Writing in the Atlantic magazine, Alana Samuels has an article about a new phenomenon: the increasing numbers of single women and lesbian couples who are seeking sperm donors who will take an active role in their children’s lives, as distinct from no role, which is the preferred option of most people who used donor sperm to have children.

Dawn Pieke is a single woman who wants her child to have a relationship with her sperm-donor dad. The dad is Fabian Blue, a gay man she met online on a website for people who wanted to have kids and raise them together, but without a romantic relationship. This is what’s known as ‘Platonic parenting’.

The article explains:

Blue would set up his laptop with Pieke on Skype for dinner parties and special events, and the two would talk daily, sharing their hopes and fears for having a family, getting closer and closer to the conclusion that they might just want to make and raise a child together, though without any sort of romantic involvement.

 …

They met in person for the first time in downtown Omaha on Thanksgiving 2011, when he pulled up in a horse-drawn Cinderella carriage, handed her a bouquet of red roses, and asked, “Will you be my baby mama?” When she said yes, they gave each other high-fives and got into the carriage.

Pieke and Blue now have a daughter, Indigo. They live in different states in America, but Blue “flies back frequently.” They’re both still looking for romantic partners.

“I’m so thankful that everything did happen, because Indigo wouldn’t be who she is without her dad,” Pieke said. “She’s amazing and funny and she’s just awesome. Now that she’s here, its hard to look back and say I wish this or that would have happened. She’s here because of all of that.”

And it’s not just single women who want more from sperm donors than just their “reproductive material.” (A pretty odd euphemism in itself. It’s this “reproductive (or genetic) material” that makes you a mother or a father).

Increasingly, lesbian couples who want to have children are turning to men they know for genetic material, and are sometimes asking him to share some parenting responsibilities.

…

“We are seeing a growing trend of a female, same-sex-couple parenting with the man who provides the genetic material but does not relinquish his rights as a sperm donor,” said Diana Adams, a New York lawyer who advises families on issues like these.

The move to have genetic fathers more involved in their children’s lives is motivated by the recognition that yes, mothers and fathers both matter, and so do the natural ties; and is in that sense to be welcomed.

But the piece also illustrates the very real problems with “platonic parenting.”

 Although there isn’t any research about the outcomes of children born into these non-traditional families, W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project, said that this type of family could create instability, which studies say is definitely bad for children.

“My concern about platonic parenting is that such an arrangement will not last,” he wrote, in an email. “In most cases, one or both of the parties will develop a non-platonic attraction to someone else and move on.”

A healthy sexual relationship is what contributes to the emotional and physical bond that keeps many parents together over the long haul, he said. Platonic parents wouldn’t have any such relationship.

It’s not just the sexual bond: It’s that children of platonic parents will miss out on the organic parts of living with a mother and a father who work together to raise them, said Glenn Stanton, director for Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family.

“Parenting is not a time share,” he said. “It’s something you’ve got to own completely and full-time.”

If women don’t find a man they feel they want to marry and raise children with, he said, they should think about the child’s welfare before deciding to have a child. After all, humans often desire a number of things that they sometimes can’t have, he added.

It’s true that sometimes people marry and have children with the best intentions and then split up, but they raise their children “doing the best they can in spite of the curveball life has thrown them,” he said. “The idea of putting yourself intentionally in that situation is a whole other matter.”

The key missing insight is that people do not have a right to a child by any means. Far more important is the child’s right to be raised by their own mother and father where possible because every child has a mother and a father, and it’s best for that child is to be raised by them in the context of an absolutely committed relationship.

As it happens, there’s actually an insitution that exists to forge these bonds, to bind a child’s mother and father to them and to each other – an instituion that channels romantic bonding, sexual attraction, and parenting into one seamless whole, for the benefit of children and of society. If it didn’t exist, policymakers would dream about inventing it.

It’s called marriage.

Read the whole Atlantic piece here.