Posted March 3, Not too long ago, many of the big, important components of a life were all rolled into the package of marriage. To get those things—or at least to get them without stigma or shame —you had to marry. Those components included living together, having sex , raising children, and having a loving committed romantic relationship. Over time, the components of marriage and family have been disassembled, and put together in new ways. Each time a big chunk was pulled out of the marital package, shock and outrage ensued.
For a long time, sex outside of marriage was stigmatized—especially for women. Now, not so much. Single parenting still carries some stigma but not nearly as much as it once did. In a fairly new rearrangement of the pieces of marital package, some married couples and committed couples who are not married are choosing not to live together. They want places of their own not because that would make it easier to cheat and get away with it, but because they value having the solitude and privacy and autonomy that comes with having separate homes.
I knew about all these examples of the reconfiguring of the components of a life before I started researching How We Live Now: Redefining Home and Family in the 21st Century. There was one new variation, though, that I knew nothing about at the outset.
It startled me when I first learned about it. The new family form begins with single people who very much want to have children, but do not want to be single parents. Some wanted to find a romantic partner, but got tired of waiting. Others never were interested in being part of a romantic couple. Either way, these single people take a bold new step: They look for someone to commit to parenting with them, for at least as long as it takes for their children to reach adulthood.
A romantic relationship is not part of the package. To have children with a person who is not a romantic partner, IVF is often used. Some parenting partners have children the old-fashioned way. Adoption is another option. In still other instances, one of the two partners already has children, and looks for another partner to be a coparent.
