In 2019, researchers at the University of California ran an intriguing experiment. Strangers were offered two conversation formats: small talk about the weather and current events, or a series of deep personal questions about values, fears and hopes. Participants expected the first format to be more comfortable. In practice, the opposite was true. Deep conversations produced feelings of connection and mutual understanding substantially faster — and most participants rated them as more enjoyable than they had anticipated.
This paradox applies directly to co-parenting meetings. People often spend the first two or three conversations on general topics — work, travel, hobbies — deferring the genuinely important material to 'later.' A later that sometimes never arrives.
Meetings with a potential co-parent have no good equivalent in ordinary social experience. It is not a romantic date, where attraction and chemistry are being assessed. Not a business negotiation, where parties who already know each other are settling terms. Not a friendship conversation, where there is no agenda. It is something between all of these, and simultaneously none of them.
Psychologists who study interpersonal trust identify three components required for its formation: competence (the person is capable of doing what they say), benevolence (they are oriented towards your interests, not only their own) and integrity (their words correspond to their actions). In first conversations with a potential co-parent, you are assessing precisely these — consciously or not.
There is a difference between questions that seem important and those that genuinely are. 'Do you want children?' is too obvious for a co-parenting platform. 'How much time are you willing to spend with the child?' matters, but is easy to answer with social desirability. Questions that genuinely reveal a person are those with no obviously 'right' answer.
A few examples. 'Tell me about a conflict with someone close that you resolved — and one that you didn't.' This opens up capacity for reflection and relationship patterns. 'How do you make decisions when you don't have all the information you need?' — reveals whether someone tends towards anxiety or is capable of acting under uncertainty. 'What is non-negotiable for you in parenting — something you would absolutely refuse?' The answer here often says more than any description of ideals.
Hypothetical scenarios are another useful tool. 'Imagine: the child is six, you're away on work, they have a fever, and the other parent is unreachable. What do you do?' Not because this scenario will necessarily happen. But because the response reveals priorities and patterns of reaction better than any abstract question about values.
There are signals worth noticing not in the content of answers, but in how the person answers. How easily do they speak about their own mistakes? Can they acknowledge uncertainty, saying 'I don't know'? How do they respond when you disagree with them? Do they interrupt when you say something they disagree with, or listen to the end?
American family therapist John Gottman, known for his research on predictors of relationship breakdown, identified what he called the 'Four Horsemen': criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. Any of these patterns appearing in early conversations with a potential co-parent is a serious signal worth attention.
First meetings are not the place for legal details and medical tests. This is the stage of feeling out compatibility: is there basic mutual respect, do fundamental values align, is the conversation comfortable? Detailed discussion of agreements, costs and schedules belongs to later conversations, once there is a sense of 'yes, this person.'
Some topics deserve to be raised earlier than might seem natural. Religion and its role in the child's life. Attitudes to non-traditional family roles and LGBTQ+ identity, where relevant. Expectations about the role of future romantic partners. Attitudes to medicine and vaccination. None of these are minor matters. Discovering deep divergences is far better done at the conversation stage than after a decision has been made.
Pay attention to what the person does not say. If over several meetings they have never once mentioned money, even though co-parenting inevitably involves shared financial decisions — that is not accidental. If they avoid talking about their past relationship experience — that is also data. Silence about something important is rarely neutral.
First conversations with a potential co-parent are not a test or an examination. They are a shared investigation: are the two of you capable of thinking together about difficult things, without retreating into social comfort? This is precisely the skill that will be needed throughout co-parenting. And first meetings are the best place to start practising it.