DADsquared℠

It was early one afternoon and my boy said, “Can you play with me?”   “No, I’m working, “, I said.     “No you aren’t, you are looking at Facebook” my boy pointed out. , OK, I did feel a little guilty and decided to play with him for a few minutes.   He said, “I want to be superman and you can be the bad guy”.   I decided, “Ok, I’ll be Captain Butt Kicker.” “Whose that?”, He asked.    “That’s the bad guy that kicks you in the butt if you get to close to him”, I said.    Well that got him going and he went running through the house. He ran past the one side of the kitchen so I bolted to the other side hoping to cut him off as he was going by.   As I ran to the other side of the kitchen, I put on the brakes, pivoted on one foot and turned suddenly and then “SNAP”, I felt something in my lower right leg pop out of wherever it was supposed to be,   and it hit the back of my leg behind the ...

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...