I watched the new film "Friends With Kids" hoping for an UNhappy ending. Or what Hollywood generally thinks of as unhappy. Specifically, I hoped the boy wouldn't end up with the girl, but rather they would end up with other people. Alone would be fine with me, too. And I hoped that this non-happy ending would send viewers out of the theater smiling, because it really wouldn't be unhappy at all.
Let me back up for a moment. "Friends With Kids," which you can find in theaters starting this weekend, is crammed full of actors you have loved in other things (many of them, including Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Jon Hamm and Chris O'Dowd, were together in "Bridesmaids.") Its director, actor and star is Jennifer Westfeldt, who has been half of a couple with Hamm for 15 years. The two have no children, but watching the ways that kids changed their friends' lives led to this exploration of how relationships bend, and sometimes break, when lovers become parents. The solution, the two best friends in Westfeldt's film decide, is to have a child and raise him platonically.
When I first saw the trailer, I thought, "Why not?" After all, it's not as though the "normal" way to do this -- mom and dad fall in love, get married, have 2.2 children, and live happily ever after -- is actually the norm. If you are a mother under the age of 30 giving birth this year, you are more likely to be unmarried than married. Just over two-thirds (67 percent) of American children younger than 18 lived with two married parents according to the latest Census, which means that one-third of children do not. Add in same-sex parents, along with all varieties of biological links (surrogacy, gamete donorship) that have become possible between parents and children, then take into account the fact that our mobile, scattered way of life means we turn our friends into relatives. The result is a concept of family that has been de- and reconstructed in recent decades.
And a small but envelope-stretching subset of this transformation is of the type shown in the film -- friends who are literally becoming family. I'm betting you have flirted with your own idea of a platonic partnership at some point in your life. I certainly have. That conversation with a pal about how you will marry each other if you are both single at 40? That joking with mom friends about how a group of "sister wives" is actually appealing -- wouldn't it be practical to be a group of women raising a group of children? The vague plan to gather a knot of friends together in old age to live in commune-like retirement?
There are real people doing all these things. You can find them by the handfuls at websites like modamily.com, where singles advertise themselves as looking to find a platonic partner with whom to raise a child. And they periodically pop up in profiles like the one in The New York Times last Father's Day about Carol Einhorn, her old friend George Russell, and his partner, David Nimmons, who are all cobbling a way to parent Griffin, the 3-year-old conceived through invitro fertilization using Mr. Russell as the sperm donor.
"More people seem to be deciding that the contours of the traditional nuclear family do not work for them," reporter N.R. Kleinfeld wrote, "spawning a profusion of cobbled-together networks in need of nomenclature. Unrelated parents living together, sharing chores and child-rearing. Friends who occupy separate homes but rely on each other for holidays, health care proxies, financial support."
The response from readers was harsh -- less because of what readers thought of the arrangement in theory, but because they really seemed to dislike the three "parents" as portrayed in the story. But peppered amid the comments saying "I find this whole mess confusing and grotesque..." and "poor child" were stories from others who are rejiggering the family jigsaw.
"I have a rare and very workable living arrangement," wrote one. "My husband and I share a duplex with a connecting door. For the most part, we do our own housework, shopping, laundry, and cooking. I think we spend about as much time together as most couples, maybe more, since we both work at home. We are childless seniors, so this is fairly easy. I did know one couple who managed a similar situation with kids, though."
Hollywood flirts with the idea of nontraditional parents, but in the end they just can't help themselves and they veer toward the traditional and romantic in the third act. "Knocked Up" starts with two strangers with nothing in common, but by the end they have fallen in love. In "Life As We Know It," two relative strangers who loathe each other accept custody of a baby whose parents have died and, you guessed it, fall in love. Isn't it time for another depiction of Happily Ever After?
I won't ruin the ending by telling you whether "Friends With Kids" is that new version. But I will ask why the ongoing disconnect between how we really live -- messily, imperfectly, improvisationally -- and how we think "real" families live. Why has it taken so long, in art and in life, to warm to the reality that a variety of villages can happily raise a child?
PHOTOS: Scenes From 'Friends With Kids'
When I'm in the kitchen and my husband comes up behind me for an embrace and a kiss, if my kids are in the room, they always take notice, get silly and happy and jump right in for a hug too.
My kids get invited to hyped up parties and we go on nice vacations, but guess what their favorite place is? Grandma's house. There is often nothing to do there but poke around the garden and watch TV, but it doesn't matter. They know the difference between family and friends. They know that this is a place where we are all specially loved, and that makes it the best place on earth.
Yes, I think there are all kinds of ways to make a family, but family HAS to be people who love the kids but also love each other. Commitment flows naturally from love. What you're talking about is commitment because its practical.
I don't know how kids understand love when they don't see it happening in front of them and apart from them. How else do children develop a functioning mental framework to understand romantic love?
I understand that divorce happens, often for good reasons, and it is often in the best interest of the children under the circumstances. But having kids with friends is *intentional* . You're essentially saying that liking the father or mother of your child well enough, without commitment, is enough to raise a child on.
Kids strain us and often bring out our worst. Parenting is a give-a-thon. Kids need, but they really can't understand your perspective on anything. You're rewarded in hugs and kisses, but then they tell you that they hate you because you won't buy them a DS. They are naturally narcissistic and they it takes decades to outgrow that. In the meantime, you have to be pretty thick-skinned, never take anything personally, empathize with them and teach them to do the same, and always take the high road. It is deeply rewarding, and deeply draining.
In my hardest moments with my kids, I am not the least bit likable. It helps to have help with childcare and friends to talk to who are going through the same thing. But what brings me back to equilibrium is the rational voice in my head and having someone who continues to love me even when I am feeling curmudgeonly.
When we chose to get married, divorce was not an option. We made a commitment and have stuck with it literally in good times and bad. The glue throughout was trust. Neither one of us have ever strayed and I've never had any reason doubt he was going to be with me no matter what happened. I've "put up" with a lot of other stuff, as has he. We are still in love, but it's not the "knock your socks off" stuff that you start out with. We've both turned 50 in the past six months and it feels good to know that whatever the future brings we'll weather it together.
It might also be a class thing. Most middle class people do end up married and staying together. If they're more likely to buy the movies, that's going to affect things.
I definitely think it would be too bad for the kids to grow up without seeing parents who love each other and knowing that they are all together as a family for something more than just the kids.
If that couple existed in the real world, they would have broken up, moved on and gotten on with their lives.