These two are obviously made of wax, but are their real-life counterparts really co-parenting?
(This post first appeared in Deesha’s co-parenting column at The Faster Times)
Recently on Twitter, Friend of CoParenting101.org Mydria asked us: Can an unmarried couple with kids be considered “co-parents”? in response to media outlets referring to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s co-parenting” partnership and referencing them as co-parents. Mydria asks because around these parts we tend to think of co-parents as people who share parenting duties but live apart, after a break up.
I wonder if the media refer to Brad and Angelina as “co-parents” and not simply as “parents” because they aren’t married. As if we need a special designation to remind us that the couple is living in sin. Or maybe we need a special designation for unmarried celebrities who live and parent together, lest they be confused with the riff-raff.
That said, I’ve also read about married couples who are referred to as “co-parenting.” I usually translate this as: “Hey, look! Dad cares for the kids too–besides going to work everyday. He does, you know…Mom stuff.” No disrespect to couples, married or unmarried, who are parenting with parity under the same roof. In fact, good for them. But the fact that what they are doing is considered co-parenting, and not just parenting, signifies how much of an anomaly non-gendered division of childcare labor still is.
Finally, in response to Mydria’s question, I mentioned that some same-sex couples who are parenting with a third-party donor or surrogate also describe their relationships as “co-parenting.” Again, all involved are parenting, but there is a distinction made that says, “We are the parents of these kids, but we’re not parenting in the ‘traditional’, i.e., married and/or heterosexual, way.”
Or maybe they aren’t saying this at all. Maybe the distinction is being made for them…for all of us? Because applying my own logic, the parenting that my kids’ father and I have done since our divorce is “just” parenting as well but it too requires a clarifying label. I can’t even remember where I first heard the term “co-parenting,” and I don’t recall making a conscious decision to call what we do with regard to jointly caring for our kids “co-parenting.”
For all my musings, however, the title of this column and of the resource site I run with my ex aren’t changing. After all, U.S. marriage rates are declining, and we have the lowest percentage among Western nations of children who grow up with* both biological parents. We have highest divorce rate and the highest rate of single parenting. If these trends continue and if the number of married and co-habitating dads doing their fair share of the childcare continues to grow, then maybe “co-parenting” will replace “parenting” as what Americans call the heart-, hand- and headwork that two or more people undertake on behalf of a child entrusted to their care.
*I’m assuming here “with” means “living full-time in a single household with.”
Deesha, for me the term worked, because we weren’t ever married. For me, it wasn’t just about how we were parenting our child, it was a term that reframed our relationship to *one another*. It gave me a paradigm inside of which it was easier to speak to “family-hood” in a society that doesn’t necessarily recognize that that’s what we are despite the absence of a marriage. Additionally, it embodied the concept of partnering which is still different from parenting. So, I embrace the term and encourage other people to use it if they can relate to it as an empowering term.
At the end of the day, it’s not my place to judge or label anyone else’s relationship or to question the value of the labels they use to make sense of it. Whatever they call it, the most important thing to me is that they’re doing it.
[co-parenting embodies] the concept of partnering which is still different from parenting.
Yes!!!!! Thanks for sharing this perspective, T.