Should you consider a “parenting marriage?” Or are you perhaps already in one? In this episode I welcome guests Vicki Larson and Susan Pease Gadoua back to the show. Vicki and Susan are co-authors of a very interesting book called The New “I Do:” Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels. They were on the podcast WAY back on episode 12, “Are We Doing Marriage Wrong?” which remains one of our most popular yet. The New “I Do” explores the modern shape of matrimony. And while they were researching the reasons why about half of marriages don’t last, Susan and Vicki discovered that people are quietly tweaking the institution, redefining it to suit both their needs and the times. One of those is the parenting marriage. Sometimes this takes the form of people seeking each other out for the soul purpose of having a platonic co-parenting relationship and sometimes it’s about changing the job description from your mate being your lover to being just your co-parent. Whether you want a parenting marriage or not, they say, it’s important to have a dialogue about what we do and don’t expect from a marriage—“conscious coupling” as opposed to trying to fit ourselves within a one-size-fits-all definition of marriage.
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