Everyone has daydreams: whisking yourself away to a quiet place where no one is screaming for you, or needs anything from you. A place where if you want to write you can write; if you want to draw you can draw. If you want to spend all day browsing high-end handbags online, you can do that. Except often, if you have a family, these daydreams stay exactly that: dreams.
Unless you’re Lori Tipton, that is.
When she started thinking about a family in 2012, she asked several parents what they considered their biggest challenge. “One answer stood out,” she writes. “‘I don’t have time for myself anymore’.”
Lori prides herself on her independence, so this was a problem for her. At the time she’d been in a relationship for 10 years and chosen to live separately from her partner the whole time.
“How was I supposed to find the energy to have a career, pursue my passions, and raise a child with the help of only one other person?” she writes.
“It’s a pressing question for all working moms in the 21st century. Then, I had a thought. What if my child had more than two parents?”
Top Comments
Lots of people are suggesting that it's no different from parents who are separated. It's extremely different. This family made a choice to have this type of arrangement. Separation can be the result of many issues and can often cause trauma to the family and the children who are raised with expectations of always having their biological parents together in the same household.
Yep, no different to parenting with people who had separated then got with another person. We have 5 people in ours! There is my partner and I. My ex and his partner. And my partners ex. We have 4 kids together. My partners son. My two. And our one together. So on any given weekend we can have from 1 to 4 kids.
The only difference with this partnership is that they live so close to each other.