MyCoParenting
5 Tips To Find Your Co-Parent
The 5 Best Ways to Find Your Perfect Co-Parent!
1. Ask Friends or Family to Co-Parent
The the most convenient and often thought of as the safest option to find a suitable co-parent would be a friend; either a social friend or friend of the family. And in some cases even family members have been known to co-parent a child with.
When I was a young whipper snapper in my early 20s in Liverpool I was in my usual gay watering hole, a pub called the Lisbon and a couple of my friends came bouncing in all around me in excitement, she was a single heterosexual woman and he was a single gay man. They were elated as they had begun the process of having a baby together as friends.
When they had the child they brought her in to show me and they were clearly totally in love and smitten. The baby was absolutely beautiful and more loved by those two than any child I knew.
Still to this day they are as lovely a family now as they were when they were just started out being co-parents.
2. Use a Co-Parents Network Website
There are several very good co-parent social networks available right now on the internet. Unfortunately all of the ones I could find in my research are also for sperm donors and are not free to send messages.
This is one of the reasons I made My CoParenting as I personally got fed up of not wanting to pay to send messages and also having to search for a co-parent on a donor site too.
These sites are all very good for finding a co-parent as you can do an advanced search for your perfect co-parent and make a profile to connect to these potential co-parents.
www.coparents.com ~ Not Free & Includes Sperm Donors
www.mycoparenting.org ~ Totally Free & Only for Co-Parents
www.modfamily.com ~ Not Free & Includes Sperm Donors
www.co-parentmatch.com ~ Not Free & Includes Sperm Donors
www.pollentree.com ~ Not Free & Includes Sperm Donors
On our website you can search for any type of co-parent from lesbian to heterosexual, gay, bisexual, pan-sexual, transsexual, queer, single co-parents and couples.
3. Alternative Parenting Events
Another great way to meet like minded potential co-parents is to actually get off your butt (what with a wifi device right in front of me)?! Yes! I dare you! :P
Get out and about and check out local alternative parenting groups and events. You could even host your own!
One of the best ones in the UK right now is Alternative Parenting, their show is on Saturday 24th September 2016 at The Royal College of Surgeons in London. Check out more at their website: The Alternative Parenting Show
You may even see me and my partner there as the My CoParenting "team" i.e. Me... and my ever suffering missis :P Are hoping to trundle on down to the big smoke with my wheelchair and if I am feeling up to it and my illness will allow we hope to attend ourselves.
Do check it out it will be a fantastic way to not only meet potential co-parents and the like but also to learn a lot about being a co-parent and alternative parenting.
4. Facebook Groups
Finding co-parents using Facebook groups has both draw backs and benefits.
I personally find the groups unfortunately get a lot of sperm donors advertising which defeats the purpose of being a co-parents group - these men should really be posting in the sperm donor groups.
The other issue is it can be difficult to search / find a co-parent most suited to you as you only have the wall and adverts to rely on, which means a very time consuming search through the wall posts and even those posts could be old and out of date. By the time you reach them to contact the potential co-parent their post or ad may be irrelevant by now.
That being said I have met some nice guys on these groups and it is nice to chat to other people and co-parents in the same situation as you and to get feedback on what you are trying to achieve yourself.
Also, sometimes you do find a co-parent randomly that might be suited to you, I just find it quite a lengthy and sometimes inefficient task.
These are the best co-parenting groups I could find:
Find CoParents Free
Co-Parents UK and Ireland
Co-Parents UK
(Apologies for my non UK readers I couldn't find any further afield).
5. Search for Co-Parents Online
I personally haven't done this yet but believe me before I built this website I did think about it! There are other ways to connect with people online and search for a co-parent.
For example parenting forums, gay forums, blogs, groups and advertising sites such as gumtree and craigslist.
Even Twitter! Believe it or not, I have actually seen quite a few people post that they would like to be a co-parent on Twitter you only have to reply. (Although this is a tad exhausting as a search method).
Best of Luck with your search, I really hope you find the co-parent of your dreams and have a wonderful alternative family together.
Gem xxx
mycoparenting.org/blog/coparents/5-tips-to-find-your-copa...
5 Tips To Find Your Co-Parent
The 5 Best Ways to Find Your Perfect Co-Parent!
1. Ask Friends or Family to Co-Parent
The the most convenient and often thought of as the safest option to find a suitable co-parent would be a friend; either a social friend or friend of the family. And in some cases even family members have been known to co-parent a child with.
When I was a young whipper snapper in my early 20s in Liverpool I was in my usual gay watering hole, a pub called the Lisbon and a couple of my friends came bouncing in all around me in excitement, she was a single heterosexual woman and he was a single gay man. They were elated as they had begun the process of having a baby together as friends.
When they had the child they brought her in to show me and they were clearly totally in love and smitten. The baby was absolutely beautiful and more loved by those two than any child I knew.
Still to this day they are as lovely a family now as they were when they were just started out being co-parents.
2. Use a Co-Parents Network Website
There are several very good co-parent social networks available right now on the internet. Unfortunately all of the ones I could find in my research are also for sperm donors and are not free to send messages.
This is one of the reasons I made My CoParenting as I personally got fed up of not wanting to pay to send messages and also having to search for a co-parent on a donor site too.
These sites are all very good for finding a co-parent as you can do an advanced search for your perfect co-parent and make a profile to connect to these potential co-parents.
www.coparents.com ~ Not Free & Includes Sperm Donors
www.mycoparenting.org ~ Totally Free & Only for Co-Parents
www.modfamily.com ~ Not Free & Includes Sperm Donors
www.co-parentmatch.com ~ Not Free & Includes Sperm Donors
www.pollentree.com ~ Not Free & Includes Sperm Donors
On our website you can search for any type of co-parent from lesbian to heterosexual, gay, bisexual, pan-sexual, transsexual, queer, single co-parents and couples.
3. Alternative Parenting Events
Another great way to meet like minded potential co-parents is to actually get off your butt (what with a wifi device right in front of me)?! Yes! I dare you! :P
Get out and about and check out local alternative parenting groups and events. You could even host your own!
One of the best ones in the UK right now is Alternative Parenting, their show is on Saturday 24th September 2016 at The Royal College of Surgeons in London. Check out more at their website: The Alternative Parenting Show
You may even see me and my partner there as the My CoParenting "team" i.e. Me... and my ever suffering missis :P Are hoping to trundle on down to the big smoke with my wheelchair and if I am feeling up to it and my illness will allow we hope to attend ourselves.
Do check it out it will be a fantastic way to not only meet potential co-parents and the like but also to learn a lot about being a co-parent and alternative parenting.
4. Facebook Groups
Finding co-parents using Facebook groups has both draw backs and benefits.
I personally find the groups unfortunately get a lot of sperm donors advertising which defeats the purpose of being a co-parents group - these men should really be posting in the sperm donor groups.
The other issue is it can be difficult to search / find a co-parent most suited to you as you only have the wall and adverts to rely on, which means a very time consuming search through the wall posts and even those posts could be old and out of date. By the time you reach them to contact the potential co-parent their post or ad may be irrelevant by now.
That being said I have met some nice guys on these groups and it is nice to chat to other people and co-parents in the same situation as you and to get feedback on what you are trying to achieve yourself.
Also, sometimes you do find a co-parent randomly that might be suited to you, I just find it quite a lengthy and sometimes inefficient task.
These are the best co-parenting groups I could find:
Find CoParents Free
Co-Parents UK and Ireland
Co-Parents UK
(Apologies for my non UK readers I couldn't find any further afield).
5. Search for Co-Parents Online
I personally haven't done this yet but believe me before I built this website I did think about it! There are other ways to connect with people online and search for a co-parent.
For example parenting forums, gay forums, blogs, groups and advertising sites such as gumtree and craigslist.
Even Twitter! Believe it or not, I have actually seen quite a few people post that they would like to be a co-parent on Twitter you only have to reply. (Although this is a tad exhausting as a search method).
Best of Luck with your search, I really hope you find the co-parent of your dreams and have a wonderful alternative family together.
Gem xxx
mycoparenting.org/blog/coparents/5-tips-to-find-your-copa...