Match Launches Stir, a Dating App for Single Parents
Stir aims to help single parents beat the challenges of dating while having to take care of kids.
- She has a master's degree in journalism from Syracuse University.
Match says it wants to make it easier for single parents to date. The company, which owns popular dating apps like Match, Tinder and Hinge, is adding a new service to its roster: Stir.
"We believe that single parents should no longer feel like having kids is a deal-breaker when dating, or that they feel like they need to 'explain their kids,'" said Match's vice president of new verticals, Dinh Thi Bui, via email, "This is a hugely important group of people, who bear a ton of responsibility, and we want them to find love and romance too."
The US has the highest percentage of single-parent households in the world, according to The Pew Research Center. The launch is timed to coincide with National Single Parent Day, and Match released data relating to single parents looking to date. For example, about one in five single parents said they'd been ghosted after someone learned they had kids.
Bui also noted that for single parents, finding time to date is an issue. One in four parents said just trying to coordinate a time to date actually kept them from going on dates. This led to the creation of a feature called Stir Time, which is a scheduling tool that lets daters display their availability to their matches.
"Going on a date at 9 a.m. for coffee after school drop-off is perhaps more appealing to a single parent than a fancy evening dinner," Bui said.
The app gets its name from the idea of getting single parents to try something new -- to mix things up a bit.
Stir is available for free for iOS and Android, with additional paid premium tiers.