Tag: Confessions

CoParentaLys

This is something I did not know existed before today.  However, I belong to a mom’s group, all of whom conceived their children by some method of assisted reproduction.  In our group are more than one single woman who was aging and gave up on waiting for a suitable partner to mother a child and these women – each and every one of them – is a strong, capable, loving and effective parent.

In this age of on-line dating, it should not surprise me that since 2014, an internet site has existed to facilitate several unconventional kinds of yearnings.  There is the Co-Parenting by Choice aspect for a single person wishing to meet another person of the opposite sex that is willing to become the parent of a child with the seeker.

There is the aspect of someone who both wants to conceive a child but also find love as part of that effort.  In this case it is a kind of dating site that pre-selects for a willingness to start a family.

There is an aspect for men willing to donate sperm so that a single woman can conceive a child.

There is finally an aspect for homosexual co-parenting in which a gay couple who want to have a child team up with a single person or another homosexual couple.  Suggesting, they surround that child with love by becoming three or four parents together.

I find this very interesting.  They say they have 25,000 members.  It is noted that since the creation of their site, thousands of families have been created and hundreds of children have been born (maybe even thousands …).

There are YouTubes related to the effort and Facebook page.  There seems to be a strong international component to this community.  You may wish to consider this woman’s experience in a video sharing – The Life of a CoParent.

Young and Foolish

There is a raging debate in an adoption group I belong to over what it is like to be young and foolish causing one not to be a good mother.  Part of the debate has to do with how much time it could take for a 21 yr old, unsupported and drug addicted, partying mother to get her act together.  Fortunately, the baby in question that was taken by Child Protective Services is currently in place with a relative who has worked hard to keep the child in contact with the mother and wants to maintain family care for the infant so that the child can know the child’s grandmother, great-grandmother and other extended family.

I wasn’t a good mother when I was in my early twenties.  I gave birth at 19 and was divorced by age 23.  My marriage had involved drug use.  My perspective was still wild and free and partying.  I did manage to hold down a job and pay rent but I struggled financially, often going to my mom for inadequate $20 handouts and had an ex-husband who refused to pay child support because he believed I would just party on that money.  He never seemed to give any consideration to the cost of child care, pediatricians, much less food and clothing.

So, in desperation I took my child to her paternal grandmother (not expecting my parents to approve of my plan to head out on an 18-wheel truck in order to make some real money).  Eventually, her father remarried a woman with a child and they conceived another child together.  This ended my plan to come back and continue to raise my daughter because I could not give her the family he could and I was still struggling financially.

I am totally in favor of maintaining family ties when a young mother isn’t mature enough or financially sound enough to support her child.  Adoption by strangers should ALWAYS be the absolute last resort.  Eventually, I matured.  I married a man when I was 33 and we went on to have two sons together.  I truly had felt like a failure at parenting.  I was simply too young and too unsupported to have done better.  I know now that was the truth of it.