Jennifer Zamparelli was joined on air by Zoe Desmond, founder of FROLO, a dating service that connects like-minded single parents.
Four years ago, when she first became a single parent, Zoe said that she struggled to find like-minded people with whom she could set up play dates and spend time with on the weekends.
She began FROLO, an online community for single-parents, as a way to connect with those who were in the same boat.
The online community became a haven for those looking for connection, support and companionship as they muddled through the ups and downs of single parenting.
Before long, the community grew to have an incredible 35,000 users, and as they shared their day-to-day problems with one another, one particular issue came to the fore – dating.
“Our community of single parents have a real pain point when it comes to dating,” Zoe told Jen.
“Through strong user feedback we decided we needed to create a FROLO dating offering which would be a safe and respectful dating experience for single parents.”
According to Zoe, using regular dating apps as a parent can be tricky, as daters struggle to decide when and how they should tell their matches that they have children, and exactly how much information about their kids they should be sharing.
“It might feel a bit uncomfortable putting photos of your kids or any mention of your kids up on a general dating app. And then there’s the worry of ‘Is this going to put people off me? Will this going to go against me that I have kids?’. From the get go you’re conflicted.”
When it comes to single parents, our thoughts can often jump to single mums but Zoe insists that the online community is for both men and women.
“Single parents aren’t just single mums. There are so many great single dads who are very much involved in their kids life, and also need that support as well and really feel grateful to be so involved in the FROLO community.”
“The dads have a really active part in FROLO,” she adds. The gap is lessening all the time, so we have about 60% mums and 40% dads.”
On some dating apps, a dater’s profile can be reduced down to their looks, leaving potential matches to swipe left or right depending on whether they find the person physically attractive or not.
With this dating app, Zoe says that the focus is on users’ personal values, parenting situation and lifestyle compatibility rather than just aesthetics.
“From a person’s profile, you’ll be able to see what their parenting situation is – whether they’re a solo parent, a co-parent, a widow.”
The profiles will also offer up details such as the age of the person’s children, whether they hope to have …….
