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My two moms


Anyone who has ever applied to graduate school, or found an apartment, a car, a job, a good article (ahem), or even his or her soul mate online knows the Internet is something we can no longer live without. And single mothers, many of whom can barely support themselves and their children, are discovering that the Internet just may offer them opportunities that allow them to survive and provide a makeshift family support network for their children.

Co-Abode.com, the latest in online “matchmaking services,” is helping single mothers meet their match — other single mothers. That is, through the site, single mothers can find other single mothers who want to share their homes, reduce their expenses, and alleviate some of the burdens of raising children without a second parent.

Sure, this matchmaking system is fraught with many of the same risks and uncertainties associated with meeting a prospective significant other or friend online. In fact, the stakes are even higher since there are children, homes, and responsibilities (even some division of labor) involved. But if you’re willing to look past that, to look past the fact that the Internet, for better or for worse, has become one of our primary means for connecting with other people in this day and age, it’s a pretty good idea as it gives single mothers and their children a chance to defray some of the burdens of their lifestyle and, significantly, an easy way to network with other women who may be experiencing similar burdens. And the ability to find someone to talk to, someone to confide in, someone to learn from just might be one of the most important steps in empowering these women — and their children, many of whom are “latch-key kids” — and enabling them to secure a sense of belonging as they forge their own new little communities and family units.

One, of course, can’t help but wonder what the right thinks about this — I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before comments are made about how Co-Abode.com promotes lesbiansim because — gasp — it encourages two women to live together and about how it undermines what President Bush terms “that sacred institution between a man and a woman.” But if that’s what critics end up saying, one can only hope that they recognize that Co-Abode.com isn’t the cause of the dissolution of traditional heterosexual coupling. It’s a solution, a means to ensure that children whom might otherwise be raised by just one parent have more stable home lives and have other adults who care for them and to look out for them. Yes, they’re other women. But perhaps that just begs the question of why it is that the right believes that the institution of heterosexual marriage is so fundamental to the definition of family.

The shape of families is changing in the U.S. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a change for the worse. It just has to be a change that adapts to changing times. And for now, that seems to be exactly what Co-Abode.com is trying to do.

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