Black Gay Fatherhood

So my husband and I have been actively pursuing fatherhood for some time now. During the process, we’ve joined some gay dad Facebook groups related to adoption and surrogacy. One of the things I’ve learned is that there are A LOT of different ways to become a gay dad.

I’ve seen it all. Gay foster dads, gay adoptive dads, gay dads who coparent with lesbian couples or straight female friends, gay dads raising their younger siblings as their own, gay dads who are raising their sibling’s kids, gay dads through surrogacy, and gay dads through previous heterosexual relationships.

Despite the diversity, there’s one group of gay dads that seems to be a bit rarer: black gay dads. Specifically, black gay men partnered with other black gay men raising kids together. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen a few black gay dad couples, but I could probably easily count on both hands the total number I’ve come across in about a year and half. And I’m probably being generous. There’s definitely black men in the groups. I’ve seen a few black gay single dads. And for the black gay dads in relationships, the vast majority are partnered with white men.

The thing is, I know there are black gay dad couples out there. I immediately think of some gaylebrities like Terrell and Jarius, Kordale and Kaleb (are they even still together?), and…..maybe that’s it……..

I know kids definitely aren’t for everyone. Maybe it’s a reflection of relationship trends. Or maybe all the black gay dads are not spending their time on Facebook. But to be honest, as my husband and my journey to fatherhood slowly becomes a reality, I would like for our kids to meet with other black gay dad families. Dads in the Facebook groups are always planning play dates for their kids so that their kids can see that they’re not the only kids with two dads. That’s great and I would love to take advantage of that. But would we be the only black couple? Maybe I should move to Atlanta. Haha.

What do you all think? What’s going on here? Have you experienced things differently? Can you see yourself raising kids with another black man? Have you come across a lot of black gay partnered dads raising kids? What’s up?

 

Yeah, this is definitely what I thought about. The community is just so small so any dysfunction gets magnified. It's a little disheartening though.

 

Being able to have bio kids with my partner would be a dream, but I imagine technology like this is decades away from approval. And just imagine the cost. Regular old IVF with a surrogate is at least $100k. Stuff like this could easily be double, triple, or more.