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Two Fathers, With One Happy to
Stay at Home
By GINIA BELLAFANTE
MINNEAPOLIS — Right before
Christmas, Jamie McConnell arrived at the Lake
Country
School here, as he does most days of the week, to pick
up his son, Ben, 3. Hardly short on spunk, Ben made
his way out to the snowy playground, and Mr.
McConnell, as parents have done since the dawn of
swings and monkey bars, trailed behind.
Mr. McConnell had
plenty of time to watch Ben romp and to invite one of
his classmates and his mother home for peanut butter
and jelly sandwiches.
 |
|
Stephanie
Diani for The New York Times. Tom
Howard, background, left his job as a
professor to raise three children with his
partner, Ken Yood, a lawyer in Los Angeles. |
For years, Mr.
McConnell ate very different lunches.
He was a
corporate litigator at Dorsey & Whitney, among the
country's most prestigious law firms. But since he and
Dr. Bill Atmore, an anesthesiologist, adopted Ben as
an infant, taking care of the child has been his
full-time job. Dr. Atmore, his partner of eight years,
works full time.
In assuming those
roles, demographers say, the two are part of an
emerging population of gay men who are not only
raising children but are also committed to the idea
that one parent should leave the workplace to do it.
Of 9,328 same-sex couples with children whose census
returns were randomly selected for analysis by the
Census Bureau, 26 percent of the male couples included
a stay-at-home parent, said Gary Gates, a demographer
with the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research
organization in Washington. That figure is one
percentage point more than for married couples with
children and four percentage points higher than for
female couples, said Mr. Gates, who performed the
analysis for this article.
The percentage of men
who stay at home is significantly smaller among
married heterosexual couples, Mr. Gates said.
The obstacles of
finding surrogate mothers and of discriminatory
adoption laws that favor heterosexual couples have led
some gay men to pursue parenthood with fervor.
"Being a planned gay
father is such a project in itself," said Judith
Stacey, a professor of sociology at New York
University and a senior scholar at the Council on
Contemporary Families, a research organization. Often,
Professor Stacey said, gay fathers or those aspiring
to be "remain very judgmental of parents who don't
stay home."
To some gay men, the
idea of entrusting the care of a hard-won child to
someone else seems to defeat the purpose of
parenthood.
Ray Friedmann, of
Portland, Ore., gave up an accounting job at a credit
union after he and his partner adopted their daughter,
Ceriwen, now six months old. Unable to join his
partner's medical plan because it does not provide for
domestic partners, Mr. Friedmann, like many other gay
fathers, pays for his own health insurance.
"We never thought
we'd even be able to have this child," Mr. Friedmann
said. "When we had the opportunity to do it, we wanted
to give her the best attention and love."
Four years ago, after
Bernie Cummings and his partner, Ernie Johnston, a
marketing executive at Warner Brothers, had a baby
girl, Caelan, through a surrogate mother, Mr. Cummings
left his job as a managing director at Ogilvy Public
Relations. Since then, they have added twins to their
family, also through surrogacy.
"I've taken myself
out of an industry that moves pretty quickly," said
Mr. Cummings, who lives in Los Angeles. "But if I were
working, I'd miss that moment when Caelan was just
getting up from her nap, grabbing and holding on to
me."
Same-sex couples with
a stay-at-home parent are doing this even though
census figures show that their median household
income, $35,000, is lower than the $45,000 for a
heterosexual married couple with a stay-at-home
parent, Mr. Gates of the Urban Institute said.
The 2000 census found
that there were some 60,000 male couple households
with children in America, and close to 96,000 female
couple households. Those figures are about 20 percent
of all male couples and a third of all female couples.
Rob Calhoun and his
partner refinanced their home in suburban Atlanta when
Mr. Calhoun quit his job as a social worker to stay
home with their baby daughter. "We really couldn't
afford it," Mr. Calhoun said.
Sociologists, gender
researchers and gay parents themselves say that
because gay men are liberated from the cultural
expectations and pressures that women face to balance
work and family life, they may approach raising
children with a greater sense of freedom and choice.
They may also not
fear stigmatization in these new roles, said Ellen
Lewin, chairwoman of the women's studies department at
the University of Iowa. Professor Lewin is the author
of "Lesbian Mothers" (Cornell University Press, 1993)
and is working on a study of gay fathers.
|
|
Dawn Villella for
The New York Times
Bill
Koch, left, stays at home with Frankie, 4, while
his partner, Paul Lennander, works at a social
services agency in Minneapolis. |
Conversely,
feminism's legacy may leave lesbians more
ideologically committed to equality in their
relationships, said Christopher Carrington, a
professor of sociology at San Francisco State
University and the author of "No Place Like Home"
(University of Chicago Press, 2002), which examines
how gay and lesbian couples divide household labor.
That staying at home
constitutes the just and noble course of parenthood
was a sentiment echoed again and again in more than a
dozen interviews with gay fathers.
Mike Farina, 40, left
his job as an engineer in Anaheim, Calif., after
adopting twins with his partner in 1998.
"In the beginning, I
was even pig-headed about it," said Mr. Farina, who
now has four children with his partner. "I wanted the
kids to bond with us. I didn't want any help. In those
first few years, I didn't even get baby sitters. I
thought, `That's my job.' "
Though many gay
fathers may enter into domesticity with few conflicts
or reservations, the pressures of starting a new life
stripped of professional status can mirror those faced
by nonworking mothers. The transition may be even
rockier, given that male identity is largely defined
by achievements outside the confines of nurseries, mud
rooms and kitchens.
Professor Carrington
said some of the domestically oriented men he observed
struggled with self-esteem. "Men who make these
choices really grapple with how to portray their lives
to their friends, families, to service people and
repairmen," he said.
For Tom Howard, a
stay-at-home father of three adopted children, all
younger than 4, the consequence of his decision struck
two years ago, just before April 15. "I was filling
out our tax returns for the first entire calendar year
I was not working, and my occupation went from
`professor' to `homemaker.' I felt like someone had
put a knife in my stomach and twisted it."
For the preceding 10
years, Mr. Howard, who has a doctorate in
microbiology, had worked at the University of Southern
California, first as a researcher at its virology
laboratory and then also as a professor at its medical
school. "I can truly empathize with the women's
movement now," Mr. Howard said. "I know that I've
committed career suicide."
After the birth of
his first child, Emma, Mr. Howard, now 47, took a
three-month paid paternity leave from the university,
returning to work in February 2000. At the same time,
his partner of 17 years, Ken Yood, 40, was working his
way to a partnership at a Los Angeles law firm. "We
realized pretty quickly that Ken's pay scale was going
to support the family," he said.
No matter how
fair-minded the intentions of partners may be, the
myriad obligations of home stewardship invariably fall
to the partner who remains at home.
After Tom Seid, 47,
and his partner, Howard Ronder, the creative director
of Gaiam, a lifestyle company in Boulder, Colo.,
adopted their son, Matthew, four years ago, Mr. Seid
left his career as a feature-film editor. Their shift
to a single income meant that they could no longer
afford a housekeeper. Now, Mr. Seid's day consists of
shopping, cleaning and dropping off and picking up his
son from school.
The choice leaves
many facing a loss of financial independence that may
result in a suddenly dismal credit rating or strong
feelings of guilt about buying a CD or sweater.
"I have a problem
asking for money, and I have to ask for money every
time we're paying the bills," said Bill Koch, who
stays home with his 4-year-old son, Frankie, while his
partner of eight years, Paul Lennander, works as an
investigator at a children's social service agency
here.
Mr. Koch, who
previously worked in internal technology at General
Mills, said that a lack of income had left him feeling
invisible.
"After I'd been home
a few months, we went to lease a car," Mr. Koch
recalled. "We'd sold my car to come up with the money,
and the whole time the salesman is only talking to
Paul. The guy just looked right through me. Only
Paul's name could appear on the lease, and I was just
sitting there the whole time twirling my pearls, so to
speak."
Still, Mr. Koch, like
many of the other gay fathers interviewed, did not
betray any eagerness to return to the work world soon.
As Peter Vitale, a
gay stay-at-home father in the Twin Cities, put it,
"If I were honest, I'd say that I want to do an
excellent job at this because I know the world has me
under a microscope."
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