Platonic Parenting? Desperate and Irresponsible!

I will link an article for you with the headline Platonic parenting? How some start families when romance isn’t happening or wanted. As you may know, Love Beyond the Sea is a channel rated 4M for Mature Marriage-Minded Men only. Is that you? Please subscribe if you are pro marriage. I got married after a very long wait but didn’t give up and in the times we live in today, there are many aberrations to marriage and relationships that you can hardly believe your eyes and ears. I came across this article and wanted to make it a topic.

I think marriage is the grace of life as it says in the Bible in 1 Peter 3:7; the best of life. Most people are made to be together in marriage, with all its challenges. 1 Corinthians 7 says to avoid fornication (sexual sin) by getting married and goes on to say that people not struggling in that area don’t need to get married. It might be unusual but not all people burn sexually and are in danger of fornication. Matthew 19:12 ^-The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Accept means to handle or make room for so it is saying that while not marrying is an option for some, not all (and I think most people) can not handle or tolerate the single lifestyle, which biblically means no sex. Marriage is a good thing for most people.

Ephesians 5 says this starting in verse 22 ²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her ²⁶ to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, ²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. ²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church— ³⁰ for we are members of his body. ³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” ³² This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. ³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

We know that it is the doctrine of devils to forbid marriage, but here is another case of perverting marriage, which Satan also wants to do. Both cases are bad for people and children in the latter.

So marriage requires love and respect, sacrifice, unselfishness, forgiveness and normally involves strong sexual desires that lead to having children. I will read some from the article, not all, and the article itself talks about some pitfalls of this desperate and irresponsible notion of platonic parenting.

Platonic parenting? How some start families when romance isn’t happening or wanted.

A growing share of adults are looking for partners to help with parenting — but aren’t counting on finding “the one”

Robin Mock is trying to figure out how she wants to become a mom. She knows she wants to have a child — and soon. She’s 43, in the final stages of divorce and keenly aware that her longtime longing for motherhood has not only not happened, but gets less likely with the passage of time.

So the Los Angeles doctor of audiology is looking seriously at her options, from fostering a child to adoption, from sperm donation to the increasingly popular platonic parenting.

The latter option involves prioritizing partnership above romance, so instead of finding someone you hope to spend the rest of your life with in a couples-focused relationship, you look for someone you feel would be a good parent with whom to share raising a child.

While the practice is growing, critics warn that children do best when their family life is stable — and that’s more likely when they’re being raised by their own married parents who are committed to the children and to each other.

“Children benefit from being raised by two stably married parents,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, a scholar at the Institute for Family Studies and director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. “And, frankly, married parents have enough challenges sticking together for their kids and one another. Without the bond of married love, platonic parents are much less likely to stick together and give kids the stable, loving family that is best for them.”

Platonic parenting, according to Naomi R. Cahn, a law professor and director of the Family Law Center at the University of Virginia School of Law, is an international movement that probably got a boost from the pandemic because dating slowed down and the ticking of the biological clock may have seemed much louder.

Platonic parenting is also more established within gay and lesbian communities, but as a recent Guardian article notes, it’s increasingly popular with heterosexual singles, too. The news site notes tens of thousands of people have signed up on the matching website Coparents.co.uk, while U.S.-based Modamily.com has 30,000 international members, two-thirds of them heterosexual. In the United Kingdom, Pollentree.com has 53,000 members, three-fifths of them women. Some on those sites seek a parenting and romantic partner, others a parenting partner only. The big goal for all members is becoming a parent.

Platonic co-parents could have children a number of ways, including though intercourse, surrogacy, in vitro fertilization and adoption.

People thinking about forming nontraditional parenting partnerships don’t tend to trumpet their decisions, said Patrick Harrison, PollenTree.com founder. “Our members keep a low profile because it’s nobody else’s business. They don’t need to rest of society to tell them it’s a good or bad thing,” he told the Guardian.

As noted, there are lots of opinions on the topic, but the phenomenon is driven by a real yearning for parenthood by both men and women who have not found “the one.”

Mock is more than willing to talk about her efforts to be a mom. And she’s trying to be realistic. She is preparing to be ready if she decides to try having a baby: taking prenatal vitamins, checking her fertility and hormones. She’s read avidly about options and she seeks out folks with experience in different ways to have children, including a potential sperm donor and a woman who fostered then adopted a child.

“I’m prepping, prepping prepping,” she said. “And I still know that rationally, everything could look good but I may not be able to get pregnant or, if I do, maybe I can’t carry a child. The likelihood that I’ll do IVF is pretty low, because it’s ridiculously expensive,” she said. “I think I have a couple of years — maybe until I’m 45 — to figure this out.”

Legal issues

Some family experts are leery of having children with someone absent romantic and marital commitment.

“No other institution reliably connects two parents, and their money, talent and time, to their children in the way that marriage does,” Wilcox wrote some time ago in a blog post for the Institute for Family Studies. “Can anything be done to increase the odds that every American child has an equal opportunity to be raised by his or her own parents in a strong and stable marriage?”

There is much more in the article you will find at the top of the description box but that’s all I chose to read for the sake of time. What do I care? I am happily married. Well, I want others to experience the goodness of marriage that I do with my wife. Today, there is pushback against marriage altogether, which is insane because marriage is a God-given institution for the good of mankind. It isn’t easy to do but when you grow through it, you become a more well-rounded person and a happier one. It is essentially an unselfish union with total devotion and commitment when two people decide they will love each other.

I don’t see any love involved with platonic parenting, or attraction or the necessity to stay together and follow biblically prescribed guidelines and commandments for marriage, when two people decide they just want to be “married” in order to be a parent. Marriage IS the place for raising children, however marriage is a lot more than just any two people wanting to be legally married to raise a child, when the child needs to be raised from parents who love one another and are committed for life.

The “one flesh” the Bible refers to is having children ultimately in addition to a closeness only known by a man and women in true love. Platonic Parenting just isn’t right and is bad for the children. It is selfish. For the record I am against IVF and artificial insemination, adoption is a biblical concept.

My channel and podcasts on Casting Beyond The Sea, go back to the Bible for their foundation as I have today here on Love Beyond The Sea.