DADsquared℠

Has anyone noticed that more and more couples with kids are choosing to have one of the parents quit their careers and become a stay at home parent?   I meet people daily that either just recently quit their jobs or that have been raising their kids for years as a stay at home parent while their spouse works extra hours at his or her job.   There was a trend in the 80s and 90s for both parents to be working full time jobs.   Now, as I go through my days as a parent, I am finding that more and more couples are making the decision that I made. When I realized that I was going to become a dad, I had to rethink a lot of things about my career and myself.   As the realization set in that we were going to become parents, we sat down and tried to figure this whole thing out.    What happens when the baby gets here?    Do we hire someone to take care of him?   How will he know his caregiver from his parents?   Will we be there for ...

           One of my favorite television shows is Doctor Who.   It's about a Time Lord from Gallifrey that travels around in time and space in his Tardis, a blue police box.   There is an episode in which the soul of the Tardis is put into the physical body of a woman which allows the Doctor and the Tardis to talk to each other for the first time.   During their conversation, the Doctor tells the Tardis, “You never take me where I want to go!” and she responds with, “I may not take you where you want to go but I always take you where you need to go!”   What a great line....an amazing line really. In life, we don't always end up where we want to go but we always end up where we needed to go.   I have found that to be a great lesson in this life.    When I was a kid, having gay parents was difficult.   I grew up around amazing people and had such wonderful experiences but because of bigot...

Henry and his husband live in Florida, where they were one of the first gay couples to adopt after the state’s infamous ban on gay adoption was struck down. Now he’s paving whole new roads of awareness by becoming a voice for gay fathers everywhere. He writes for DADsquared ,  It's Conceivable Now ,  Gay Parenting Magazine  and  ErgoBaby Alison Aucoin is the happy single (not co-parenting) lesbian mom of a 5½ year-old daughter she adopted from Ethiopia. She runs her own consulting firm that provides organizational development, fundraising, and grant writing services to non-profit organizations around the country and also writes for  The Nervous Breakdown . "Who am I? That’s simple. I am a gay parent that’s treated like a second class citizen and I am done taking it.  Every day I am in the battlefields, in my kid’s ...

Do you know who Zach Wahls is?    He is a 21yr old heterosexual man who is an activist for the LGBT community.   He is a standout in today’s fight for our equality because of how different his situation is.   He was raised by two moms and is fighting for our rights.    Does this sound odd?    Inspiring?    Normal?    He's not a politician coming out of the closet.   He’s not a sports star telling his life story after his career is washed up.   He’s not even an entertainer who needs a career boost.   He’s an everyday man who just happens to have been raised by a lesbian couple.   This used to be an anomaly.    But, you had better get used to it.   He will be paving the way for our kids. I just had a conversation last night with someone who said, “Remember when gays only had dogs?   Now they all have kids.”   He was talking about living in New York City a...

Many years ago I saw the movie Lilo and Stitch and fell in love with it.    The film is about family.   “ Ohana means family and family means nobody gets left behind. ”    It is a mantra that I have incorporated into my family and means a lot to us.    When I was growing up, my family was not only my blood related family members but also our extended family of friends.   My parents’ social group was primarily gays and lesbians.   We all socialized together, spent holidays together, and went on trips together.   Everybody came from different backgrounds yet we all melded into a beautiful familial arrangement.    As an adult, I have ended up with a similar family which is tight knit and includes my two best friends, Domita and Naisha.                  Gay marriage translates into my head as gay families.   ...

The adoption agency didn’t come out and ask me about my sexual orientation but they did ask about my “relationship history.”  I truthfully described my previous romantic relationships as  1) not terribly dramatic,  2) not fulfilling enough to warrant marriage, and  3) with men. It wasn’t until I was in the middle of the required parenting education program dedicated to transracial adoption that it hit me, like a ton of bricks. As the white parent of a black child there was no way I could model being black but it was critical that I model self-acceptance.  Hmm, I thought, how’s that going to work, what with me pretending to like boys and all? Now you’d probably expect me to describe a childhood growing up attending a fundamentalist church or never having any gay people in my life but you’d be wrong.  My childhood was mostly good and liberal. My mother was an interior designer so I was very familiar w...