A Celistan & Co. Films is currently seeking real people to share their stories regarding Parenting Partnerships for an upcoming television series.

We want to capture the essence of what it takes to go through the journey of co­parenting without the parents having ever been romantically involved. They could be good long time friends or complete strangers, who simply want to come together to create and raise a child.  

We understand how challenging this process may be. We want to help people become the parents they wish to be and be able to provide a modern family unit filled with the love and attention every child deserves.  

For more information and to apply, please send a description of your story along with a recent  

photo and contact information to casting@celistantwins.com​ . SUBJECT LINE should read:​   

PARENTING PARTNERSHIP ­ YOUR NAME.  

 

How women choose sperm donors online - study shows intelligent, shy donors are more sought after

A study into how women choose sperm donors via online websites has revealed men who are intellectual, shy, calm and methodical are selected to produce more children than those who are extroverted. It also highlighted that women choose donors who have a higher income, even though there is no requirement for ongoing parental support.
The study, Determinants of online sperm donor success: how women choose by Stephen Whyte and Professor Benno Torgler from QUT's Queensland Behavioural Economics Group, has been published by the international journal Applied Economic Letters.
"Worldwide demand for sperm donors is so great an informal online market has emerged in which offspring are being produced outside of the more formal fertility clinic setting," said Mr Whyte.
"You would expect in an online setting, men would have to sell or promote themselves to women, and extroverted men should be better at doing that. But what we find is actually the opposite.
"In what we believe is the first study to include males who are donating purely through unregulated websites and forums, we interviewed and collected data from 56 men.
"This online donor market works quite differently to fertility clinics in that it facilitates more interaction between the recipient and the donor. This allows us to explore individual donor personality characteristics and how likely they are to be chosen by women as their donor.
"Women were far less likely to choose the sperm of fretful or socially awkward men but at the same time those with lively, extroverted personalities were also less successful in being chosen."
The participants for the study were aged between 23 and 66 and were from Australia, Canada, the UK, Italy, Sweden and the USA. Data was collected across 2012 and 2013 via online surveys of regulated (paid), semi-regulated and online sperm donation forums and websites such as Pride Angel.
"Research has previously shown humans are good at judging personality traits as well as levels of intelligence with only minimal exposure to appearance and behaviours, and our findings certainly seem to support that," Mr Whyte said.
"We also found that 73 per cent of our participants who had children by donation kept in touch via mail, email, phone, video link or even in person with at least one of their donor children."

Pride Angel Journey - Christmas in Toddlerdom

Luna shakes broken crumbs out of the hollow Christmas tree chocolate on to her plate. “I’m shaking the seeds out.” This is a two-and-a-half-year-old who has eaten a lot more fruit than chocolate. I briefly ponder the idea of planting a chocolate seed and waiting for the tree to grow and fruit. Just briefly though: there’s not much time for pondering with two toddlers loose near a Christmas tree.
Usually it’s just the baubles they go for, or the lights, but I did have to peel half a dozen pine needles off Luna’s tongue on Christmas Day evening; apparently hunger returns relatively quickly after a three-course roast dinner, and hunger coupled with tiredness led not for the first time to eating plants rather than asking for food.
Willow meanwhile, at eighteen months old, spent Christmas Day using his new catchphrase every time a wrapped present appeared: “what’s in there?!” If the wrapping happened to be relatively quick and easy to remove, he would stay the course, but more often than not by the time his question could be answered, he was engaged in using a remote control as a phone, pilfering someone’s keys or hunting for long-lost raisins under furniture.
I have to admit that ‘Jingle Bells’ has really brought on their singing – both can make it right through the chorus if you allow for a sort of mumbly skipping over the awkward line ‘one-horse open sleigh’ and it’s easily taken over ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’ as the favourite. I have a feeling that by April they’ll have it mastered and we’ll never want to hear any Christmas song ever again.
For both us and the children I think the whole festive period has been a muddle of chaos, bewilderment, excitement and exhaustion. And earlier today I bemoaned the fact that it would likely be years before we could reasonably be part of some sort of adult celebration of New Year.
But lying here in bed at 9pm on New Year’s Eve writing this with a sleeping two-year-old snuggled up against me – a two-year-old who when asked what she wanted for Christmas, replied “mushroom” and whose only wish when she stirred the Christmas pudding was to “eat it”, I know that such innocence is a precious thing and that one day, there’ll be nothing I want more than another Christmas in Toddlerdom.
Article: by Lindsey, West Yorkshire 2nd January 2016