?Co-Parenting‘ and ?Future Love‘ – Parenthood beyond the romantic love complex

If two or more persons found a family, who are neither a couple nor in a love relationship, it is called ?Co-Parenting“. Yet, it remains an open question how co-parenting affects the (romantic) love complex. To date, a thorough discussion of the missing liaison between family making and romantic love as we find it in co-parenting, is still outstanding. Thus, the aim is to analyse the potential implications of co-parenting for the dyadic romantic love. Love hereby is conceptualized not mainly as an emotion, but as a cultural pattern regarding the organization of intimate relationships. The concept of romantic love was the main foundation of the modern ‘nuclear family’, which was widespread in Germany between 1950 and 1970. The ‘nuclear family’ refers to the conjugal family, which includes a male breadwinner and his economic dependent wife, caring unpaid for the common children.
Do we have to expect consequences like a decline of love? An emotional dystopia, that holds on to the idea of romantic love? Or can we expect a transformation of love, which is open for new types of fami-lies and relationships beyond the heteronormative and dyad-normative romantic love we still need ade-quate definitions for? Or does post-romantic parenthood bear utopic-emancipative potential, which lib-erates women and LGBTIQ*s from patriarchal, hetero- und couple-normative oppressions? Or do vari-ous ambivalences become evident?
In the project, light is systematically shed on future developments of love from a cultural and structural sociologically point of departure. Finally, socio-political challenges are addressed.