Gay Men’s Relationships: When You Want Kids and He Doesn’t
I’m the founder of GayTherapyLA.com, which I’ve had for 26 years in private practice, but 32 years overall as a gay men’s specialist psychotherapist, and also an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Life/Career/Executive/Relationship Coach at GayCoachingLA.com, and, more recently, author of some online courses for gay men’s mental health and well-being, which I’ll “pitch” to you later!
The hot topics and issues guys bring to me to work on each day vary over the years, but I’ve noticed that some individuals and some couples I’ve been working with lately have been utilizing their sessions to work on grappling with the dilemma of whether or not to have kids.
With marriage equality, it seems to be getting either easier, more popular, or both, for same-sex couples (including my focus on gay male couples or polycules) or even single gay men to consider (somehow) becoming parents, often through surrogate egg donor and surrogate mother to carry the baby, and the sperm being used by one partner, the other, or some combination of the two and “may the best man win” in the “great sperm motility race!”
It’s a romantic idea, and the gay men whom I’ve known, professionally and personally, have reported that having their child(ren) has been the most rewarding experience of their lives to date, despite the seemingly endless and predictable challenges that come with parenting.
I’ve written in a previous blog article and podcast that gay men still have the paternal instinct. We might not, by nature, want to “make babies” with women, but our sexual orientation and sexual expression is an independent variable from our paternal instincts. These instincts can include a desire to be a father, to leave a legacy in our family (including “carrying on the family name”), to support the new generation of people on Earth, to defend against the seeming finality of mortality, to create a broader sense of community, to have someone to take care of us when we’re old, and to enjoy the existential state of being a family. In previous writing, I’ve discussed the various ways that gay men can satisfy the paternal instinct.
When gay men are in relationships, especially when we start them, the notion comes that perhaps the couple (or polycule) of the two-person family (or more partners) can expand from gay male adult peers to include a child or children as well. I even have a special year-long training background, from the Sexual Health Alliance, on Consensual Non-Monogamy and Polyamorous Families, which are more common than you might think, even among straight people.
For some gay men, we have similar life goals as perhaps straight men do, such as reaching adulthood and then wanting to carry on the experience of the circle of life to a new generation, from birth to adulthood. We have “arrived” at adulthood, and then we want to help someone else do it, too. It’s part of a generational cycle that has been going on for Millenia, throughout evolution, world history, and cultural development across the globe.
For gay male relationships, the consideration of whether (or not) to have children includes a discussion of how gay male couples reflect or divert from our cultural understanding of the “heteronormative” couple. Some guys deliberately want to create a family structure similar to their (usually heterosexual) Family of Origin, while some guys very definitely want to create a family very different from their Family of Origin, but still a family unit. Other gay men don’t want anything that gets anywhere near cultural heteronormativity, including child-rearing, and want different things for their careers and their personal lives, and all those options are valid, despite what some people like to impose (let’s say) on others!
Other gay male relationships discuss the option of having children as a result of family expectations. It used to be the old joke that mothers of gay men would complain, “Eh, now I never get to have grandchildren!” except perhaps through the gay man’s siblings. Nowadays, with marriage equality and the increased frequency of gay men being parents through fostering, adoption, and surrogacy, or perhaps becoming the parent of a child in the family whose own parents can’t or aren’t alive/available to raise the child, the question of whether a gay relationship can “have children” is no longer answered with “of course not.”
Some men, including straight and gay, see their role as men as being able to sire progeny. They see part of their identity and definition as men to be fertile, just as some women see a key component of being a woman as being a mother. These kinds of notions – even, certainly, strong cultural pressures – can be very controversial, especially in the current (horrifying) political age of abortion becoming illegal again in many areas of the United States where it had been previously legal in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision for over 50 years, and the issue of procreation and parenthood now including, once again, forced birth, including under extraordinary circumstances such as rape, incest, older age, younger age (even as a minor), and extreme medical risk. It’s a new Dark Age for reproductive freedom, brought on by the Trump Era and an aggressive, Republican public policy dominance in many regions. Most recently, a movement to ban easy access to birth control methods has been a new Republican legislative and judicial goal, perhaps with the underlying misogyny against women’s place in society, and to create a society of just “more babies” to grow up to be “more workers” to serve them. Time will tell how that movement plays out, but it’s a critical juncture for social policy with enormous implications.
But many progressive voices, activists, politicians, and citizens would argue that when it comes to procreation, birth control, the right to choose abortion, the right to choose the circumstances of procreation – such as IVF — should remain options — safely and with all supports needed (like prenatal care, birth and delivery resources, child care, education, and public social services that support food security, housing, and medical care). This includes the idea of child-rearing for gay men as well, either single men or in relationships of two or more.
The desire for having children can be strong and profound, being a part of many gay men’s existential sense of self and deep sense of purpose. However, just like straight men and women (and other gender identities), others very specifically do not want to be parents in this lifetime, for other deeply-held reasons about how to conduct their life, at every age in the adult lifespan.
The challenge is when two (or more) partners in a relationship fall in very different places on the spectrum between wanting to – and wanting not to – have children.
The issue of whether one “wants to have kids” is one of several very big issues in compatibility in dating. Even straight people have this question in dating. I hear from single gay men often that they are only looking for a partner who shares their place on that spectrum, or close to it. Unfortunately, a great difference on this issue can prevent a new relationship from moving forward, and it can even make an established relationship break up, and it’s one of the top five or so reasons that I see in my practice for gay male relationships to end (I’ve written about other reasons, which can include unaddressed drug and alcohol issues, or problems with sex, money, work, or criminal involvement).
If gay men are agreed that they don’t want kids, they might discuss how to get their paternal instincts (however strong/however weak) satisfied (see that article, here). If they are agreed that they want to pursue becoming parents, that’s when an assessment of what options they have to do it becomes key.
Like so many issues in relationships, communication is key. Hearing your partner out, listening, but also asking to be heard, rather thoroughly, is vitally important. Even if you don’t agree with what your partner is saying, listen very actively, and thoroughly, and try very hard to cultivate your capacity for empathy and seeing things from his point of view. There’s no objective “right and wrong” in this; it’s more about saying to each other, “what kind of choices can we make that are right for us, right now?”
The options are challenging because it’s not just about what guys want to do, it’s about what they can do, on a practical level, especially with resources – with money, living space, and time, in addition to any physical considerations in procreation such as sperm count, sperm motility, and genetic counseling issues. For fostering and adoption, it takes a lot of patience for a usually long, slow, and tedious bureaucratic process that is necessary to protect children and try to avoid disastrous situations, but can be frustrating in how slowly that process works: This isn’t “Door Dash Kids.”
For each partner, once they are agreed that they want to pursue becoming co-parents/fathers, they need to consider how the various options for having a child (or more) align with their own dreams, goals, and personal values.
For example, surrogacy might be the right choice if you are especially invested in either a physical/genetic idea of siring offspring, where you want to “control” at least the father’s source portion of the DNA sequence, or if the idea of having offspring from your historical family line generationally is especially important to you. Partners need to determine if they will use one partner’s sperm, or the other, or mix them and just be surprised later who “won the race.” Sometimes, if they plan on having more than one child, they might take turns using each partner’s sperm donation.
The partners would also have to be agreed on the financial investment not only of raising one or more children, but also be ready for the investment in In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF, formerly known crassly as “test tube babies”), including the idea that IVF might not always be successful, and the investment money in the process can be lost, like any other financial investment where there is a risk of loss of your principal. Each attempt for the IVF process to result in successful and sustained pregnancy has a fee schedule associated with it in various stages.
Adoption as an option has been attractive for lots of reasons, but it’s also somewhat challenging because it can involve a very bureaucratic process. One of my longest-term colleagues in psychotherapy in Los Angeles, Dr. Tony Zimbardi, wrote a book about his and his then-husband’s experience adopting through the Los Angeles County system and wrote a book called, “Forever Dads” about the rewards and challenges of that. Another colleague, David Strah, LMFT, along with Susanna Margolis, wrote a book called “Gay Dads: A Celebration of Fatherhood,” also about the parenthood process. Resources like that, as well as social groups like the one in Los Angeles called “The Pop Luck Club,” about gay dads or potential gay dads, can be enormously useful in de-mystifying the process of what to expect in terms of possible rewards and challenges of parenting.
The thing with adoption can be raising a child who comes from a biological lineage different from yours, that you might have less influence over and knowledge about. My colleague, Tony, who is White, adopted, along with his African-American then-husband, two Latino brothers who were about a year or so apart, in a truly blended, diverse family, that brought cultural intersectionality to the home. Adoption is also a socially important option, because the need for good homes for children available for adoption, even after long (but still failed) efforts for family of origin re-unification, is large, almost overwhelming. I think Tony said there were 23,000 kids in Los Angeles County alone that were eligible for being adopted, and of course there are other municipalities and children who need homes in countries around the world.
Fostering a child is another option, where the arrangement could be temporary until more permanent placement, such as with a relative, can be found. As awkward as this sounds, being a foster parent for a time can be an opportunity for anyone to “see what it’s like” parenting, while the decision is still somewhat reversible.
And that’s the challenge that makes many gay men anxious about this discussion, in that it is an irreversible decision; there is no “returns department” and you’re stuck with whoever and how-ever that child is. Nowhere is this example more prominent than in horrible situations where parents reject a child for being gay or any of the LGBT spectrum; remember, LGBT kids are over-represented among unhoused minors directly as a result of being kicked out of their homes by their bigoted parents for being LGBT; this still happens, worldwide.
Another consideration is that having a child (or more) is subject to chance. You need to discuss, and consider, if you could handle having a “special needs” child, or if there were pressure to have more than one child (such as fostering or adopting siblings) or multiple births resulting from IVF (like the “Octomom” controversy, years ago). You need to consider if you could “handle” having a child very different from you. Two gay men who are progressive might need to face that their son wants to be a conservative jock! Or having one child who is somehow “easy” to care for infancy, such as sleeping through the night early in life, versus a child who is more fussy and needs more care. The question to ask is, “Could we handle this?”
There is the process of “if” to pursue having children, and then the “how” aspect of becoming parents. There needs to be fairly frequent, thorough discussions of negotiating those plans in the context of a relationship. Not only identifying and evaluating the options of surrogacy, adoption, or fostering, but also a fairly thorough discussion of the pros and cons of becoming parents.
It’s a very different lifestyle – anti-gay people throw around the words “gay lifestyle” in a very pejorative way, as if there were only one “gay lifestyle,” and there certainly isn’t just one “parenting lifestyle,” but gay male relationships with children and those without differ in some existential ways. When you’re a parent, you’re not just taking care of yourself in work/life balance, but you have your very dependent children to consider, too. Whether you see this as an opportunity, or a burden, needs to be discussed. Make arguments for parenting, and all the things that might mean for your lives. Then make arguments against parenting, and all the challenges that are very likely to occur, and then the ones that are not likely, but are possible. And each asking of themselves, and each other, can we handle that?
Of the many gay male couples and other relationships that I’ve worked with in my long (32 years), career, much of the variables to their success have been just practical, about resources, and about, yes, money. Maybe that’s just in a high cost of living area like Los Angeles, and some other places where my clients have lived, but the money to hire an au pair or wet nurse, nanny, babysitter, tutor, music teacher, perhaps private school, college, and family travel are all considerations. It’s not that only well-off people, including gay men, can have children, but I’ve noticed that many problems are averted or resolved just by having the means to deal with them, which would be much harder (although not impossible) if you didn’t have a fairly comfortable income, and perhaps extended family like your own parents, usually mothers, to help out as an extended family. All professional services related to kids are expensive, and they add up because they are different things at different times – needing an au pair when your child is an infant is different from them needing a tutor in high school to get into a good college, if they even want to.
Gay male relationships can explore things that give them opportunities to be around kids first, before they have to make these decisions. Being a part of Big Brothers/Big Sisters, or Scouting America, which is the former Boy Scouts, or the Girl Scouts of America, all can be opportunities to “be around” kids to see what they’re really like, if you haven’t been around neighbor kids or nieces/nephews a lot in your family.
Volunteering for a school system can be a big help. Coaching a youth soccer or Little League baseball team can be beneficial, or a local children’s theatre troupe.
Supporting a children’s charity where you get to be involved with the actual patients or clients can be rewarding. Being a Court Advocate is a volunteer opportunity that I’ve heard about, as well as certainly tutoring or mentoring a young person, which can be a wide range of age. Even babysitting for your neighbors or with family who live nearby can give you some idea of what kids are like.
It’s opportunities like these that might help the partners in a gay relationship to have in vivo experience with children that help to clarify your feelings – perhaps for, or against, the idea of becoming parents.
Having a structure to the conversations in your relationship, like in relationship coaching or couples therapy, can certainly help. Having someone to facilitate your discussion so that it doesn’t just digress into fights or arguments can help you stay focused on identifying, clarifying, and expressing your values, as well as identifying and evaluating your feelings on the matters, and your options.
Sometimes, perhaps sadly, or seriously, or poignantly, the discussion needs to be whether to break up over this issue if you can’t agree. Unless you believe otherwise, spiritually, “you only live once.” You not only “can” choose how to live, but you “must” choose how to live, as a relationship. And it is critical – I’m going to repeat that: critical – that the decision you arrive at, ultimately, works for both of you, and doesn’t create a lingering resentment that you acquiesced – either for, or against, children. Whatever decision you make, it has to just “feel right”, and you can move forward with optimism and confidence that the path you are choosing is right.
Personally, I am not a parent. My husband of over 22 years and I decided at some point in our relationship not to have children, by any means. We wanted something different for our lives, and we felt that we already are involved in supporting the well-being of the younger generation(s) by what we do, me as a therapist/coach, and him working in higher education as a fundraiser/development officer for college scholarships for underprivileged students. We also have enjoyed “parenting” our pets, in various combinations of cats and dogs over the years. We are also close to a bunch of nieces and a nephew. We are OK with that, but we made that decision just coincidentally right as I was researching my own family history on Ancestry.com, and had traced over 1100 years of my family name’s line, going back through the Revolutionary War, to the executions at the Tower of London of two of my great-great-or-so grandfathers, or further back to one of the wives of Henry VIII, the first Duke of Norfolk, and even Lady Godiva! It seemed a bit strange that Little Ole’ Me was the end of at least that “branch” of the family line, but my uncle or my grandfather or my parents or others could have had more children; it’s not my problem. Nor do I think “carrying on a family name” is all that relatively important in society anymore, frankly. It just wasn’t the right decision for us to have kids; our lives have meaning and purpose – including for younger people – without doing that.
But for the gay men I’ve known who have become parents, I see, first hand, what it means for them, and being a parent can be profound; for some, it’s the thing they point to as the most important event in their lives.
These are not easy decisions, but part of being a grownup is that we have to face this one, and lots of other decisions as both the Adult Prerogative and Adult Responsibility. It’s infantile to think we never have to make the hard decisions in life; grow up. It’s not that bad.
It’s said that the best decisions come from a careful understanding of the dynamics and options involved. Think of judges in court cases, or juries, or judges in some kind of artistic contest; there isn’t time to do everything in this lifetime, so we have to choose, and create, and craft our lives to be what we want them to be in this incarnation, and know that we are choosing to align with some things, and choosing also to leave other things aside.
Ultimately, you’re committing to a decision that is part of many decisions in existentially “designing your life” from a place of empowerment and meaning.
If you need help or support for this, or any decision or challenge in your relationship or just in your life, consider therapy (if you’re in California, where I’m licensed to provide therapy for those with at least some kind of mental health challenge), or coaching, for support for life’s “non-clinical” issues, all over the world (we just figure out the time zone difference when we schedule appointments).
There are some areas of overlap in those services, but also some important legal and ethical differences that are important to differentiate between these types of professional services; see also my websites at GayTherapyLA.com or GayCoachingLA.com for more information.
Check out the other Blog articles on the websites, or check out my Podcast, “Gay Therapy LA with Ken Howard, LCSW, CST” heard in over 175 countries around the world, with over 140 episodes to date.
Something that is new this year, 2024, is that I also offer online courses, including one on gay men starting your own business, available on the Thinkific course platform, and one coming up very soon on “Gay Men Improving Sexual Self-Confidence,” from my work as an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist, one of the few gay-identified ones. Other online course offerings are in the works, and if you have suggestions for topics you’d like to see offered for those courses, please reach out and let me know.
If you have suggestions for future blog articles or podcast episodes, your suggestions are welcome. If you want individualized help sooner, email Ken@GayCoachingLA.com, or call/text 310-339-5778, and I’d be happy to help.
