Parenting is a unique, one-of-a-kind journey with many paths. There is no one, conventional way of raising children and building a family. This is truer more so in recent times where you can find more and more diverse, non-traditional families, LGBT couples or divorced co-parenting couples who successfully rear and raise happy, healthy families.

One particular family dynamic and co-parenting trend that is growing in popularity in recent years is “platonic parenting” which, in the most basic terms, means two (sometimes more) non-romantically involved people work together to raise children as a family unit.

In a society that, for decades, has been taught and raised to believe that only traditional nuclear families with a mom and a dad have the capability to raise children, and only recently began to recognize the capability of same-sex couples – platonic parenting can seem like an ultra-modern, progressive idea. However, many platonic parents say it’s quite a simple concept: just two or more adults raising children together.

But is it really as simple as that? Kinacle examines the good, the bad and the ugly of platonic parenting so you can determine if it’s an arrangement that will work best for you.