The best-friend family by Paula Bartlett

For generations, society sold adults a remarkably simple proposition, fall in love, get married, buy a house and have children. The sequence was presented less as one possible route through life than as the route. Yet increasingly, people are looking at the entire arrangement and asking a rather inconvenient question: why must romance be the foundation of a family at all?

The answer emerging in some households is surprisingly old-fashioned. Friendship. Across affluent societies, adults are experimenting with buying homes with their closest friends, sharing domestic responsibilities and, in some cases, raising children together without being romantically involved. Platonic life partnerships and co-parenting arrangements are becoming more visible, while the financial realities of housing have made friendship a surprisingly practical economic alliance.

This is not necessarily the death of romance. It is the end of romance's monopoly. The modern romantic relationship has been asked to do an extraordinary amount of work. One person is expected to be lover, best friend, financial partner, emotional therapist, co-parent, housemate, holiday companion and retirement plan. No wonder so many relationships buckle under the weight. We have turned the romantic partner into an entire social infrastructure.

Friendship, meanwhile, has been treated as the supporting cast. Perhaps that hierarchy was always backwards. A good friend may know your weaknesses without exploiting them, understand your irritating habits without pretending they are charming and remain beside you after the romance has lost its chemical fireworks. Friendship can be remarkably durable precisely because it does not require the permanent maintenance of sexual attraction.

Then there is money, that unromantic little tyrant. Buying a home alone has become increasingly difficult in many places. Pooling two incomes, sharing a mortgage and dividing household expenses can turn an impossible aspiration into a manageable one. For adults who have no interest in waiting indefinitely for Prince Charming or who have discovered that Prince Charming is financially useless, friendship can become a practical route to stability.

Children may make the argument even stronger. Parenthood is not fundamentally a romantic activity. It is a long-term exercise in cooperation, patience, reliability and sacrifice. A child needs adults who show up. Whether those adults kiss each other goodnight is rather less important than whether they turn up at the school gate, remember the doctor's appointment and remain calm when the child has painted the dog purple.

Platonic co-parenting challenges precisely this old assumption, that a child's family must originate in a love affair. Of course, friendship does not magically eliminate conflict. Quite the opposite. Property disputes, different parenting philosophies, new romantic partners, jealousy and changing ambitions can make these arrangements complicated. A friendship can survive a disastrous holiday; surviving a mortgage and eighteen years of childcare is another matter.

Yet the broader cultural shift deserves attention. People are increasingly separating the things previous generations bundled together: love, sex, companionship, property, parenthood and family.

That may ultimately be healthier. The family of tomorrow may not be defined by who sleeps together, but by who turns up for one another. And perhaps the most radical family revolution is not abolishing commitment. It is choosing it deliberately.