Netherlands and Israel; the former could soon pass legislation allowing more than two people to be named as a child’s legal guardian. But here in the UK it remains something most people know nothing about, as we have learned. Our first real contact with this world was last year at the Modern Family Show in London, an annual event for LGBTQ+ people looking to start families. One of the events was a talk on the legal side of co-parenting. Before this event, the room had been packed out for a talk on surrogacy. Then, the room cleared. Just a handful of us turned up to hear the co-parenting talk; mostly women.
This was our first sign that this process was going to be much harder than we thought. So my partner Leo, ever the proactive one, decided we should set up our own group to meet others like us. In January, we hosted our first Queer Platonic Co-Parenting meetup. About 40 people showed up, far more than either of us had expected. At first, we tried to implement a speed-meeting setup, but in the end, the meetup has established itself as something closer to a support group.
It has been energising to see that – niche as it may be – there is a call for this kind of family structure, but the eggs-to-sperm ratio remains an issue. In our experience, co-parenting seems to overwhelmingly appeal to cis women, trans men and non-binary people assigned female at birth. Without any exhaustive studies on this, I can only guess why. Statistics around sexuality and income are sparse, but – as of 2017, at least – gay men in the US were earning significantly more than lesbians. At a time when having kids has become a luxury for many, one of the appeals of co-parenting is being able to share the financial burden.
Leo and I are still waiting to meet somebody right for us. Since starting our meetup group, we’ve been inundated with messages from people thanking us for setting it up. We’ve learned that there are plenty of people looking, like us, to do parenting differently. We just hope that, somewhere among them, is someone for us.
Eleanor Margolis is a columnist for the i newspaper and Diva
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