The site that unites those who want to have children without any romantic commitment

Female, 37 years old, businesswoman, looking for a man who wants to be a father. Taline Schneider’s ad is reminiscent of those formerly published in newspaper classifieds, but gained space on a Facebook page that brings together people interested in having children without getting romantically involved. It seems specific, but Taline knew that desire couldn’t be hers alone. “I dated, got married, it didn’t work out. I thought: why do I need all this to have a child?”, she explains, who found herself asexual – a name given to those who do not feel like having sex. Inspired by international websites, in 2015 she created “Make a child with me”, which soon gained followers. There is a name for this type of family construction, it is called coparenting and is covered by Brazilian law. The practice is defined by the American website Modamily.com (with more than 20,000 registered users) as “the shared upbringing of a child between loving, committed and financially secure adults”.

There are no official numbers of the movement’s reach in Brazil, but the public exists. Proof of this is that Taline imported the idea and transformed the old fanpage into the Pais Amigos website, a virtual meeting point that today has around 4,000 subscribers. To enter the site, you must answer a secret question with incorrect alternatives and only one correct one. It is a filter to protect the platform and its users. Built with Talline’s investments, it looks like an almanac of cards. Who accesses reads the name, age and city of the candidate. Pregnancies can happen via artificial insemination or traditional method. It is also possible to adopt. Around 40 families have already been born from the network’s connections. “My objective is not to incite people to have children, but to promote the meeting of those who share this dream”, says Taline. The oldest child is about to turn 2 years old. There are still those who closed the process but did not notify the site – since there is no obligation to share the conclusion of the attempts with the platform.

Read more: Man confesses to killing six-year-old girl for revenge

new formations

Professor Rodrigo Florêncio da Silva, 36, signed up on the site in 2017. Single and homosexual, he talked to younger women, but he did not feel confident. He persisted and, about a year and a half ago, he met Maria Angélica Pantaleão de Paula, 41, an inspector at a public school in the interior of São Paulo. “You know that feeling of finding the right person? It was just like that”, explains Rodrigo. Maria Angélica had past frustrations, traumas from when she talked to a boyfriend about having children. She heard from the then partner if he would have to pay alimony. “I wanted someone who shared my desire to live it, and not see it as an obligation. I came to think that motherhood was not for me,” she says. “Rodrigo sent me a message asking if I had already achieved my big dream. Those words moved me,” he recalls.

The pair spent almost two years talking on social media – he has been teaching in Mexico since 2009 – until they agreed to meet in 2018. “We created a very strong bond of friendship”, says Maria Angélica. They are already on their second attempt at in vitro fertilization. “It was Rodrigo’s companionship that made me overcome the first venture, which went wrong, and set out on a new one. It is difficult to deal with the negative result, but he supported me.”

Read more: Man rescues dying puppies and recovery is exciting

Before undergoing the second procedure, Maria Angélica went to Mexico to visit Rodrigo. They recorded the trips to make a photo album for their son. The result of the pregnancy test had not come out as of this writing, but the plans are to raise the baby in Brazil, as Rodrigo intends to return later this year. Meanwhile, the paternal grandmother will be present.

Coparental families are not heteronormative – formed by a man and a woman. It can be two fathers, two mothers, a couple of women and one more man, a couple of men and one more woman. The possibilities are endless. The important thing is that they are people driven by the desire to have a family. In the Talline network, those registered are between 30 and 40 years old, and 63% define themselves as heterosexual. “What happens in responsible coparenting is what should be the norm – you prepare to have a child, you think about how his education will be, among many other aspects. Every child has the right to have a welcoming family that will fight for their needs. The idea that choosing co-parenting is a way to guarantee a certain freedom, even as a parent, is false. You will be bound to the other person for the rest of your life. And it goes without saying that raising children is an arduous task,” says psychoanalyst Isabel Kahn Marin, a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo.

Read more: Giselle Itié loses two ex-boyfriends in three months

dream x prejudice

Co-parenting puts an end to the idea that you need a spouse to have a child, and maybe that’s why it generates so much controversy. It is a break from a behavior that has been established as a standard for years. “Who says a partner or a marriage legitimizes a family? Disqualifying other formats outside the traditional one is something that happens in many religions. But what about in practice?”, asks Breno Silva Rosostolato, a psychotherapist from São Paulo who helps Taline when questions arise.

Like so many other families that flee from what is considered traditional, coparents face prejudice. This is the case of teacher Gilmar Araújo, 31 years old, his partner Igor and Milla, mother of Heitor, the baby raised by the three of them. When they announced that they would have a child together, between 2014 and 2015, no one in Serra do Ramalho (BA) welcomed them. “Milla was the one who suffered the most. They accused us of all kinds of bad things, because they didn’t understand that we wanted to have a family”, says Gilmar. For protection, the couple called Milla to live with them in the first month of pregnancy, and she only moved when Heitor turned 1. Today, Gilmar and Igor live in Belo Horizonte. Milla is studying the penultimate year of performing arts in Goiás. “We travel a lot,” he says.

The story became a movie in April last year. The feature A Cidade do Futuro, by Cláudio Marques and Marília Hughes, has the three adults on stage. The birth of Heitor materialized the new family, which, during pregnancy, many could not see. “The arrival of our son opened people’s minds”, completes Gilmar.

Read more: 11-year-old girl dies after using toothpaste

attention to expectations

The Brazilian Federal Constitution understands as a family entity any of the parents and their descendants. “Despite being a topic that has recently gained notoriety, co-parental families have been legally foreseen in Brazil since 1988. The guarantees and duties are the same in any case”, says Ariel de Castro Alves, a lawyer specializing in the rights of children and adolescents, from Sao Paulo.

“Coparenting is a contemporary expression that the legal machine is understanding, a consequence of new families. The big change in the law is that the tripod sex, marriage and reproduction is broken. Marriage no longer legitimizes sexual relations, and sex for reproduction is no longer necessary,” says lawyer Rodrigo de Cunha Pereira, president of the Brazilian Institute of Family Law (IBDFAM). Rodrigo suggests that the fathers or mothers, with a lawyer, draw up a term of agreement on the child’s upbringing. The document must include how they will live together, the division of custody, financial support, education goals, among other issues. All this before the pregnancy and with approval by the Judiciary. He has already made five such documents. On one of the occasions, when they began to detail what day-to-day life would be like with the child, a man gave up because the woman did not allow him to participate with the same intensity as she did in the upbringing. He didn’t want to be reduced to a supporting role.

Read more: 10 Inspirational Messages to Send on Mother’s Day

The unwillingness to marry made Rosa Maria Gomes, 49, list the necessary characteristics of the father of her child. “Good nature, constant presence and appreciation of education”, she describes. Whoever met the requirements was his childhood best friend. It was with him that she had her first child, almost two decades ago, before the term coparenting became popular. She felt comfortable and had a second child, by another friend. Young people learned little by little, even during childhood, about their origin. “The important thing is to show that each family is happy in a different way”, recommends Rosa Maria. Even after adults and with their own convictions formed, open conversation is a constant. “We’ve always called it shared parenting and parenting. There was never a lack of education, money or love,” she says. “And there are no regrets. Would do it all over again.”

See more: Madeleine McCann case may have twists warns investigator

Follow CLAUDIA on Youtube