Why I'm Handpicking Some Dads for My Son
It could read like the first line of a dating profile:
Lesbian moms seek loving, compassionate dads. My partner and I wanted to have
children without a third person—and personality—in the picture.
So, my
6-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter are products of an anonymous but
"open" sperm donor, meaning they donʼt know him, but they have the
option of seeking out his identity when they turn 18.
While my daughter will presumably learn how to become a
woman by modeling the behavior of my partner and me, we must even the scales
for our son by illustrating for him different ways to be a man today, beyond
archetypes of Iron Man and Luke Skywalker. And the older he gets, itʼs becoming
clear that I have to create a dad—or a few dads—for him.
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He was hungry for male attention, and we
realized it was our job to carve out male relationships for him.
When my
partner and I began trying to conceive years ago, an old friend asked us,
"But aren't you concerned that your children will need male figures in
their lives?"
"Well, duh," we thought, appalled that someone
would proscribe our parenting paradigm, and also hurt by what felt like a
homophobic, if well-intentioned, undercurrent.
But now that conversation is
more than theoretical—it's a conscious task on my part. I must find dads!
As a part-time, stay-at-home mom, I spend a lot of hours
with my kids—and other children and their parents. And, not unlike a dating
candidate searching for compatible partners, Iʼm always on the hunt for adult
men—but with the added requirements that they be interested in hanging out with
children and socially compatible with my kids and me.
We want to create fun
male-bonding opportunities for our son, but we're also trying to expose him to
regular positive models of masculinity.
But he doesnʼt want just any man, anywhere. Some men he is
indifferent to; others inexplicably drawn toward; and it's steered seemingly by
chemistry. So, following my sonʼs lead with specific men, I'm building a
patchwork quilt of dads, a composite of people that includes close friends and
men I barely know.
The process is a bit random, as was that of choosing a
donor—perhaps someone musical, or humorous, or just low-key and sweet. Mostly,
I let our son steer the way.
We've found the gregarious actor dad, who does impressions
and is known as "The Funny Man," as in "Can we go to the Funny
Manʼs house again?" He invited us in one day when we passed his house on
the street and taught my son how to use toy nunchuks.
The boy still talks about
it a year later. Thereʼs the high school teacher dad, who rides his vintage
bike to pick up his two sons and takes our son home with them on occasion for
man-dates: play involving Pokemon cards, plastic swords, ice cream, and TV. And
we have my best friendʼs husband, who runs a kids' summer camp and has two
daughters.
When we visit, he and my son may play a board game or sit back to
back on the sofa reading a graphic novel and The New York Times.
I donʼt feel bad that we had children without a tangible
man—it wasnʼt a choice. My partner and I had been together 10 years, wanted
children, and didnʼt have a known-donor option. I do wish that my kids had a
father, because I know itʼs hard for a kid to feel different from his peers,
but we did the best we could given the parameters of biology.
Our kids have two
loving parents who bring different traits to the table—some masculine, some
feminine, some not specifically gendered.
But I do see now that it's our
responsibility to build a community of men, for both of our children, that most
importantly show them that there are good, kind, loving fathers out there; that
women arenʼt, and shouldn't be, the only nurturing parents; and to demonstrate
how to properly spin a nunchuk.
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