Chosen families: How atypical households are creating their own pockets of care

As her daughter grew up, Mallik would often recall the dream that the group had in college—of growing old together. At a get together in 2016, this came up, and everyone hopped on board. Most people were at a stage in their careers and lives when such a move seemed plausible. So this mixed group of singles and couples purchased a piece of land together in 2018 and started building a home in 2020, just before the covid-19 pandemic. And finally in August 2024, their dream space was ready, divided into four identical independent homes with a common area. “Most of us have moved in fully. One of us got transferred from Chandigarh to Bengaluru. So, she spends some days here and some days there,” says Mallik. “I am lucky to be growing old with a family that I chose.”

Though they have independent kitchens in each of their homes, the friends also have a shared cooking space. Sometimes they make food in their respective kitchens and have a potluck in one of the houses. At other times, a meal is cooked for everyone in one person’s house. The majority of the vegetables come from their kitchen garden. The group makes sure to have at least one meal, if not more, together.

It’s an interesting thought—curating your own family. Most of us are raised with the notion that family is something you are born into and don’t have much of a choice over. You grow up in a preordained structure, which you are expected to add to through marriage under the watchful eyes of society. The idea that family could mean more than just blood ties or typical households of father, mother and child is still somewhat of an outlier. However, some people have been creating pockets of care that work for them.

These are not short-term associations, or simply a bunch of people bunking in a flat together for convenience. Rather, people are working with permutations and combinations to create frameworks that offer emotional succour in the truest sense, and in which each member is there for the long haul. One is seeing family-adjacent arrangements based around romantic or sexual preferences. However, not all of these structures are held together by the romantic notion of love or conjugal relations but often by a deep bond of friendship or kinship. And they choose to stay together even when not recognised by law or looked at with a raised eyebrow by society.

BEYOND THE BIOLOGICAL

“What drives all of this isn’t rebellion against tradition, but honesty about what a person wants emotionally,” says Chandni Tugnait, psychotherapist and founder-director of Gurugram-based Gateway of Healing. “These alternate structures work because they offer exactly what people need: routine, companionship, a sense of being cared for, and the freedom to define commitment on their own terms rather than someone else’s.” The emotional support that used to come bundled with marriage and children is now being sought more deliberately through relationships that deliver it. Rather than accepting the gendered roles society dictates, many are choosing lives where they can retain their independence while replicating the safety and care of what the idea of family actually connotes.

Two single moms, A.N. and R.G., 38 and 39, widowed and divorced, respectively, are perfect embodiments of this idea. They met six years ago through common friends in Gurugram. Both were fairly new to the parenting journey, with one child being three-years-old at the time and the other four. A.N., a teacher, had toyed with the idea of moving back to her hometown in Rajasthan, but the constant references to her widowhood by her extended family and neighbours irked her. R.G. had a set career as a human resource consultant and had no option but to stay on in the city. “I would rely on friends and colleagues to help out with my daughter as her father was not a hands-on co-parent,” says R.G.

The two single moms bonded over their shared struggles and formed a steady friendship. It was serendipity that led them to create a home of their own. A.N. had been looking for a flat closer to her daughter’s school when R.G., who stayed close by, came up with the experiment to share a house together. They could help out with each other’s kids and also have a like-minded person for company. They were hesitant at first—if the arrangement did not work, it would spell instability for the kids. It helped that the women shared common values and the children were of similar ages. So, they decided to take the plunge. It has been five years since the two women moved into a rented accommodation together. They have made it a practice to sit down every Sunday to account for the expenses of the past week and make sure everything is shared equally.

“We have seen the pandemic together and stood in for each other during emergencies. My father, who was visiting, had a fall and hit his head. R.G. took leave to care for him,” says A.N. They have formed a bond with each other’s parents as well, who initially thought of the two women only as flatmates. “They expected one of us to move out at any time. Some of my relatives even wondered if we were involved romantically. They now know we are family by choice. We are not looking for romantic relationships. I, for one, have been badly singed by these. Friendship has given me the best foundation in life,” says R.G.

REDEFINING THE NEST

Is the rise of such atypical households a new trend? Does this have to do with the rise of singlehood in India? There has been a growing interest in this field both within the media and academia. Researchers have been closely analysing the last census conducted in 2011 and government surveys mapping data from 2011-19. These reveal a 39% increase in the number of single women in India, with numbers rising from 51.2 million in 2001 to 71.4 million in 2011, including widows, divorced women, those deserted by husbands and those who are single by choice. And what about the men? Ketaki Chowkhani, an assistant professor at Manipal Centre for Humanities, Karnataka, who was the first to teach the Single Studies course in the country in 2020 and has continued ever since, feels that the shifts have been studied more for women and not so much for men. In fact, it is women who are actively coming forth with their stories of redefining the family tree.

In a 2023 article, Yaar Parivaar, Mid-Day noted that this trend stemmed from the reality that men more often than not tended to benefit from marriage more than women. “Housework and taking care of children is largely done by women, which benefits men. If they are financially independent, women stand to gain more from being unmarried, which allows them to have greater autonomy,” it observed. Chowkhani believes that the rise of singlehood among women and the resulting choices they make needs to be studied historically. “I would say that the trend to not marry at all is new. However, for some time now women have exercised the choice of staying single after a divorce or widowhood.” Chowkhani has been looking for a grant to conduct an in-depth study but it is hard to come by. “That itself tells how against the grain these structures are. This is not something mainstream society wants to promote.”

ECONOMICS AND EMOTION

Sometimes it is mundanity that defines family life—handling finances, picking up groceries after work, filling bank documents, scheduling doctor appointments, picking up relatives from airports…. In a structure that has been handed down to you, these roles come attached, prescribed and approved by society. However, in a structure of your choosing, the family dynamic might acquire a complexity of its own. Does anyone feel the need to opt out if there is a difference of opinion? Or do you have to work harder to find your “regular” in this structure was one of your choosing?

Susan Dias, founder, Native Brews, an indigenous alco-beverage enterprise, feels it is the latter. At 38, she is co-parenting a five-year-old son with entrepreneur-filmmaker Aditi Anand. The couple have been together for 14 years and were among the petitioners in the Supreme Court to legalise same-sex marriage in India in 2023. “The truth is that the greatest victory of living my life has been in the mundane, in finding the regular,” says Dias. Her life’s ambition while growing up was fairly simple—study hard, earn well, look after family and have children. “I always knew I wanted children. Perhaps earlier I did not have a clear idea of who I would be raising those kids with, if it would be alone or with a partner. It did not present a complication to my mind,” she adds.

In her early 30s, when she felt stable—both financially and in her relationship with Anand—Dias knew that was the step she wanted to take. In her essay titled The Hardest Part is Letting Go of Hope in the book Queer India Now (2026), Dias writes that being a straight parent must be different from being a gay one. “...easier, in many ways—but, I have never found it to be particularly hard. Just like when I fell in love with a woman, loving wasn’t the hard part. The issues came from someplace else. So it is with being a gay parent. Everyone looking in, sees a different family structure and of them, there are several who think they have the right to impose their will on us.”

As a queer parent, Dias says, what would otherwise take you three steps takes you six. There is a lot more deliberation in the decision-making. “I find this true even for my heterosexual peers. The decision to choose a school will be based on whether they are close, affordable and align with your values. For us, the added factor is whether they are queer-friendly and if our child will have problems with his peers. We have to work harder to find those schools. The end goal is the same, but involves added steps for us,” explains Dias.

Making a family outside of convention is a work-in-progress for most. In Mallik’s case, her group of friends comprises distinct opinionated people. The transition from friends like family to becoming an actual family-like setup has been a journey of keeping faith. “There might be disagreements on small things but on the big ones we have all agreed,” says Mallik. Take the making of Oggattu: since such a large group of people couldn’t open a joint account, they opened one in the name of one friend and kept depositing money there for the construction and design. There was no mandate that everyone had to put in an equal share—that was left to the discretion of each friend. “If you see, all our houses are identical. Our setup is very much in the spirit of being a collective,” she adds.

Y.J., a 49-year-old Delhi-based writer, has followed a different arc but has created a framework in sync with her unique vision for life. She and her husband separated after 17 years of marriage. Her partner had never wanted children but Y.J. was optimistic that he would change his mind after marriage. “My husband was keen to see me happy, he was clear that he didn’t see himself as someone in a traditional family unit,” she says. Around four years ago she broached the topic of adoption. Her husband, though reluctant, agreed to the legal undertaking. “My daughter, then a little over five years old, came home,” she says. Soon after, the chasm between the couple grew so wide that she moved out with her daughter.

That’s when things surprisingly took a positive turn. Though living separately, they devised a new structure. They worked together as friends to co-parent their adopted child. “Though we are not legally separated, we live independent lives and are no longer walking on eggshells around one another. He visits regularly and is a huge help when I have to travel for work. We are together in the audience cheering during our daughter’s theatre performances,” she says. They have created rituals unique to their structure—their daughter celebrates two birthdays, one is her actual birthdate and the other marks her homecoming. And the father and daughter make it a point to go birthday shopping together. The child has often questioned this family structure, perhaps seeing her own friends’ conventional setups. “She calls my husband by his first name, and bears my last name. She is slowly coming to terms with this unconventional family,” says Y.J.

BUILDING SUPPORT

Since 2019, I have been following a rather interesting instance of an atypical family chronicled by many media outlets in the US, including The Atlantic. A 2022 article titled The Rise of the Three Parent Family, explored the dynamics of a unique choice in which a married couple, Zeke Hausfather and Avary Kent, came together with their friend, David Jay, in a legally binding relationship to co-parent their child, Octavia. “The typical path to parenthood didn’t work for David Jay, a founder of the asexual movement. So he designed his own household—and is trying to show others what is possible,” notes the piece.

Another media interview, with NPR’s Boston radio station, explored how the three of them arrived at this choice. The three of them discussed the values that were most important to them and arrived at this system. There were also conversations around financial commitments. “You’re turning a two-person, complicated decision-making process into a three-person process, and that takes a lot of groundwork. It took years of building trust,” stated Hausfather. “...but that work is really paying off, and that all of us get this beautiful, amazing child in our life—and get a lot of support…”

In such structures, the presence of allies becomes critical—a tribe that helps you find your own rhythm to manage such frameworks, which come with their own complexities. In an earlier media interview to Better India, Dias and Anand shared quite a heartwarming anecdote about how their son views a “family”. “One day, their son decided he wanted to ‘run away from home’. When she asked where he’d go, he named one of their closest friends,” states the article. This small moment was revelatory in showing that for their son, family was not a physical or a singular entity but expanded to include all those that he loved.

Growing up with same-sex parents is normal for their son, he has known no different. But how do they equip the rest of the world to understand his lived reality? “This is all a part of the hard work that I was talking about earlier,” says Dias. “You have to have patience to have additional conversations with people and find a social infrastructure that affords you that change.” Dias and Anand need to ensure that their son has the confidence to talk about his life and “that only comes from living with confidence yourself”. Rather than sensitising everyone around them, the couple leads their lives as openly as they can. “People usually respond to what they see. That is the best kind of sensitisation. When something is happening in school, we make sure that both of us are present. And we introduce ourselves upfront as same-sex parents,” says Dias.

The hope is that this becomes a thing of normalcy for the 20-odd kids in their son’s class and they won’t grow up with the kind of bias that the couple has seen. They have also adopted a non-confrontational approach to seemingly simple things like school forms, which often require signatures of both the father and mother. They simply cancel out the “father” option. And the next time they notice that the form comes in with that option cancelled.

LEGAL GAPS

The big question is whether the legal system is ready to recognise all these different shades. While the underlying kinship and emotion is heartwarming and truly beautiful, there may be times when the dynamics break down. In such a scenario, what happens in case of financial and property disputes? If two single mothers who had been living together purchased a house jointly, how will that be divided among their children after they are gone? In the case of same-sex parents, who gets custody of the child when one partner wants out?

According to Jayna Kothari, senior advocate in the Supreme Court and co-founder, Centre for Law and Policy Research in Bengaluru, while there might not be legal validity of many such relationships, courts have given recognition as and when disputes arise. In certain issues, when people have gone to court, the law has recognised their setup as a long-term “family-type” arrangement. Further, there is recognition of live-in relationships between heterosexual couples, and women in live-in relationships are safeguarded under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, which acknowledges their right to a shared household and freedom from violence.

“Take a non-traditional family arrangement like a guru-chela setup in the transgender community. They live like family though they are not related by blood or marriage. In many cases, we have seen that they have left property to one another,” Kothari explains. In some cases where blood relatives have contested the property division, and the survivor in the guru-chela setup has taken up the matter with law, the courts have upheld the validity of the claim, stating that it seemed like a family arrangement. “These atypical structures will have to be tested in court as and when disputes arise,” says Kothari.

Some efforts are being made to offer protection and safeguards. In a judgement in Deepika Singh vs Central Administrative Tribunal, dated 16 August 2022, the Supreme Court granted relief to a woman who had been denied maternity leave on the ground that she previously availed childcare leave for her two non-biological children. The ruling questioned the predominant understanding of the concept of a “family” both in law and in society as a single, unchanging unit with a mother, a father and their children. This notion ignored the diverse circumstances that may cause familial relationships to take on the form of domestic, unmarried partnerships or queer relationships. The apex court stated that a household may be a single parent household for any number of reasons, including the death of a spouse, separation, or divorce. Similarly, the guardians and caretakers (who traditionally occupy the roles of the “mother” and the “father”) of children may change with remarriage, adoption, or fostering.

“Such atypical manifestations of the family unit are equally deserving not only of protection under law but also of the benefits available under social welfare legislation… The same undoubtedly holds true for women who take on the role of motherhood in ways that may not find a place in the popular imagination,” observed the court.

Kothari mentions another instance: The Madras High Court is currently hearing petitions regarding Tamil Nadu government’s LGBTQIA+ policy. “The Court stated that persons in same-sex relationships have no marital rights but are living as a family or couple. So, the court first proposed in 2023 that the government come up with a standardised registration procedure for a deed of familial association, which allows partners to access socioeconomic benefits and navigate daily life,” she says. This is important for events when consent is required for medical procedures, or a partner needs to be made a nominee in a bank.