Brett Cooper — Women Are Having Babies With Their Gay BFF Because They're Scared to Get Married

Guys, breaking news. Women and the gays are ditching straight men. They are ditching romantic love and instead they are opting into platonic co-parenting arrangements. Now, this led me down a rabbit hole of all of these weird progressive co-parenting relationships that are happening around the world right now. And while I will say there might be a case to be made for some of these, we'll break down all of the arguments in this episode, I do think that most of them are still missing the point about what it means to provide the best stable environment for a child.

And one of my biggest qualms across the board for these people is that they are doing the dance of marriage. They have a pretend marriage and yet they're not actually doing each other. I mean, what is the fun in that? Now, before we dive into this story, make sure that you like this video, subscribe to the channel if you've not already, and of course, ring that notification bell to make sure that you stay up to date on every single thing we upload here on the Brad Cooper Show.

All right, so earlier this week a new video from ABC came across my feed both on X and on TikTok. It was like a double header for me of a straight woman who decided to have kids with her gay best friend. Just watch. >> No romance, no traditional partnership, no marriage. Amrita identifies as straight and Andrew as gay. >> We've been friends for almost 15 years. [music] We met at work and um hit it off immediately and things have snowballed from there.

>> [laughter] >> We never put guardrails on what that meant for our life. >> And now we have a family together. >> The idea may sound unconventional, but it's a path a growing number of people are choosing. Then during the pandemic, after living together for the first time, they rethought what a family could look like. Amrita says she initially didn't see herself as a mother. >> What actually changed for you though?

>> I realized, okay, well, I don't have an opposition to motherhood. What if that goes a step further and like I can be a mother but not within the structure of also being like a wife and a mother. >> Within the structure of being a wife and a mother. Don't worry, we're going to get into that. The response on X has been obvious. People just going, "Wait, I'm so confused by this. This is just ridiculous." Somebody commented and said, "ABC News peddling more evil globalist anti-family propaganda for the elites, I see."

And then this was my favorite comment and it really speaks to my overwhelming comments on this, but this person said, "The level of commitment it takes to avoid commitment is astounding." Genuinely, like is this just a case where people are so afraid of commitment and the that comes with commitment that they are just like quote unquote playing it safe. Like I feel like we see this more and more these days where people are so terrified of marriage for some reason.

Like the marriage part is so terrifying to them, the permanency of it. And yet they will happily have a child with somebody. They will happily get a baby daddy or baby mama, which is far more permanent. And it's just so insane to me that marriage is more of a hurdle than bringing life into the world. Now, on that note, the other thing about this video that was so interesting to me is what she said at the end there, that she didn't want to be in the structure of being a wife and a mother.

And this is just another moment of hypocrisy. I don't even know if that's the right word to use here, but where they're not wanting to be part of something yet they actually are a part of something. I'll try to be more clear later on in the episode, but essentially she's saying she doesn't want to be in the structure of being a wife and a mother. And yet she lives in a home with a man. She is best friends with that man.

She is raising children. She's now pregnant with a second baby with that man. She takes care of a home with that man. And so she just doesn't have sex with him. Like girl, you're doing all of that, but not doing that? Like that's just dumb. It is so so dumb. You are in fact living within the structure of being a wife and a mother, but without a lot of the pleasure. Sorry, putting it out there. Like I don't know what you're so afraid of when it comes to being a wife.

That's just something that society has told you is so awful and is so oppressive, but now you're doing it. And yet you don't have any of of legal protections. You don't have any of the intimate pleasure, but none I mean, it's just doesn't make sense. Same goes with the fear of marriage versus the permanency of having a child. Oh, I don't want to commit. I don't know, maybe things will change in the future. And yet, we are going to be permanently bonded around this child for the rest of our lives.

It's cognitive dissonance. That's the term we need to use, not hypocrisy, cognitive dissonance. Like lady, you are not sticking it to the man and removing yourself from some oppressive structure as the feminist would say. And like you are simply just missing out on true love and a good time. But apparently, the lack of sex, that is part of the arrangement that some people on Tik Tok find so appealing. Like one woman commented and said, "I would love to raise my kids with somebody who loves them as much as me, but doesn't want to have sex with me."

And then 245 other people liked that comment. Like that is just crazy. And then just building off of there, the other thing that is inverted about this is that, you know, these people, they want to have kids. They're not opposed to being parents. They want the family. But based on my read of the situation, they're wanting to do it in this, you know, really unique progressive way to look cool. But then, at the end of the day, like watching this video, even though they're not actually married, they're not, you know, in love as a married couple, they actually have a pretty traditional family dynamic.

There's a mom, a dad, and kids. So, you're just like mixing up the labels to make yourself feel better about the situation. It's just weird. And I do want to say, this is not some super niche thing that's just happening on Tik Tok. You're like, "Brett, this is so weird. This is definitely not happening." No, this is actually growing. There are now even apps that are designed to help strangers meet so that they can have kids together.

Not so that they can fall in love and live happily ever after and then start a family because of that love. No, just purely to create children. One of which is called Modamily, which was the pioneering platform founded in 2011. It screens users and offers tools and guidance to help match with others who align with their values and expectations. It's grown its user base 200% since 2020, from 30K to 100K in 2025. Another app called Let's Be Parents went from about 1200 monthly active users in 2023, which was its first year to 10k today.

Another one co-parents now has 150,000 registered users up 76% since 2020. So like this is happening. A lot changed, but I do want to say even though I just kind of made the argument that some of these setups have a more traditional dynamic, not everyone is as traditional out there obviously because the next part of this crazy journey that I've taken you guys on involves a man named Jay, the asexual of the story. And he lives with his friend and her husband and helps raise their kids.

Now the Atlantic did an article on him back in 2020. Like really like all COVID things aside, we're going to look back on 2020 in the future history books and go what the hell was in the water? What happened that caused our society to literally flip on its head in more ways than one because again, I feel like I've been talking about this the last three weeks, but everything goes back to 2020. All right, anyway, but moving on from that aside, the Atlantic did this piece on him and they wrote that as this individual Jay grew older after spending years talking about asexuality being a big prominent voice in that community, he runs a big asexuality organization, I believe.

They wrote that the questions on his mind moved beyond identity and attraction to issues of parenting and family life. The problem for Jay was never how babies are made and fostering and adoption were options. The problem was that he wanted kids and also wanted a co-parent to help him raise kids, but wasn't interested in romantic partnership. Before exploring single parenthood, he was curious whether there might be another way to form the family he wanted and obviously, it is the 2020s.

So of course somebody came up with an option here. article goes on and writes that today Jay is part of a three-parent family in Northern California. He lives with a married couple, Avery Kent and Zeke Hausfather, and is not part of their marriage, but is a father to their biological daughter Octavia or Tavi, whose full name includes all three of their last names. Jay is Tavi's parent just as fully and permanently really?

As Kent and Hausfather and just as legally too. This is the crazy part. Since three-parent adoption has been recognized by the state of California, three-parent adoption has also been recognized by the state statute in Maine, Washington State, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Of course, California has three-parent adoptions, and of course, it is being used in this way. Like, have we lost the plot? Again, we're just trying to subvert everything.

Have we lost the allure of being like the fun, cool aunt, popping in and helping your sister raise her kids or vice versa, just being, you know, the village for your friends' children? A gunkle, LIKE CRAZY IDEA. Even crazier, a traditional marriage. Actually finding somebody that you care about, that you love, choosing to commit to them, and then building a family. Like, I'm reading this article and I felt like I was going crazy because I was like, "Okay, so this man is an asexual."

But now we have all of these other people that are platonically co-parenting with one person. Like, was that not an option, too? Like, no, we had to go to the extreme where now these children have three parents. An additional man is living in their home. It's like, it just feels unnecessary. On the topic of tradition, Jay does push back. So, I want to give him the space to do that. So, the article goes on, and the writer says, "Three-parent families are not a new phenomenon, and Jay does not consider himself a trailblazer.

Many parents, particularly those who are single or have low incomes, have long cobbled together child care by bringing in relatives and friends as informal co-parents." But I would argue that the tradition of having a village, which is a tradition that we should be fighting to bring back as I think that does not exist for a lot of young families anymore. But that village and supporting your friends and your community is not the same as having a third legal parent.

That's a very different thing. You're equating parenthood with child care. Both important things, but vastly different things. And then going on, the author says, "The idea that the default family unit consists of two straight parents and their children is outdated." Of course, it's outdated. "And does not reflect the US today." Is it because people have nannies and babysitters and send their kids to daycare, and because of that it's outdated, and there's everybody has like six parents?

No. No. Now, they go on and they say, "One a 2014 Pew Research report, for example, found that fewer of half of American kids lived in a so-called traditional family environment with two married parents on their first marriage. Divorce and remarriage are more common than they once were, as are blended families and step families, many of which feature a third parental figure. The queer and polyamorous communities, too, have plenty of examples of three parent families.

Now, before I respond to that and we talk about two wrongs not making a right, I do want to give more space to this because another man has a historical argument for this as well, writing in his experience that I for years of wanting a family and going through the struggles of dating and not finding anybody to settle down with, he is now raising an 8-year-old girl with a platonic co-parent. So, that's his story, but he said that right until the 16th century, romantic love, far from being seen as the sole reason for marriage, was considered a risky strategy that could affect the success of a family that has to raise children and pay the bills.

That's very true. Has anybody read a Jane Austen novel? I'm sure you'd get it. The criteria for success was to find a partner that had good earning potential, came from a good background with a sound education and reputation. As we got into the 19th century in the West, literacy improved, romantic literature flourished, people started writing love letters. As the ability to get work became easier, people became less dependent on their inheritances to make their own decisions instead of following what their family dictated.

With this autonomy, romantic love became an increasingly important consideration along with the more practical aspects of who somebody should marry. Pretty soon, the importance of romantic love in the West became all consuming. And so then he uses that to say, "So maybe it isn't that important to begin with because civilization existed, we procreated for generations and generations without it." Now, here is my personal issue with that argument.

Yes, in the past, again, if you've read a Jane Austen novel, you know, but people in the past did not always marry for love, but they still got married. And in most of those, you know, great old stories in the Jane Austen, the Jane Eyres, people might not have married for love, but there is always that arc in those stories where they do come to love each other through, you know, the act of raising children together and the lifelong commitment that they make.

It was not some, you know, platonic co-parent situation arrangement that they just came up with. It was a marriage, and they also rarely divorced. So, there was stability for the children. The lack of love or the romantic inclination to get married was not what gave the children stability, it was the marriage. And so, to apply this to what we're seeing today, you know, if these people, the lavender marriages where you have a straight person and a gay person, if they are actually getting married, if they believe in the seriousness and the sanctity of marriage, if they are fully committing to one spouse and committing to that family, then I'm actually not too concerned.

If you're not head over heels in love with each other, if you just want to start a family, like, it might not look like your, you know, average American suburban family, but in my mind it would still be a marriage because, obviously, there is respect and care there, you're wanting to start a family, and you are committing to one another. And I know you might be thinking, "Brett, I just do not agree with that at all," which is totally fine, but I do want to give one example because all of this reminds me of this couple on TikTok that I have kept tabs on for years.

I might have even done a comment section episode on them years ago, but it is a straight woman named Samantha and a gay man named Jacob. They are best friends. They fell in love platonically, but also a bit romantically. They were dating for years, but they were always struggling with the fact that Jacob was gay, that he, you know, believed he was gay, and so he was struggling with the fact that he had, you know, these feelings of affection for this woman.

But, love conquers all, and so in 2024, they got married. And you can see, they often do videos talking about their decision to get married and start a family. This one they just posted a couple of weeks ago. >> Hi, I'm Samantha and I married a gay man. Why did we choose to get married? >> Well, hopefully, like most people, we chose to get married because we're madly in love with each other. >> Fun fact, Jacob and I were dating as boyfriend and girlfriend for 6 and 1/2 years before he even proposed.

>> Yes. >> So, this isn't like a decision that just happened all of a sudden where we were like, "Huh, lavender marriage sounds nice." >> Right. This is a marriage that has actually not come through convenience, but inconvenience. We have gone through of trying to figure out this dynamic because nobody else was talking about this when we were dating and now we're trying to bring this to the world and say, "Hey, these sorts of relationships exist and people should feel comfortable talking about their sexuality no matter what dynamic or partnership they're in."

>> We knew it was love at first sight from the second that we met one another, but because he was gay and I was straight, it was very confusing and we did not know how to navigate it. And now that we have shared, we've been approached by many other couples who are in this dynamic and we wish that we had had this representation for ourselves. >> Okay, before I get into what I do really like about them, this whole thing is just the most 2020s problem I have ever heard.

It's like, we are madly in love with each other, but I'm gay. Whatever will we do? You get married. You love each other. It does not matter. Like, I thought you people were all about fluidity and like labels don't matter. Oh, they don't matter until they really do. Like, I really don't feel like it's that complicated. You love one another. Like, you had to spend six years figuring it out. If we need any kind of evidence that our culture and our society and all of these identity politics have messed with people's minds, we should point to this because this is a complicated situation that is actually very, very simple.

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I really don't think it should have taken you 6 years to figure it out, but they did figure it out and they they went with it. They now have been together for years, they're married, they made a baby together the natural way, so they're not missing out on the sex like all these other people are. They're monogamous, they love each other, they are committed to one another. And honestly, all craziness aside, I do kind of like Samantha's energy.

Just watch this video. >> There are women on here who are telling other women that they are selfish for wanting to have children. There are also women on here who are telling women that they do not love their bodies if they want to become pregnant. First and foremost, I'm so glad that these women have no interest in having children because it would be selfish of them to procreate. I loved being pregnant. I have never felt more empowered, more capable, more magical as a human being than when I was pregnant.

The fact that my body could actually grow fingernails and eyelashes, that's a superpower. I'm a superhero. Giving birth was the thing in the world that I feared the most, and I overcame it. So, I feel like I could literally do anything. I am going to conquer everything I've ever wanted to do because I've overcome my biggest fear in life. And not only that, I overcame my biggest fear while giving birth in life, which was hemorrhaging.

It happened, and I survived. There's one more woman who cannot be stopped walking around this Earth. Another argument is that the world is burning. We are in no state to bring a child into this Earth. When would have been a less selfish time to have children? During the bubonic plague or World War II? If you're one of the people who thinks that the world is on fire, then you're part of the problem because you're consuming the sensational media, which is designed to make the world seem like it's worse than it is.

>> I mean, I love her. Like, I just think it's fabulous. Like, I watch her videos, I'm like, I really don't get it, but I also think she has great energy. They obviously love each other. She loves being a mom. She's so excited about being a mom. They are doting on this child. I'm not upset about it. Now, on all of these stories, including theirs, all of these couplings, I saw a lot of comments online from people, especially on the right, ripping into these individuals, especially the partners that identify as gay, and arguing how wrong this is.

And very gently, gently, I would say that at this point, I feel like you might just be looking for something to be upset about. Because these same trad people that are leaving the angry comments, they are the people who don't want individuals to be in a gay marriage and raise children. They don't want surrogacy to happen. They don't want a gay person to raise a child alone. And so now you also don't want them to commit to somebody of the opposite sex and raise a child in a two-parent household.

Then what do you want? Then what is the right solution here? Like with Samantha and Jacob, they obviously love each other and they are committed to being with each other and raising this child. I personally think that that is a great scenario. In that case, it is a married monogamous couple with a mother and father who wanted the child, who loved the child, and better yet, have respect and care for one another. Now, the problem that I I personally have with a lot of this is the non-committal nature of a lot of these relationships.

Because what happens when these platonic situations, as I said, these arrangements fall apart? When these people inevitably do fall in love? When they pair off with other people? Like how does that work for the children that you have now brought into the world? Then the child has multiple homes and more instability and it's confusing. And of course, yes, kind of like Jay was doing in that Atlantic article, you can argue that people get divorced and remarried all the time.

There are step parents. There are separate houses. So like who cares? It's normal. But to push back on that, just because a bad thing happens in our society frequently does not mean that we should go about intentionally trying to do that bad thing. Because obviously, divorce is not ideal either. And so by making that argument, you are theoretically saying that it is, that it is totally fine and okay. And the difference between these arrangements and marriage is that the legality of marriage makes the decision to enter into it and then the decision if you want to leave it far more consequential than some kind of platonic co-parent arrangement.

So I guess my overwhelming response to this entire trend is that yes, there are many different ways to go about building a family. But at the end of the day, and this is just across the board, stability is what matters most when you were looking at successful childhoods. It is stability and a secure consistent attachment to at least one parent. AKA, that just means more stability. And empirically, this is not just me guessing or presuming, but empirically, according to the science, the best way to provide that stability is by having two biological parents in a low-conflict committed marriage.

Biological parents, low-conflict committed marriage. Not an arrangement, not dating other people, not four parents, three parents, whatever it is, two parent married household. Now, before you guys jump down my throats, obviously there are outliers and obviously there are other ways to offer attachment and stability, and families do make do. And like, I am even an outlier in the situation, you guys know my parents split up when I was young.

But like, again, empirically, this is just what the facts say. And so, in looking at this growing trend, looking at these relationships, in most cases, it seems like they care far more about what is convenient and comfortable for the adults versus the children. They want, you know, minimal commitment and low stakes. They don't want to have to go through the vulnerability of falling in love and getting married, whatever it is.

And so, if these platonic parents have one foot out the door with each other, because they might meet somebody else, it's not a real marriage, whatever it is, then obviously we have to ask how will that impact the children? Like, children who do not know the difference or cannot feel or understand the difference between a parent leaving this weird platonic partner situation arrangement and a parent walking out and leaving them.

I can tell you from experience, children do not understand the difference. Like, I don't know if I've ever told this story online before, but I remember being really young and my parents' relationship was tumultuous from the beginning. Like, I've written about how, you know, my mom kind of knew the marriage was done by the time I was born, but she stayed in it for me. But I remember us leaving Costco one time when I was maybe, you know, eight to 10 years old, something around there.

And she had a really bad day. I think there was an argument with my dad, something, you know, my brother had died only a couple of years prior. Life was just really hard. And I think that she was just talking to the universe. I don't think it was directed at me, but she said, "You know what? I could just walk away and leave all of this. I could walk away and be done. And I know now that she was talking about the marriage, saying that she was tired of fighting for this marriage when all of these things were going wrong in her life and she was just so so difficult.

But me as an 8-year-old, I heard that as my mother could leave me. I need to be perfect and make sure I stay in line and do everything to make her life okay because she might walk out on me. Children don't know the difference. That's why the stability is so important. You can't just have an arrangement and hope for the best and think, "Oh, maybe one day we'll meet somebody else." It is It is so serious. And so that's why I have a problem with some of this.

Not because it's weird or unlike my relationship, but because you're putting children at risk. And so that's why looking at all these stories, I really feel like Samantha and Jacob have done it best. If you're going to be in a situation like this, if you're in a situation like them, yes, it is a bit odd. It is definitely not really traditional, but it kind of is. Like even though it is a lavender marriage, it is still a monogamous committed marriage.

love and respect and commitment and stability for a wanted prioritized child. And with how tumultuous our world already is, the world that these young children are going to be growing up in, like that is the bare minimum that we should be fighting to give our children.