The rise of the gay dad
Having two dads isn't as unusual as it used to be. Rebecca Seal meets the generation of young, gay men who are re-inventing the world of adoption
Rebecca Seal, (The Observer, 25/11/2009)
Paul is 49 and has been with his partner Matt, 41, for 19 years. They adopted brothers Harry, eight, and David, six.
My partner and I talked about adopting one night after we'd had our civil partnership ceremony. We'd been together 15 years and were thinking about what we could do that might help someone. We were so naive – we didn't know who we could adopt or foster; we thought perhaps we could only foster a child of, say, 12, who was in a difficulty for six months or something. Then we started to discover we could be taken seriously as adopters. We were told that often it's harder for a child to be adopted if they are older, that if they are sibling groups they're often at the end of the queue, waiting. It began to get quite heart-wrenching.
It took nearly three and a half years for us to adopt. The day we first met our boys was a shell shock. I remember naively asking about what happens if it doesn't go well and they're not the right ones – do we choose again? And the adoption staff said: "No, no, no – we've found the boys, you've all agreed that this might be a good match, it's happening, there's no going back. These are the ones." We went to the foster home with real trepidation – and because it was a foster home I had this vision of it being a run-down old house and lots of kids and a maternal lady in a pinafore. It was actually an immaculate house. We went up to this glass door and although we'd seen pictures of the boys we had no idea what they were really like, and there they were jumping up at the door, like puppies. They were two stunning little boys, just fantastic. It's a really artificial set-up of course, manufactured by the social workers, who say you'll have a cup of tea and you'll get to talk to them, but you mustn't pick them up, give them space, don't get too close. But it was a great three-quarters of an hour. And afterwards in the car, I said to my partner: "Let's not make too big a thing of this" and he looked at me and said: "You're joking? This is huge." We just knew as soon as we went in that it was going to work.
There was a lot of prejudice in the adoption system, even though it's not allowed and the law states you must treat everyone the same and with respect. There are still individuals who have difficulty getting over the fact that their values and mindset don't fit with what they have to do in their job. And now there's clearly prejudice when people realise the set-up. There's what I call the mummy prejudice – the boys misbehave in public and one of us dads will berate that child, and you get a clear sense from groups of women out with their kids that they think once those boys get home their mum will sort it out. And I'm thinking: it doesn't work like that!
People are quite innocent too – my children are darker-skinned than me, so people often ask if they are my kids and I'll say yes, and they'll go: "Oh. How come?" And this will be in front of the boys.
Their school is absolutely brilliant. It's the first time they've had adopted children with same-sex parents, and they're very sweet – they take you to one side and say: "What should we do on Mother's Day?" We say they can make a card if they want to – although someone did once say: "But they haven't got a mother." To which I responded: "Well, how do you think they got here?"
Times have changed immensely: I put myself forward to be a governor and I got voted in by the parents who know all about me, which is fantastic, because I'm old enough to remember being too scared to ever tell anyone I was gay.
People focus too much on the fact that two men can't have a child. But what they forget is that adoption is not about starting a child – it's about taking over and parenting damaged children, and that's a skill. I'm not putting us up on a pedestal. All I'm saying is that we're a real resource.
Having two dads isn't as unusual as it used to be. Rebecca Seal meets the generation of young, gay men who are re-inventing the world of adoption
Rebecca Seal, (The Observer, 25/11/2009)
Paul is 49 and has been with his partner Matt, 41, for 19 years. They adopted brothers Harry, eight, and David, six.
My partner and I talked about adopting one night after we'd had our civil partnership ceremony. We'd been together 15 years and were thinking about what we could do that might help someone. We were so naive – we didn't know who we could adopt or foster; we thought perhaps we could only foster a child of, say, 12, who was in a difficulty for six months or something. Then we started to discover we could be taken seriously as adopters. We were told that often it's harder for a child to be adopted if they are older, that if they are sibling groups they're often at the end of the queue, waiting. It began to get quite heart-wrenching.It took nearly three and a half years for us to adopt. The day we first met our boys was a shell shock. I remember naively asking about what happens if it doesn't go well and they're not the right ones – do we choose again? And the adoption staff said: "No, no, no – we've found the boys, you've all agreed that this might be a good match, it's happening, there's no going back. These are the ones." We went to the foster home with real trepidation – and because it was a foster home I had this vision of it being a run-down old house and lots of kids and a maternal lady in a pinafore. It was actually an immaculate house. We went up to this glass door and although we'd seen pictures of the boys we had no idea what they were really like, and there they were jumping up at the door, like puppies. They were two stunning little boys, just fantastic. It's a really artificial set-up of course, manufactured by the social workers, who say you'll have a cup of tea and you'll get to talk to them, but you mustn't pick them up, give them space, don't get too close. But it was a great three-quarters of an hour. And afterwards in the car, I said to my partner: "Let's not make too big a thing of this" and he looked at me and said: "You're joking? This is huge." We just knew as soon as we went in that it was going to work.
There was a lot of prejudice in the adoption system, even though it's not allowed and the law states you must treat everyone the same and with respect. There are still individuals who have difficulty getting over the fact that their values and mindset don't fit with what they have to do in their job. And now there's clearly prejudice when people realise the set-up. There's what I call the mummy prejudice – the boys misbehave in public and one of us dads will berate that child, and you get a clear sense from groups of women out with their kids that they think once those boys get home their mum will sort it out. And I'm thinking: it doesn't work like that!
People are quite innocent too – my children are darker-skinned than me, so people often ask if they are my kids and I'll say yes, and they'll go: "Oh. How come?" And this will be in front of the boys.
Their school is absolutely brilliant. It's the first time they've had adopted children with same-sex parents, and they're very sweet – they take you to one side and say: "What should we do on Mother's Day?" We say they can make a card if they want to – although someone did once say: "But they haven't got a mother." To which I responded: "Well, how do you think they got here?"
Times have changed immensely: I put myself forward to be a governor and I got voted in by the parents who know all about me, which is fantastic, because I'm old enough to remember being too scared to ever tell anyone I was gay.
People focus too much on the fact that two men can't have a child. But what they forget is that adoption is not about starting a child – it's about taking over and parenting damaged children, and that's a skill. I'm not putting us up on a pedestal. All I'm saying is that we're a real resource.
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