PRAISE FOR Gay Dads
“One thing that seems to unify the fathers in Strah’s book is the incredible sense of love they have discovered in their journey to parenthood.”
—The Advocate
“Gay Dads reads like an adventure—so many twists and turns, ups and downs—and all the stories have happy endings for dads and babies. So many blessings for all concerned!”
—BETTY DEGENERES, writer/activist
“Gay Dads skillfully documents a quiet revolution taking place in neighborhoods, schools, and playgrounds across the county, as out gay men shake up popular perceptions of what constitutes the American family. These thought-provoking stories reveal the myriad faces of gay dads and their children, and the perseverance, commitment, and love that bind these families together.”
—JOHNNY SYMONS, director/producer, Daddy & Papa
“It’s rare in the history of human relations that we get a frontline report of a social phenomenon right from the start, but Gay Dads is just that: a panoramic look at the first decades of an entirely new kind of family. Neither a personal memoir nor a clinical study, it is instead the spiritual survey of a trend, encompassing not just the hard data but the yearnings, the impediments, the strategies, the joys, the costs, and the benefits of becoming a parent in a way almost no one has done before. As such, it is a valuable addition to the growing literature on the subject, whose relevance will only increase with time—not only for gay people but also for the growing majority of Americans being raised outside the white-picket, two-parent, two-sex, one-race, genetically related ideal (or was it a fantasy?) of some other century.”
—JESSE GREEN, author of The Velveteen Father: An Unexpected Journey to Parenthood
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
KRIS TIMKEN
Gay Dads
A CELEBRATION OF FATHERHOOD
David Strah
with Susanna Margolis
FOR BARRY,
who makes my dreams come true,
AND FOR ZEV AND SUMMER,
who are my dream.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It’s a pleasure to express my thanks to a number of people who provided inspiration, information, and numerous intangible forms of assistance in the creation of this book.
Special thanks to Michael Sheldon for laying the groundwork on which the book was built.
Thanks also to Maggie Drucker for her friendship and professional assistance.
To Kris Timken, whose photographs bring the people in this book to life, I offer particular thanks. Without her dedication, commitment, and enthusiasm, and without endless travel that took her from her family, this book simply would not have happened. She consistently exceeded expectations. To my agent, Sarah Jane Freymann, who believed in the project from the beginning and kept on believing in it through thick and thin, and to Susanna Margolis, who helped give voice to so many gay dads, I express deepest gratitude.
For this paperback edition of the book, I again want to acknowledge Joel Fotinos, publisher of the Jeremy P. Tarcher imprint, and to offer thanks to editor Terri Hennessy. Both have been unstinting in their ongoing support and encouragement.
To Kelly Groves, of Penguin’s publicity department, his assistant Katie Grinch, and PR gurus Chrishaunda Lee, John Murphy and John Tiffany, warmest thanks for all your efforts.
I extend particular gratitude to Sally Susman, communications maven extraordinaire, for her commitment and enthusiasm in spearheading the effort to get the word out about Gay Dads.
I want also to acknowledge the support and love—given both to my family and to this project—by my parents, Joyce McKelvey and Michael and Sara Penn-Strah, by my in-laws, Ruth and Ron Miguel, and by my sister Annie and sisters-in-law Melanie and Renée. I am grateful to you all.
For their friendship, as consistent as it is profound, I thank Mary Ann Deffenbaugh and Catherine Ryan. And for their continued support and enthusiasm for this book, thanks to Rob Levy, Dave Schutte, Mark Corpron, and Joe Vallo.
Special thanks to Kelli O’Donnell and Gregg Kaminsky for their help.
Thanks also to Terry Boggis, director of Center Kids, and to staff at COLAGE and the Human Rights Campaign for referring families to be interviewed.
To Maris Blechner, the executive director of Family Focus, the adoption agency for my own family, and to attorney Michael Goldstein and legal assistant Renée Franklin, endless thanks for helping to create my family and for their invaluable help in clarifying numerous points of information.
Dr. Stephanie Schacher, Psy.D., generously articulated the findings of her research and shared her own perspective in the matter of the “new gay dads.” Her pioneering research, articulated in her doctoral thesis, Fathering Experiences of the “New” Gay Fathers: A Qualitative Research Study, illumines a growing and important phenomenon.
Thanks also to researchers Lauren Hudecki, of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Nikki Cruz, of COLAGE, for prompt, thorough research—congenially delivered.
I want to express my eternal gratitude to the birthmothers of my children—and to all the birthmothers of all the children. Your sacrifice is our greatest gift, and you will always have a place in all our hearts.
Finally, thanks to all the fathers who agreed to be interviewed for the book—for their time and for generously sharing their experiences.
INTRODUCTION
Gay Dads:
A New Phenomenon in the American Family
In our statistics-happy nation, there are as yet no precise figures beyond crude estimates that measure the number of gay men who have set out to have children and create families of their own. Perhaps nobody has yet been able to count these men, for they represent a new phenomenon in our society.
To be sure, there have always been men who married, fathered children with their wives, and only later—or perhaps never—identified themselves as homosexual. In the past, many such men probably remained closeted all their lives. More recently, many have come out of the closet and out of their marriages, while of course remaining devoted fathers to their children. But the phenomenon of men who identify themselves as gay, who openly and publicly live gay lives, and who then undertake to create families is still a fledgling trend.
When my partner and I, an openly gay couple, became fathers for the first time in 1998, I felt that my heart was going to burst with joy and newfound love for our son. But I also felt isolated as a gay dad. I couldn’t find anyone else like me in what was otherwise a vibrantly cosmopolitan city. I knew instinctively that there must be other families like mine, and I wanted to see them, hear from them, learn about their troubles and triumphs, find out what we had in common and what was different about their experience. I suspect that other gay dads feel a similar isolation, wherever they may live. It’s why I wrote this book.
In it, you’ll meet 44 of the “new” gay dads, fathers in 24 families. You’ll hear what they went through to form their families, how they feel about what they went through, how they view parenting as gay men in the twenty-first century. I hope the book gives readers a sense of being present at the beginning of what I expect will one day become a more common aspect of gay life.
To find these families, I alerted a number of national and local gay organizations. I received more than a hundred responses, interviewed more than 60 gay dads, and winnowed the number down to the 23 families in this book—24, including my own. I also sought out the assistance of a seasoned professional writer, Susanna Margolis, who helped with the interviewing, gave shape to the individual stories, and brought to the task the perspective of someone from outside the gay community.
Who are the men in this book? They are as diverse a bunch as you’ll find anywhere in our diverse nation. When Rosie O’Donnell famously “came out” on national television, she told Diane Sawyer, “I don’t think America knows what a gay parent looks like: I am the gay parent.” So are the men in this book. They are of different races and skin colors. Professionals, wage-earners, and full-time homemakers. Young and middle-aged. Deeply religious and mildly observant. Tall and short, athletes and couch potatoes, activists and homebodies. They come from all parts of the country. The 2000 U.S. census conclusively dispelled the notion that gay men live only in the well-known urban centers of both coasts—New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles. These profiles bring the census figures to life, especially, in my view, in showing the trend to suburban life. Evidently, gay dads seek the same two-car garages, tree-lined streets, and collegial neighborhoods that have long been a model of American family life. It brings home the real answer to the question of who these men are: whether you’re gay or straight, they’re your neighbors.
But the experience they bring to the neighborhood is a distinctive one. For while the diversity among these gay dads is striking, even more striking are the commonalities. Read through these profiles, and certain themes recur—page after page. I think of these common themes as the “findings” of my exploration into the lives of gay fathers and their families.
Perhaps the most moving theme—a persistent if not universal finding—is the sense of miracle so many of these men feel at being fathers. Profile after profile speaks of how the joy of coming out as a gay man was tempered by regret that it meant a public farewell to parenthood—or so it was assumed. If the life stories in this book tell you nothing else, surely they proclaim that it is possible for gay men to be fathers. It is possible, it is practicable, and it is our fundamental right as human beings.
But becoming a father can sometimes be a Herculean task. You will read in this book about adoption—public, private, domestic, and international; about surrogacy; about coparenting. You will meet men who became fathers as a couple and others who are single dads. You will read about the different processes each of these avenues to fatherhood entails—the waiting, the preparation, the often intrusive evaluation of the men and their homes, the bureaucracies that must be dealt with, the false leads, the very painful discrimination, the high price of seeing a pregnancy through, or of flying overseas to bring home an internationally adopted child, or of the surrogacy process. Yet in every case, the men in this book stuck it out, kept struggling, claimed their rights, and triumphed in the end. In my mind, they are heroic, and their heroism is a gift for their children.
Many of those children are multiracial, creating lots of families that transcend race. It is a situation not without controversy. But I think it is fair to say of these families that their gay fathers, having faced discrimination and isolation for their sexuality, possess resources for handling the situation that others might lack.
In that regard, another of the themes that threads through these profiles is the healing impact of fatherhood. Especially for those men estranged from their families and thus in a way cut off from their own childhoods, becoming a parent appears to be restorative, even therapeutic. If it does not remedy the estrangement, it is such an optimistic plunge into the future that it can overwhelm the pain of the past.
Ironically, however, fatherhood can “cause” another kind of isolation—this time from the gay community. Of course, it’s understandable that these gay dads suddenly feel more in tune with the straight parents of their children’s friends than with their old friends; after all, they have joined the Tribe of Parents. What is less easy to compute is the fathers’ sense that their gay friends are no longer interested in them, a recognition that becoming parents has so changed their lives and sensibilities that they no longer “fit” in that community—or at least, that the community doesn’t seem to think they fit. This is a phenomenon that is both puzzling and sad, but it is widely felt by the men in this book.
My partner and I have felt it, as I’ll relate in our story, and I have thought a lot about it. To me, the equivocal reaction to gay dads by many in the gay community—an indifference that sometimes approaches resentment—is just one more indication that parenthood signals a sea change in our community.
The details of the change are only now beginning to be studied—thus far by only a small handful of pioneering researchers. Dr. Stephanie Schacher, a licensed clinical psychologist practicing here in New York, is one of the pioneers.* Her findings affirm that the new fatherhood is having an impact not just on the lives of the gay dads themselves but also on the life of the gay community.
For one thing, fatherhood is stretching the lives and perspectives of the new gay dads beyond the gay community, Schacher says, “connecting them to the community at large.” It provides a bridge to the heterosexual world, is often the basis of “better relations with extended families,” and offers the men “a comfort and commonality they did not have before.” It is also, she says, “an important personal growth experience.” Her study found that gay dads felt fatherhood had unleashed capacities for giving and loving they had not known they possessed. It also made them “feel better about their own identity,” Schacher says, “helping eradicate any remnant of their own internalized homophobia.” There are similar revelations from some of the men in this book, men who say they feel more at ease with their own sexuality, more linked to the world at large through fatherhood.
At the same time, Schacher found that gay dads see themselves as “writing their own script” for parenthood, freed from ties to traditional gender roles. “They are generalists rather than specialists” in parenting, she says. “They blend the daddy and mommy roles into one totality, then split the totality into parental roles and allocate those roles by inclination or talent or convenience.” In so doing, she adds, gay dads are “redefining masculine gender roles, too, just by doing it. They are modeling a new masculine gender role of nurturing, empathy, caretaking, and expressing emotion.” And, I would add, we are doing this in a very public way—at school, in the playground, in community interaction. It’s why I am occasionally asked if I am my children’s nanny, or where my wife is, or if I’m the uncle. Some people simply can’t easily conceptualize a full-time gay dad.
What I found particularly intriguing was Schacher’s response to the results of her research. Having begun her study “neither pro nor con the idea of gay dads,” in her words, she emerged from the work with the sense that “this is how everybody should embark on being a parent.” For most straight people, Schacher goes on, becoming a parent “is like going to school. Everybody does it, but without really thinking about it.” Yet “parenting is one of the most important functions in life,” something for which people “should be emotionally, mentally, psychologically prepared,” something that “takes a lot...
