How Things Have Changed: Adoption Memoirs of Second-Generation American and British Gay Dads

Gay dad adoption memoirs written in the twenty-first century differ in several ways from those of first-generation adopters (1990s), reviewed in Layne, 2019b. Whilst two of the men who adopted in the 1990s had first started down the road of being sperm donors for lesbian friends, this option is never mentioned as a possibility by the second-generation authors considered here. This does not mean that it no longer happens but reflects the fact that sperm banks have started selling to lesbian couples and single women. Once women could order sperm online, with no strings attached, negotiating with a third party may have become less attractive.

Another difference concerns surrogacy. In 1991, first-generation adopter Ken Morgen pursued genetic surrogacy and open adoption simultaneously because there was so little difference in cost or process. In the intervening years, the commercial surrogacy industry has managed to shift practice almost entirely to gestational surrogacy at an exponentially higher cost. This change can be illustrated using examples from gay dad memoirs. In 2002, a genetic surrogacy arrangement cost one gay couple about $35,000; the price for adoption would have been 25,000-$40,000 (Menichiello p. 41). In 2013, a gestational surrogacy cost another couple $191,000, the lion’s share of which went to the surrogacy agency $55,000, IVF clinic $54,000, lawyers $6,000, and insurance agency $34,000, not the surrogate ($35,000) or egg donor ($8,000) (Westoby 2013: 16, 116).

Second-generation adoption memoirists dismiss surrogacy out of hand because of the expense (Fernandez p. 2; Williams p. 9). For example, in 2006 Tony and Antonio, two psychotherapists, could not afford $100,000 for surrogacy, the going rate in Los Angeles, or even $50,000 for a private adoption1 (p. 10). Furthermore, as people who worked in social services, they liked the idea of ‘making a difference’ by giving a home to children who needed one (p. 8). Casey and Jerrod considered enlisting one of Jerrod’s unmarried sisters as an altruistic genetic surrogate so that both could be biologically related to the child, but decided ‘Aunt Mommy’ would be too weird (Williams p. 9).

Whereas AIDS loomed large in the first-generation’s experience, it has no role in these more recent narratives. The obesity epidemic, though, makes an appearance. All prospective adoptive parents must get a medical checkup. Pablo’s husband was told he was technically ‘obese’ with a body mass index just over 30. When it was suggested that he lose some weight, he bristled: ‘Just how perfect do they expect adopters to be?’ (p. 55). Weight is an issue for Casey, too. As part of his mandatory medical exam he had to step on a scale, something he loathes, having been ‘a chubby wubby’ as a kid (p. 38). Though he is in better shape now, he remains on an ‘eternal diet’ and includes details of what he eats throughout his narrative. Sean includes a chapter, ‘Sometimes I’m Fat’ in which he describes struggling with his weight since he was ten—the shame of having to buy extra-large clothing, seesawing weight from 230 pounds down to 170 pounds, then back up again, and how he hopes to help his children ‘have better self-esteem’ than he did (p. 84).

Four of these six memoirs document adoptions made through the state/public system. This is not uncommon in the U.S., where 3.5% of the adult population identifies as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (Gates, 2011), yet 6% of foster children who are placed with a non-relative are living with lesbian or gay foster parents (Gates et al., 2007).

The earliest of these is by Greg, a 33-year old, retired NYC police officer who, with his husband, Henry, a 29-year old Filipino, started fostering in 2003. It took them only a year to be placed with a child who matched their requested criteria (a boy, under 4, who was available to be adopted). Jesus, a Puerto Rican three-year old who had been abandoned by his teenage mother in a homeless shelter, was delivered to their home within hours of having gotten the call asking if they would accept him. Soon after, they welcomed his 2-year old sister, a 9-yr old boy, and finally two brothers (5 months and 3-yr old) (p. 65-104). In addition to adopting these five, they fostered several more, including one little girl for five years. Greg recalls having cared for his dying mother when he was 16 and having taken in nieces and nephews when they were having a hard time and needed a place to stay and concludes his ‘calling in life’ is ‘to care for those who could not care for themselves’ (p. 46).

The most recent memoir to document an adoption via the public system has a very different tone. Sean explains that in 2012, ‘after fifteen years of up-all-night gay disco dance parties, [they] decided to trade in [their] leather chaps for mom jeans and start a family.’ Unlike first-generation adoption memoirists, Sean never doubted he would have a family. When young he’d imagined he would have a ‘very understanding wife and six smiling children’; once he realized he was gay, he simply substituted ‘a hot guy named Juan’ in place of a wife (p. 15). And Sean insists ‘Adoption is easy. I don’t care what you’ve heard to the contrary because it’s not true. Adoption is easy’ (p. 19). A little less than a year after he and his husband, Todd, visited an adoption agency in their hometown of Pittsburgh, they flew to Oregon to meet Chris, their seven-year-old son, for the first time. A year later, at their son’s insistence, they adopted a five-year-old little brother.

That Sean could take for granted that he would be a father, and the ease with which he and Todd brought this about, reflects the dramatic changes in public acceptance and legal rights of LGBQ parents in North America and Western Europe. By the twenty-first century, the path had been paved for gay dads, even if they were not always aware of this.

Pablo Fernandez, a Spaniard, and his British husband Mike, started pursing parenthood in earnest in 2007. By that time, the UK was one of nine European Union countries where gay/lesbian adoption was legal. At work, Pablo was informed that he would be entitled to two weeks of adoption leave; only women were eligible for one year. Later the same day, the person called back to say she was wrong: eligibility for adoption leave was not based on sex. (No man had ever asked before.)

Pablo and Mike didn’t know of any other gay couples who had adopted and worried about what the straight couples with whom they took a mandatory, multi-week preparation course would think of them; and that the committees which vet prospective parents might not approve them, or if they did, they’d be given ‘the leftovers’ (p. 1). Their fears were unfounded. Their town council had already placed a child with a gay couple; the national agency had a gay/lesbian section on their message board; an adoption magazine ran features on same-sex adoption; there was a support organization for gay adopters, and academic studies, e.g., those done by Cambridge’s Centre for Family Research, were starting to be published showing that children with same-sex parents did no worse and sometimes better than those in more conventional families (p. 71).

The ready availability of gay adoption resources also played a pivotal role for Tony and Anthony. Because they lived in L.A., they were able to attend educational events at the Pop Luck Club, the largest organization in the world for gay dads and their kids (p. 10). Tony begins their adoption story the weekend they bought a device that allowed them to record television programs on subjects of their choosing. They selected ‘gay’ and found it recorded three documentaries on gay fatherhood, including Baby and Papa (reviewed in Layne, 2017) which included footage about the film maker’s biracial family, which was especially meaningful to this biracial couple.

In gay surrogacy memoirs and first-generation adoption memoirs, the narrative is one of heroic quest--unexpected hazards are repeatedly overcome by these dedicated pioneers (Layne, 2018, Layne, 2019b). In these second-generation adoption memoirs, the dramatic tension is not about whether they will be able to cope with unforeseen challenges, but the gap between anticipated difficulties and the surprise of discovering their absence.

At their first meeting with a social worker at an adoption agency, Tony asked if the fact that they ‘are gay, over forty, and that he sees his doctor frequently’ would be a problem. She responded ‘we don’t discriminate based on age, sexual orientation or health status: in fact, we do have adoptive parents who are over forty, gay and even HIV +’ (p. 12). When they told her they’d like a boy, preferably bi-racial or black (so the child would resemble them) between three and six years old, and they would be happy to accept two brothers, she told them ‘get that bedroom ready!’ (p. 14). Even her warning that other social workers might place gay couples near the bottom of the pecking order after heterosexual couples and single women, proved to be inaccurate (p. 59). They meet their delightful sons, John (4) and Erik (5), four months later. They were also pleasantly surprised by how supportive strangers were about their impending fatherhood. The straight salesmen they encounter while shopping for a dad-mobile and bunk beds were enthusiastic – ‘maybe our kids really will grow up in a more tolerant world where gay and straight dads offer one another support and advice’ (p. 24).

Sean says that they ‘learned to avoid certain states. If…poor, conservative and in the south, the likelihood was that we would be politely informed that it was essential for the child to have both a mother and a father’ (p. 57). But less than a year after adopting Chris from Oregon, they were chosen to be the fathers of Elijah, from West Virginia, just such a state.

One thing these memoirs have in common with the first-generation ones is the use of analogies with pregnancy to describe the experience of adoption. Tony titles his first chapter, ‘Conception’. Once he becomes an ‘expectant gay dad,’ he is ‘completely hormonal’. ‘Logically, I understand I’m not pregnant,’ but reports that he cries ‘at everything and anything’ -- ‘TV commercials involving kids, band aids, cookies, or puppies’ (p.18). Looking back on the eleven months it took to get their son and then another year to finalize their adoption, Sean thinks of it as ‘the world’s longest pregnancy’ (p. 27). ‘It was worth every minute, every stretch mark, every piece of paper, every prying question.’ When matched with Elijah, Sean tried not to tell everyone, because there was a 50/50 chance it would fall through as another couple were also being considered as parents for this child. He managed to keep it secret ‘a full 48½ hours.’ Sharing this momentous but tenuous news, he reckons ‘was like telling everyone you’re pregnant the day after your period is late. Metaphorically we had...taken temperatures, charted ovulation, intercoursed—but we still had to meet with the stork’ (p. 59).

Another theme is the preponderance of boys (Layne, 2019a, Layne, 2019c). Three of the four public-adoption families are, as Sean puts it, ‘all boys club[s]’ (p. 40). This stems not just from the preference of would-be fathers, but also that of the adoption systems for placements in households without a mother. Pablo and Mike, who adopted Charlie, age 6, were told by their social worker ‘there are normally more boys than girls waiting to be adopted and that placing a girl with a male gay couple was tricky.’ He explains to his readers:

we feel we might be better prepared for boys…because we’ve been there before ourselves, we know what growing up being a boy is like. Girls always seem so complicated. Neither of us has any idea how to dress a girl, or comb her hair, let alone explain anything when she hits puberty.…it feels like it would be harder to relate to girls…. [On the other hand], we feel that a girl might cope better with having two dads. Other kids would be less likely to bully a girl…Neither of us is into football either, so I think we’re stereotyping a bit and making assumptions (p. 31).

Two of the memoirs describe private, open adoptions in which the fathers and birth mother came to an agreement before the sex of the baby she was carrying was known. In 1992, Dan (28), an actor, met Don (37), a screen writer in L.A. In 2004, they arranged an open adoption with Monica, a pregnant teen who already had one-year old twins to raise. They were with her at the ultrasound when it was learned she was carrying a girl. Dan was pleased because he ‘assumed [girls would] be easier and sweeter and less likely to want us to play something horrible with them like football.’ Dan describes himself as ‘already a bit on the girly side’ and is pleased ‘we’d get to shop for dresses and play with barbies and twist her hair into different braids and buns and do’s’ but is concerned about ‘the “down there” area’ (p. 44). He assures his readers that he has ‘never been one of those gays who have anything against vaginas per se’ but then goes on for eleven pages to describe how grossed out he has been at each and every encounter: ‘so many intricate folds, canals, wrinkles, so wet, like the mouths of caves, something you could stick to the shower wall’ (p. 44-55), ending with his hope that his daughter will ‘drive her vagina responsibly’(p. 55). When their daughter was two, they got a call from Monica saying she was pregnant again, and would they like this child too? Six months later she delivered their son, Jonah.

The other open-adoption memoir is The Adoption of Little Miss Fancy Pants, by Casey Williams, an automotive reporter from Indianapolis who calculates how much their adoption will cost in terms of cars: the price of an entry-level Mercedes. But since his employer and that of his husband provide an adoption allowance which combined totals $15,000, he figures they can deduct the price of a Chevy Sonic (p. 21). He also describes the car he is test-driving at key moments, like the ‘hot new Corvette Stingray—red with a red interior’ he was driving when he got the news that they were expecting a girl. He and Jerrod got together in 2000 and started talking about adoption in 2008 when Casey turned 34, in part because his parents had had him when they were 19 and 21 (p. 5). They waited a few years while he became more established in his career. In 2013, through a local adoption agency, they were matched with Amanda, a 17-year old high-school student who got pregnant by accident with her 19-year old boyfriend, Daniel. They felt they were too young to start a family even though both sets of parents offered to help them raise the child and decided on adoption. Casey and Jerrod lived only two hours away, so they met frequently with Amanda and Daniel, and Amanda’s father, who wanted to be sure to be able to have a relationship with his first grandchild (p. 74). During labor and delivery, Amanda had Daniel and her step-mother with her; the dads shared the waiting room with her dad, her mother, and grandmother, who brought home-made fudge (p. 102). After the birth, the baby, whom they named Amelia, after Amelia Earhart, ‘a strong pioneering woman’ (p. 83), was given to the new dads, who then passed her around to be admired by their ‘new extended family’ (p. 107). Casey ends the book with an explanation about the title. Amelia is a ‘fashionista’ as ‘you would expect from a girl with two dads (seriously, she won awards at daycare)’, hence the nickname ‘Little Miss Fancy Pants, or ‘FP’ when texting. Jerrod also shares her ‘Outfit of the Day’ (OOTD) with their Facebook friends’ (p. 143).

The fact that [we] ‘two guys…can adopt a baby…is a reminder of how far the LGBT community has come,’ Casey observes (p. 62). These changes are also reflected in the way gay-dad adoption memoirs have evolved from tales of making a family ‘against the odds’, to books ‘that celebrate a different kind of family who just happens to be like every other family on the block. Only gayer. And funnier’ (O’Donnell back cover).