Co-Parenting Without the Romance (a.k.a. Platonic Baby Partnerships)
Monday, April 14, 2025.
Let’s start with the radical idea that’s somehow both ancient and futuristic: making babies with someone you’re not in love with.
Not a one-night stand. Not a nuclear family remix.
Just two (or more) consenting adults choosing to co-parent—on purpose—without the performance of romance.
Call it what you want: Platonic Parenting, Intentional Co-Parenting, or The Last Viable Family System Capitalism Hasn’t Monetized (Yet).
Where It’s Showing Up
Parenting TikTok is full of cheery co-parent duos who look like the cool divorced couple from a Nancy Meyers film.
NYT’s Modern Love has already romanticized it in the most non-romantic way possible.
And queer communities? They’ve been doing this for decades, because necessity is the mother of… chosen family.
Straight singles are joining the movement, too. Especially millennials and elder Gen Zs who’ve lost faith in finding both sexual chemistry and emotional maturity in the same Tinder radius.
Why It’s Rising
Because marriage is optional.
Because the dating pool is either polyamorous, emotionally unavailable, or allergic to commitment.
And because many adults still want to raise children with intention, stability, and mutual support—even if the idea of living together and negotiating sock drawers sounds like slow emotional death.
Platonic parenting is rising because we’ve lost faith in the idea that love guarantees responsibility. And we’ve gained faith in spreadsheets.
The Research Says…
They’ll on to something. You don’t need romance. You need structure.
Golombok (2015) and Aiken & Goldberg (2020) have both shown that parenting outcomes depend far more on consistency, communication, and emotional availability than on whether the parents are in love—or even in the same household.
In fact, intentional co-parents often outperform traditional nuclear parents in clarity of expectations and division of labor. Why? Because when you’re not trying to merge your trauma patterns and your Netflix queues, you tend to communicate better.
What This Challenges
This is an assault on the myth that the best families are romantic ones.
It questions the emotional monopoly of marriage over childrearing.
It also threatens the romantic-industrial complex, where Valentine’s Day revenue depends on the belief that true love leads to babies, and babies should only come from true love.
Platonic parenting also highlights an unspoken truth: many married couples are already co-parenting without romance. They just feel bad about it.
Cultural Meaning
This is the ultimate marriage of post-romantic pragmatism and millennial optimization.
You can choose your co-parent like you choose your startup co-founder: shared vision, complementary skills, decent credit. Add a lawyer and a therapist, and you’re golden.
It’s already going viral in all the right places—TikTok reels with matching onesies, longform essays about “the father of my child and best roommate I’ve ever had,” podcast interviews with lesbian moms and their straight male friends who parent better than most married couples.
All we need now is a Netflix docuseries featuring an attractive throuple co-raising twins with adjacent condos, and this thing explodes.
A Quiet Revolution
Let’s not get our collective knickers in a twist.
This isn’t the collapse of family values. It’s their reinvention.
And it might be the most mature response yet to the failures of both hookup culture and monogamy myths.
No drama. No candlelight. Just a kid, two calendars, and a plan.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Aiken, C. E., & Goldberg, A. E. (2020). Parenting intentions and outcomes among LGBTQ co-parents. Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 16(4), 295–312.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2022). National marriage and divorce rate trends. National Center for Health Statistics. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage-divorce.htm
Golombok, S. (2015). Modern families: Parents and children in new family forms. Cambridge University Press.
Pew Research Center. (2023). Attitudes about marriage and family. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/. It’s their reinvention. And it might be the most mature response yet to the failures of both hookup culture and monogamy myths.