Gay Parenting

Thinking about being a parent? I read an excellent article in the New York Times about all the issue involved that most people probably don’t think about. The issue has come up for me as well, and I have had women who wanted to do this with me. But, I decided against doing it because I was fearful of all the things that this article brings up. I wouldn’t want to just be a dad. I would absolutely need to be very involved in my child’s life. I would want to be that “TV dad” that they talk about. Here’s an excerpt from the article.

“The law,” Leonard went on to say, “has lagged far behind in taking account of nontraditional family forms.” Partly, he said, this can be attributed to the “natural inertia in the legislative process.” Legislatures on all matters are “slow in reacting to changes in society,” but in this case they are also reluctant to offend socially conservative voters. (In the midterm elections this month, seven states voted to ban same-sex marriage.) Finally, Leonard said, despite the current outcry about “activist judges,” many courts are skittish about reshaping social issues from outside legislative bodies.

A result is that gay donor dads must not only trust that their co-parents will abide by whatever agreements they have designed but also hope that as dads they have managed to adequately predict their own reaction to being a parent. As Guy, who has two children of his own with a lesbian couple, said: “A lot of guys can’t do that. They think they can do it, but when the baby’s born, they really can’t.” In other words, a father-donor working with a lesbian couple must make peace with the fact that he just isn’t going to be a TV dad, a heterosexual dad or a full-time gay dad. “Ideally,” as Guy put it, you need to be “willing to accept that the baby has two parents, who are the two moms — and then there’s you.”