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Journal of GLBT Family Studies

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Adoptive Gay Fathers: Transformations

of the Masculine Homosexual Self
a

Jorge C. Armesto & Ester R. Shapiro

University of Massachusetts-Boston , Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Published online: 08 Feb 2011.

To cite this article: Jorge C. Armesto & Ester R. Shapiro (2011) Adoptive Gay Fathers:
Transformations of the Masculine Homosexual Self, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 7:1-2, 72-92, DOI:
10.1080/1550428X.2011.537202
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Journal of GLBT Family Studies, 7:7292, 2011

Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1550-428X print / 1550-4298 online
DOI: 10.1080/1550428X.2011.537202

Adoptive Gay Fathers: Transformations

of the Masculine Homosexual Self
JORGE C. ARMESTO and ESTER R. SHAPIRO

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University of Massachusetts-Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

This article discusses transformations of the masculine homosexual self that occur in gay men who decide to parent in the context
of a committed relationship. Using a developmental narrative approach, 10 adoptive gay fathers (5 couples) participated in multiple
open-ended interviews (both individually and as couples). Data
were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings
from this study indicate that fathering was a catalyst for participants crafting new definitions of homosexual masculinity that
emphasized relational and generative aspects of self. Specifically,
fathering catapulted participants into a second coming-out process that helped them shed more layers of internalized oppression
and redefine homosexual masculinity using fewer external referents such as personal attractiveness or an active social life. Participants also shifted their sense of membership in the gay community,
partly because, for most parents, their community of reference became other parents of young children, but partly in response to
their perception that the gay community regarded their focus on
fathering ambivalently and with mixed support. Ultimately, the
meaning that participants ascribed to their fathering role dramatically changed how they understood and enacted their homosexual
masculinity.
KEYWORDS adoptive gay fathers, adoption, gay adoption, gay
men, masculinity, homosexual masculinity

Address correspondence to Dr. Jorge C. Armesto, P.O. Box 2388, Providence, RI 02906.
E-mail: armesto@post.harvard.edu
This article is based on a doctoral dissertation completed by the first author. Dr. Armesto
dedicates this work to the memory of his late husband, John P. Royston. Johns unconditional
love, unwavering support, and boundless patience made this project possible. Your brief
journey changed many lives. Across the universe, you will forever remain alive in my heart
and soul.
72

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INTRODUCTION
The emergence of the multifaceted gendered Self occurs in the contexts of
a larger and lifelong gender identity project in which individuals struggle to
make sense of themselves as gendered beings within the possibilities and
constraints of their sociocultural context (Connell, 1998). The concept of the
Self-as-Project assumes that individuals are active in the construction of their
life stories, which are embodied and gendered in harmony with constitutional, ecological, intergenerational, and cultural contributions to the evolving co-constructed self. As such, both sexuality and parenting are dimensions
of individuals gender projects. For gay men, the concept of Self-as-Project
also emphasizes that the personal and interpersonal activities involved in
constructing gender include an ongoing life-course developmental process
of the adoption, interpretation, and enactment of what it means to be a gay
man. Within societies that narrowly define our human possibilities and continually enforce narrowly defined sexual and heteronormative gender roles,
the interweaving of sexuality and parenting strands of the gendered Self
create challenges that differ by sex, sexual orientation, and social class.
Theorists suggest that individuals reflexively work out their own gender
projects as means of negotiating complexity and difference within normative
and contradictory expectations as practiced in relational and social spaces
(Adkins, 2003). For adoptive gay fathers, a reflexive gender project could
serve as a strategy to create a more multifaceted and inclusive gay identity to
include both sexuality and fathering drawing on multiple resources in their
families of origin, social relationships, and contradictory cultural and media
messages regarding our human possibilities. The work of adoptive gay fathering distinctively challenges assumptions by which sexist heterosexuality
is taken as normative and prohibits gay men from incorporating parenting
into their gendered selves.

Homosexuality as a Dimension of Masculinity

Much of the literature on GLBT individuals has focused on the coming-out
process of gay men and lesbian women. This focus is understandable given
that the conscious awareness of naming and expressing a culturally forbidden
desire is a significant marker for gay and lesbian people. Since the 1970s,
many researchers have proposed that formation of a gay or lesbian identity
follows a normative process (Cass, 1979; Eliason, 1996). Many models explain
the identity disclosure process as a series of stages in which a social crisis
must be resolved. A basic assumption in these coming-out models is that to
acquire a gay or lesbian identity, a person must accept the notion that his
or her behaviors, feelings, and attitudes are socially deviant. Alternatively,
individuals struggling to define themselves against a backdrop of stigma

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J. C. Armesto and E. R. Shapiro

can reach for a socio-politically meaningful account of their experience that

addresses hegemonic masculinity and homophobia.
The existing coming-out models have helped to frame and organize
the complex, socially located developmental process of accepting a gay or
lesbian identity. However, these models describe the developmental process
of coming out and its immediate impact on overall functioning without examining its influence on other aspects of development, including fathering.
That is, the existing models do not examine the process of how gay men
come to understand that their masculine gender identity can include both
their sexual orientation and the possibility of fatherhood.

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Fathering as a Dimension of Gay Masculinity

The literature on parental development suggests that all adults must integrate multiple social roles into a sense of self and that contemporary parents
face contradictory beliefs and practices concerning the appropriate balance
of work and family obligation, a process that remains heavily gender polarized in social attitudes and workplace practices (Hochschild & Machung,
2001). Feminist perspectives on parenting appreciate that all human beings
are reduced by hegemonic femininity and masculinity while emphasizing
the specific burdens placed on women, who bear greater responsibilities for
caretaking with fewer resources. However, gay fathers face unique additional
burdens associated with negotiating a social environment that reflects negative cultural beliefs about them and especially targets their developmentally
meaningful generativity and desire to parent as incapable of coexisting with
their sexuality. Negative cultural beliefs about gays and lesbians perpetuate
the notion that father and gay identities are incompatible and create a cultural context in which relationships between gay fathers and their children
are not fully validated.
The literature on gay fathering has historically focused on the comingout experiences of gay men who became fathers in the context of heterosexual relationships (Armesto, 2002; Bozett, 1993; Marsiglio, Amato,
Day, & Lamb, 2000). For these men, negotiating a fathering role within a
gay male gender identity appears to be especially difficult, because it forces
a confrontation of self, marriage, parenting, and family roles. In contrast,
current studies (Brinamen & Mitchell, 2008; Lewin, 2009) of gay fathers in
same-sex relationships suggest that for these contemporary gay men, developing a positive identity as fathers involves being more comfortable with
their sexual orientation, confronting heterosexual privilege, and valuing their
unique strengths. Gay men in same-sex relationships do not have to hide
their identity from their children. They do not experience the fear of losing
custody of their children because of their sexual orientation and/or face the
dilemma of honoring their sexual orientation at the expense of separating
from their wives and/or children. The integration of sexual orientation into

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Adoptive Gay Fathers

75

their gender identity does not appear to be burdened by the conflicts of

separation and divorce.
For men in same-sex relationships, adoption offers the opportunity to
negotiate the complex legal and social systems required of prospective adoptive parents within the context of a committed relationship. Adoption is a
testament to a couples commitment to parenthood, because, for adoptive
families, parenting is the culmination of a protracted, carefully planned, and
emotionally taxing process. A life-course understanding of parenting as part
of socially contextualized gender-identity projects recognizes that the pathways by which adults become parents in turn create the contexts within
which a co-constructed process of self-understanding emerges. While adoption is not the only path by which gay men become parents, it offers a
meaningful context in which couples as partners can choose to parent.
Gay fathers are changing cultural norms of parenthood, family life, and
masculinity. Specifically, gay fathers in same-sex relationships are challenging hegemonic masculinity and femininity and establishing parenting roles
outside the context of traditional gender roles. Studies suggest that gay mens
fathering experiences may catalyze an identity re-exploration that facilitates a
broader gay identity that includes parenting (Silverstein, Auerbach, & Levant,
2002; Schacher, Auerbach, & Silverstein, 2005). However, a major limitation
of existing studies is that they have not explored how gay fathers day-to-day
parenting experiences transform their masculine homosexual identity.
This article explores the experiences of gay men who chose to become
adoptive fathers in the context of a same-sex relationship, examining the
ways that their understanding of their gendered selves evolved to challenge
the narrow straitjacket of compulsory heterosexual masculinity. Specifically,
this article describes transformations of the masculine gay self that occur in
gay men after they become parents and the process by which they creatively
transform gender images that equate fathering with dominant or hegemonic
masculinity and homosexuality with childlessness. In doing so, this study
seeks to answer the following research question: How does fathering transform the gender-identity projects of gay men?

METHOD
As a foundation, this research is located within a narrative study of lives and
especially within feminist, pro-feminist mens studies and critical narrative
perspectives informed by ethnographic observations and interpretations that
recognize the sociocultural and social science prejudices against stigmatized
groups (Connell, 1998; Lugones, 2003; Naples, 2003; Suyemoto, 2002). This
kind of methodology is particularly suited for studying gay families as it
aims to restore voice in communities that have been silenced, and highlights
the creative complexities required of people who have socially devalued
identities.

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Participants
This study examines the developmental journey to fatherhood in gay families where both men shared the physical, moral, psychological, financial,
and legal responsibilities of child rearing. Participants were 5 white male
couples (a total of 10 participants) who had first declared themselves as
gay men, begun a partnership together, and then became parents through
international adoption. Given the in-depth nature of this study, limiting the
large number of important structural variables facilitated capturing the experience of a more homogenous group of parents and conducting cross-case
analyses. To this end, this sample was limited to adoptive gay couples who
had only 1 child, had parented together for at least six months but no longer
than 36 months (M = 27, SD = 7), and whose child was a non-white boy
(age ranged between 6 and 60 months (M = 38, SD = 9). The reason for
selecting participants who parented for at least six months was to ensure
that the couples had sufficient time to adjust to having a child (e.g., change
in routines, loss of freedom, etc.). Finally, given the multiple race and ethnic configurations of adoptive families, this study focused only on families
with white Euro-American non-immigrant parents who had adopted internationally. All the children were non-white and shared the same race and
nationality.1 Participants names used in this study are pseudonyms.
The couples in the sample were together for an average of 8.8 years
with a range from 7 to 12 years. The average age of participants was 38.8
years with a range from 35 to 41 years. Participants were on average 36 years
old when they became parents; their ages at the start of parenting ranged
from 33 to 39 years. The sample included upper-middle- to upper-class
families. All participants had college degrees, except one who had attended
but not graduated from college. In addition, 7 out of the 10 participants had
postgraduate education.

Procedures
Invitations to participate in the study were circulated at adoption agencies,
parenting support groups, gay organizations, referrals provided by the participants themselves (i.e., snowball sampling), and through personal contacts.
Candidates who met the inclusion criteria were invited to participate in four
open-ended tape-recorded interviews. Total interview time ranged from 5.5
to 7 hours per family. All interviews were conducted in participants homes.
The first author completed transcription of all tapes.
Interview data were transcribed and analyzed using thematic analysis (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Weiss, 1994), while guided by the critical
questioning and self-reflection suggested by feminist approaches. The interviews conducted with the 10 participants generated more than 600 pages of

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77

transcribed data. We used NVivo qualitative data analysis software to help

manage the complexities of organizing and analyzing patterns of themes in
this large amount of raw data.

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Validity
Issues of validity were addressed in several ways following Maxwells (1996)
and Creswells (1998) recommendations. All interviews were recorded using two tape recorders to ensure that there was a backup tape. In addition,
several data analysis and interpretation measures were taken to minimize
the risk of imposing the primary investigators personal bias. These measures included writing analytic memos to help identify thoughts, feelings,
and personal beliefs; searching for discrepant evidence and negative cases
in an attempt to falsify proposed conclusions; comparing different information sources such as multiple perspectives within a family (i.e., triangulation);
soliciting feedback about conclusions from study participants; and making
accessible to the reader examples of original narrative in context so alternative explanations could be discerned.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Participants relationships with their sons were the primary facilitative experiences for transforming both inner and interpersonal definitions of being
a gay man. These transformations of self in relation to a child reached a
developmental threshold the first time participants saw their sons referral
photographs.

Adoption Photograph: Fathering the Intimate Stranger

The arrival of the photograph signaled a milestone and highlighted a major
developmental experience in their journey to fatherhood. The photograph
offered both a concrete, as well as symbolic, turning point in their identity
as fathers:
When you know that theres a picture in an envelope of the child thats
going to be with you for the rest of your life, its a totally different
dimension. . . . It was a defining moment and it was just, it was exciting,
scary, terrifying, and wonderful. . . . Youre just nervous. Will I connect
immediately with this picture? Will I fall in love right from the moment
I see this child? Will that be it, or will I question it all, and will I not be
happy? (Barry Hanson)

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The above excerpt highlights how the first moment of seeing his sons
photograph was central to Barrys adoption narrative as well as that of the
other participants in this study. This moment symbolized fear and hope.
For example, some participants feared that they might not fall in love with
their child. They hoped their sons would be cute as a way to facilitate a
connection with them. Simultaneously, they knew that once they saw the
picture, they would accept the referral. For these men, who sought fathering
as an opportunity to have new sources of meaning in their lives, holding
their sons photographs was a concrete experience that transformed fathering
from possibility to reality.

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The First Encounter: Reality Matters

For some fathers, their strong sense of connection to their sons evoked by
the photograph served as a much-needed center of emotional gravity as
they continued their long journey through an international adoption across
time zones and cultures. Meeting their children presented another significant, emotionally overwhelming, and often surreal moment. Exhausted from
traveling, they embarked on day-to-day parenting in a foreign country and
within the confines of a hotel room. Some fathers made meaning of this
experience in spiritual terms while others focused on the long-term implications of how their lives and relationships were forever changed. For all
of them, however, this moment of first encounter symbolized the accomplishment of a dream and generated newfound feelings of doubt, fear, and
hope:
The first time was amazing. . . . When youre actually going, youre thinking, what kind of a parent am I going to be? How do I change diapers?
Will he like me? Will he come to me? . . . All these things are going through
your mind because you dont know, you never even talked about those
things, nor did the [adoption] agency really prepare you for that. . . . But
it was a very spiritual moment for us because when he came out, he
smiled at us and reached for us. . . . It was as if he was with us for the
whole time. . . . It also turned out to be a milestone in our relationship
because it was never going to be the same . . . our families would never
be the same; our definition of our sexuality and who we are as a couple
was never going to be the same. (Bryce Woods)

Daniel Koskas experience of meeting his son was different from the
other parents in that he did not know if he would come home with his son.
His adoption was hindered by bureaucratic delays:
I just didnt know if the adoption was going to happen. . . . I also got
caught up in a national holiday. . . . When I set the [visa] appointment,

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the woman said, We have problems with these court adoptions, so we

have to examine them very carefully. So I am sitting in this hotel with
this kid for ten days, all by myself, not knowing what the outcome of the
visa appointment was going to be.

Daniel worried how much hurt he would experience from loving openheartedly a child that might then be wrenched from him. He carried this
worry until he boarded the airplane back home. The fear of possibly losing
his child made their first days together a mix of him wanting to connect more
deeply and maintaining a certain distance as a way of protecting himself from
possible loss.
Participants children also evoked new awareness of their strengths and
limitations as human beings. Below are some excerpts that illuminate how
the fathers in this study described their sons and highlight how their parentchild relationships transformed core aspects of self, especially their working
definitions of what it means to be a gay man, a partner, and a family:
Ive gotten exactly what I wanted. . . . The love and your unconditional
love, and the stares and the wanting you and the affection and the kind,
cute little things he says that just light up your world. You cannot replace
it. Or just an unconditional, I love you so much, Daddy, then on to
playing with the next toy. . . . He has changed our perspective on the
world and on our ability to love; it is all good. (Barry Hanson)
I have a very good friend who lives in Santa Fe; she and her husband
do not have children. Prior to any kid coming home, we spent our time
traveling and eating meals at fancy restaurants. When we visited them,
she was taken aback by the fact that my goal of our visit to Santa Fe
was not to go see this pueblo or this pottery or art gallery or dine at this
restaurant. I wanted to spend my time with Dylan. . . . My focus changed
to where is the nearest playground and/or where is the nearest childrens
museum? (Derek Olsen)

The above excerpts illustrate how for Barry and Derek, parenting has
shifted their focus in life. Their narratives illustrate the transformative and
restorative power of fathering as focused on the experience of giving and
receiving love within the awe-inspiring relational responsibility of caring for
a dependent child. Barry Hansons description of fathering being everything
he wanted it to be highlights the unconditional love he gave to and received
from his son. While many parents report these transformations of priorities,
the arduous path these men traveled to father against the grain of social
prohibitions make these testimonies to the joy of ordinary love in everyday
parenting particularly poignant.

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Redefining Gay Masculinity

From participants narratives of childhood, we learned that they had to construct gender identities in the context of relational and institutionalized socialization processes that defined power, sex roles, and division of labor
consistent with the dominant gender order of the American family of the
1950s and 1960s. The ways in which these men described their family-oforigin relationships illuminates the multiple sources they used to position
themselves against and in relation to the dominant gender order of the time.
When reflecting on their early developmental histories in relation to the
evolution of their desire to father, participants described relationships with
caretakers, primarily mothers, as loving resources for their own parenting.
Early experiences as caretakers of younger children (e.g., babysitting, caring
for siblings) also helped participants incorporate nurturing as an emotionally rewarding dimension of masculinity that would later find expression in
fathering. Early caretaking experiences of love both given and received also
offered participants internal working models of close relationships in which
polarized gender roles casting homosexuality and fathering in opposition
were no longer the dominant feature.
A dominant theme in participants narrative was how fathering catalyzed
reconstructing their personal definitions of gay identity. When asked how
parenting had changed their gay identities, their responses varied from I
could chop my penis right off, signaling a total relegation of gay identity,
to It didnt change my gay identity, communicating this participants insistence that his fathering had been part of his gay identity all along. And yet,
participants narratives expressed the ways parenting proved to be a powerful organizer in their everyday lives and parentings deeper meanings in
reframing gender-identity projects. For all the fathers in this study, parenting
had transformed their lifestyles, organized their personal and professional
priorities, and shifted their overall definitions of themselves as homosexual men. Their fathering self emerged as the new epicenter of their gay
masculinity.
Bryce Woods narrative provided a blunt, humorous, and profoundly
insightful account of the shifts in identity he experienced when he became
a father:

I could chop my penis right off. [Laughs] I am just kidding. I am a parent

first and then I am a gay man. What separated me as a gay man was that
I was gay and a man. Gay came first, and everything else was second.
Same thing in the gay community. I am a gay man, but father jumped in
front of that. . . . We are parents first. . . . When you are a parent, the fact
that you are gay becomes less significant. Now that you are a parent, you
have one more thing in common with your neighbors and your sexuality
is less significant.

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Similarly, Barry Hanson described how parenting had transformed his gay
identity:

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When you have a child, things change and people perceive you differently. You are less a gay man; your sexuality really doesnt matter
anymore. We are parents now, and thats what defines us. Before we
were these two gay guys who would go out to the clubs, and now we
are parents first and foremost, and the rest is really irrelevant.

Bryces and Barrys narratives indicate that fathering has had a significant
effect on how they perceived themselves as gay men. Parenting relegated
their gay identity to the background. They both spoke about how their gay
masculinity and the expression of their sexuality had shifted. They now
moved in the world primarily as parents rather than gay men. They believed
that this shift in how others perceived them afforded them a new social
standing in their community and also gave them an opportunity to expand
their personal and relational lives. Bryce and Barry were also aware that
parenting diminished their connection to the gay community. Although they
could acknowledge some of the advantages of being childless, they both
welcomed the shift in focus and priority that came from having a child:
Its very nice to take the focus off me and the focus off us, to a certain
extent. In other ways there are times I miss being more involved with
the gay community. I still have very good friends in the [name of gay
organization] who make efforts to include us, and thats enough for me.
I still wish I went to the gym more, and all of those things a little bit
more, but I like being a father. I think it will be more and more fun, and
more and more work, as Benjamin gets older. And in other ways it will
be easier when he is older to bring some of those other elements back
into my life. (Bryce Woods)
I was a little obsessed with my body and the way it looked and keeping
up appearances. All that really has gotten so much less important to me
because I have a little guy whos just absolutely in love, were both in
love with each other, and theres nothing like that. . . . While I still feel its
important to be in good shape, its not an overriding focus. The emotion
you have and the love you have for your child, it just felt good, and I
felt like for the first time I didnt have to be Mr. Buff because hes going
to love me no matter what. . . . Now being in shape its because I really
want to be healthy for my family and myself. So its a totally different
mind-set. (Barry Hanson)

Barrys narrative illustrates some of the changes in the self-definitions

of being gay. The love he felt for his son, and the knowledge that his
son loved him regardless of his appearance, freed him from having to be
Mr. Buff. Other participants also felt that fathering offered an opportunity

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to live a less superficial life. Their narratives suggest that their definitions of
what it means to be gay shifted from more external (e.g., being in top physical
shape, career success) to more relational (e.g., being more emotionally connected) and generative (e.g., contributing to social change) sources of meaning and validation. Arthur Farrow, who characterized himself as a jaded old
queen, also rejected the superficial focus he attributed to the gay experience:
I have been part of the gay experience, but it is a little sad when I look at
a guy at the gym who is 43 years old, who works out every single night
for 2 or 3 hours fighting desperately to maintain the abdomen of a 28year-old. There is something missing from that guys experience. . . . We
started off as gay people being different and more eclectic than everyone
else. Then you see these really deep grooves of behavior: If you are gay,
you ought to be able to bench press, wear certain kind of clothes, and go
to certain type of restaurants. Weve become what we set out to distance
ourselves fromvery predictable, very codified. We are basically two
gay men with a baby. We are still gay, but we are less gay in some
ways. Its Gay Pride [event] right now, and we have not gone to any of
the activities. I think in some ways people have seen the evolution of
the gay movement from the gay liberation movement to the free love
years of the early 80s. Then, there was the tragedy around AIDS, and the
political entrenchment and empowerment of the gay political elite. Then,
there was a concern about assimilation, and now we are sort of in this
post-gay modern world where people are making parenting decisions.

The shift from self-focus to other-focus was a dominant theme in all of

these narratives. From a broader perspective, this change represents a normal developmental process of parenthood for both gay and nongay parents
(Demo & Cox, 2000). For Arthur, Bryce, and Barry, however, the meaning
they ascribed to their fathering role changed dramatically how they understood and enacted their homosexual masculinity. Perhaps, more importantly,
they all had contrasted their new understanding of themselves as gay men
against the stereotypical image of gay men and gay lifestyle as primarily
hedonistic and self-focused.
For some of the other participants in this study, the transformations they
experienced in their gay masculinity vis-`a-vis their fathering role were less
dramatic but equally compelling. Avi Pearson, for example, explained how
he now lives in a world of straight women and toddlers:
I never had tons of gay friends, nor exclusively befriended gay people.
I think that it is common that gay guys will have all gay friends at a
certain point in their lives. I never did that. My life is made up more
than anything of straight women and two-year-olds. That iswho I hang
around with and see every day. I may be the different one from this
group of people, so its a very unusual kind of existence, but I like it. . . .

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I do like to have relationships with other gay fathers, too. I work on

building relationships with gay fathers. Its just easier with the women
because they are there all the time.

For Avi, being surrounded by straight women was not a big change
from his life as a gay man prior to parenting. In many ways, his ability to
be comfortable as the only father in a mothering world is partly related to
his being a gay man. However, Avis narrative also indicates that he, too,
rejected the stereotypical image of a gay man living in ghettos and interacting
only minimally with the larger culture. Like Avi, many of the participants in
this study discovered that the closet or other previously accepted forms of
shelter from social oppression, including internalized oppression, were no
longer acceptable.
Even Daniel Koska, the one father in this study who believed that parenting had not changed his gay identity, described having a gay identity
different from the stereotypical image of the gay man who is focused on
clubbing and fashion:
It didnt change my gay identity. I am a person. Stop all that nonsense
with gay this and gay that. As a gay man, it didnt change me. Before
Dylan came, we didnt go out to gay bars. We didnt do any clubbing.
We went to restaurants; we went to plays; we saw movies. We were just
two people sharing a life together. Thats the way I view it. So a gay
identity, if you will, didnt change after becoming a parent.

For all of these men, fathering was a catalyst for reconstructing and
enacting a different kind of masculinity. Whether their definitions changed
dramatically or only minimally, they all had a new perspective now that they
were parents. Their roles as fathers and their immersion in a mostly straight
parenting world gave them greater perspective in regarding the gay world
from an alternative standpoint as a referent for their gender-identity projects.
Some of them spoke passionately about how fathering was a relief from the
superficial focus of stereotypically gay white culture.

Coming Out (Revisited)

Another dominant theme in their stories was that being fathers required them
to disclose their sexual orientation and be out in the world as openly gay
men in a very different manner than before they had children. For these
fathers, parenting catapulted them to re-experience a second coming out,
which required them to confront internalized homophobia:
We are less connected (now) to the gay experience but we are more
out there as gay people in a largely straight world. . . . You cant go

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to a school, you cant go to a day camp, you cant do any kind of

sporting team meeting, you cant do any of the things as a parent without
coming out. Its fine, but it takes a little bit of getting used to because as
privileged white men, we can hide our gayness if we want to as business
professionals or a guy in the gym or whatever, but you cannot do it with
children. (Arthur Farrow)

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The above narrative suggests that participants no longer had the choice
to disclose their sexual orientation as they did prior to becoming fathers.
Parenting forced them to expand and engage in a broader number of settings
that were not part of their experience as childless gay men. In conducting
day-to-day parenting, they felt challenged to disclose their gay identity:
There was an instance that made me feel uncomfortable when we were
doing interviews for our last au pair. We interviewed an applicant from
Germany that was very interested in the position. . . . We opened the
conversation, and the first thing we said was that we were a nontraditional
family, we are two dads, and we have a son that was adopted. We agreed
to call her the next day with our decision, and when we called, her
mother took the call and said: I am sorry, we have nothing against you
personally, but we are not comfortable with our daughter living in that
environment. (Carl Rigazio)
The kids in school say, Edgar, your dad is here. And they say it to
both of us, and even correct themselves: Thats not his daddy, thats his
papa. I think that the idea is because we have been visible, and the
hope would be that these types of things where Edgar has two dads is a
non-event, is a given. (Eben Upshaw)

Regardless of the degree of acceptance from their social networks, they

all spoke about having to come out as a necessary aspect of parenting. Many
of the participants said to remain silent about their family felt unauthentic
and, ultimately, detrimental to their children. These fathers found that the
preservation of their privacy or privilege as white men, which some of
them had safeguarded in some areas of their lives, no longer offered a
comfortable or even acceptable privacy. As their inner and outer worlds
became deeply intertwined with their loving attachment to their sons, they
became acutely aware of the ways concealing their identities as gay fathers
required monitoring and restraining their sense of presence as fathers and
the presence of their children as compelling, immediate members of their
lived experience:
Usually, its inevitable that people find out that I am gay. I reveal that
fairly early on, but not at the beginning. . . . However, if you have a child,
you have to. . . . If you engage with people, strangers, or just casual

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85

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acquaintances about your child, they are going to make some false assumptions about your relationship. And so I am called upon, I feel, to be
much more straightforward and honest rather than let a comment slip or
let somebody to continue to misunderstand my relationship. I feel, out of
an obligation to [my son], to never equivocate. Not to ever want to look
like there is some sort of issue about being totally out. (Arthur Farrow)

The ongoing process of having to come out as gay men to clarify assumptions as well as validate their family structure was now central to participants sense of self. Their narratives also suggested that they chose to
disclose their sexual orientations proactively because they felt it was part of
their caretaking roles. As their love for their children transformed their sense
of self and family, they had a keen awareness of the nurturing atmosphere
they wanted for their child and their responsibility to create that environment through the courage of their everyday acts. To fail to challenge faulty
assumptions that community members made about their family was to send
a message to their children that they were not as valued as their heterosexual
counterparts. Participants felt that coming out offered them an opportunity
to model to their children a sense of pride and self-acceptance.
The text (and subtext) of many of the participants narratives indicate
that coming out in the context of being fathers began to transform their
identity as gay men and their perceptions about gay life. These men now
inhabited a world of parenting that was traditionally heterosexual, and this
new social position gave them a different perspective on gay culture and on
being a man. Arthur Farrow, for example, explained how it was not until he
became a father that he really came out, because having a child prevented
him from hiding in a gay community of support. He now had to interact
with the larger community as an openly gay man:
I worked for [name of politician] and we were dealing with a lot of
political issues. I had to deal with Queer Nation, which was going to
plan a march in the Saint Patricks Day parade. I was trying to get people
to have rational ideas about what they were going to do, and I was
thinking to myself all the time, Its so easy for people to move into a
city like I did, leave family and friends behind, go to college, come out,
move to a big city and then be out. Well, you are not really out, because
you are closeted when you go home for Christmas. You never dream
of going home and asking your friends and relatives for donations to
the AIDS walk or go home and talk about Gay Pride. All that stuff that
people talk about being out isnt real if its only in their own little world,
in the gay enclave in the big city.

Arthur Farrows passionate statement that many gay people hide in the
ghettos and enclaves of big cities while they remain closeted with their
extended families and the larger heterosexual community reflects both his

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J. C. Armesto and E. R. Shapiro

frustration with having experienced that aspect of being gay and his relief
at no longer requiring different spaces of safety within which to practice
homosexual masculinityconstantly monitoring contexts to evaluate how
far out he could safely emerge. Now, the compelling need to be himself
wholly gave him and others the courage to be themselves as fathers and
gay men. As these men described that experience, coming out as gay fathers
required releasing their long-held sense of vigilance in new spaces. It also
required a willingness to confront the curiosity, ignorance, and potentially
dangerous hatred of others, rather than seek the safety of dont ask, dont
tell and other variants of the oppressive constraints of the dominant gender
order. Arthurs passage also reflects the different layers of the coming-out
process that gay men experience.
For many of the participants, fathering also carried the liberating potential to integrate into the larger straight community. They were more out as
gay men but, paradoxically, fathering also afforded them a level of social
equality and privilege that they did not have prior to being parents:
I am working with a colleague who is gay, and we are in an environment
where the conversation inevitably turns to children, and I have something
to say. . . . I never felt that if I was in that environment and didnt have
a child, I would feel less than, but it certainly works to the fact that we
do assimilate more into mainstream life because of the children. (Ervin
Malone)
There is this whole other world that we can now tap into. You can talk
about your kids; you can be happier for people when you hear they are
having a kid; you can be truly more interested when people talk about
their family and what they are doing. You get plugged in a lot more
ways and in more significant ways to everybody else around you . . . the
word from the lefty part of the movement was that we are becoming
assimilated. We are not really assimilating necessarily, but we are just
relating better to everybody else. (Arthur Farrow)

Ervin Malone described how fathering helped him assimilate into mainstream life. Arthur Farrow, instead, rejected the notion that he was assimilating and simply described how fathering allowed him to relate better to
everybody else. Both of these men, as well as several of the other participants, understood that fathering afforded them a different social status. As
fathers with their insider knowledge of a world filled with daily frustrations
and replenished rewards, they could join the societal archetype that values
child-parent bonds in a very spontaneous way with other parents. With humor, Arthur Farrow also described the potential loss involved in being a
father who had crossed a border linking him with the larger heterosexual
community, implying that his son may ultimately not connect with meaningful aspects of the gay experience.

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87

You know that kids who are raised in immigrant households, and their
parents, feel very strongly about assimilating; they dont speak their native
tongue, so here is what I am thinking. Someday in the distant future some
kids will ask Alexis or children of gay parents, Do you guys know camp
humor? And every kid will say, No, that was never spoken in our
house. [Laughs]

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Although fathering has both required and empowered these men to be

more open about their gay identity, it has also challenged them to negotiate
different levels of oppression. The Hanson-Woods family offered an example
of traveling to South Beach with their son and feeling very uncomfortable as
a gay family, despite being in a well-known gay community.
Bryce Woods: The one sort of negative experience that we had was in
Miami on Lincoln Road where people who saw us with a child knew
that we were gay in one of the gayest places in this country, and people
would give us dirty looks and a couple of people actually commented
and said, Thats disgusting.
Barry Hanson: It was really upsetting . . . literally in a two-hour time frame
we got more discrimination thrown at us than we had in our entire
lives!
Bryce Woods: You could feel it from several people, and it was bizarre.
I havent felt that at all from people here. . . . I walk a lot on the beach
in the summer and people say: How nice you get to stay home with
your daddy and your mommy works, because they just assume. And
I say: Thats nice, but he actually has two daddies; his other daddy
is working, and they go, Oh, oh, oh. It would take them three
or four ohs to fully digest what was going on and then just roll
with it. . . .

Bryce and Barrys excerpt illustrates some of the challenges of being out
as a gay family. Their narratives convey how they felt unsafe even within
the presumed safety of a gay community. A complete stranger labeled their
family disgusting. Their conversation also highlights how they wanted to
convey that this was an isolated experience and that being gay fathers has
been mostly positive. Their appreciation for how open Americans can be
and how we do not give people enough credit speaks to the many positive
experiences they have had.
Derek Olsen was the one participant who felt that he had to hide
his family because the senior partners in his law firm did not approve of
gay men adopting. Becoming a father highlighted his homosexual identity
and ultimately resulted in him being fired. Dereks narrative illustrates his
frustration of having to keep his family life hidden.

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J. C. Armesto and E. R. Shapiro

Derek: I was resentful that I felt as though I had to hide my family. I was
also anticipating resentment with having to say, I am sorry I cant go
because my kid is in a play and I want to go. I guess I anticipated
resentment.
Researcher: You think that heterosexual parents have a different experience in that law firm?
Derek: Yeah. I think that it would be a bit more understandable from
some senior partners, but there is this whole gay thing about raising
kids. They think it should not be. So if it should not be, why on earth
would he need to leave?

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Researcher: Did people know you were adopting?

Derek: I didnt think it was going to be like this because my peers threw
a big shower for me. It was a surprise shower, and everyone brought
gifts and it was very nice. It wasnt until a year later that I started
noticing a change from the senior partners. You could see the way
they were funneling work, making sure that I was not being properly
trained to be an effective attorney.

Parenting has been a bittersweet experience for Derek vis-`a-vis his professional life. As a single gay man he was able to maintain sufficient distance
between his professional and private lives. Having a child, however, magnified his homosexuality in a manner that the senior partners in his law firm
could no longer ignore. Professionally, they marginalized him and made sure
he did not have partnership preparation. He was eventually fired. This experience made Derek very cautious about disclosing his sexual orientation at a
future workplace. He also learned that his career goals did not accommodate
family life in a balanced manner. He was motivated to have a less demanding
job that would afford him a healthier balance between professional life and
home life.
These fathers narratives suggest that parenting was a major developmental transition that required disclosing their homosexual identity. Interestingly, their narratives also suggest that in this second coming-out process
precipitated by their adoptive fathering (versus when they first came out as
gay men), coming out offered them an opportunity to be more secure in
their homosexual masculinity, feel more connected to the larger community,
and liberate themselves from the limiting definitions of what it means to be
a man, homosexual, and a father in our culture.

CONCLUSIONS
Participants narratives suggest that parenting, particularly the loving attachments to a son, changed their personal and relational understanding of being

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gay. Findings from this study indicate that fathering catalyzed participants
crafting new definitions of homosexual masculinity that emphasized relational and generative aspects of self. Specifically, fathering catapulted participants to redefine homosexual masculinity using fewer external referents,
such as personal attractiveness or an active social life. Participants also shifted
their sense of membership in the gay community, partly because their community of reference became other parents of young children, and partly in
response to their perception that the gay community regarded their fathering
ambivalently and with mixed support. Participants refocused their definitions
of a gendered self to prioritize fathering within a committed relationship and
fostering emotional ties to child and partner. Ultimately, the meaning that
participants ascribed to their fathering role dramatically changed how they
understood and enacted their homosexual masculinity.
Participants specifically described fathering as a relief from the superficial focus of stereotypical gay white culture; contrasting their new understanding of homosexual masculinity against cultural images of gay lifestyle
as primarily hedonistic and self-focused. They described being less gay to
emphasize fathering as a salient dimension of their new gay masculinity.
Many participants also identified fathering by gay men as an important next
step within a larger socio-political gay liberation movement. Participants
narratives suggest that fathering offered them an opportunity to express aspects of their gendered selves that had been disavowed within as well as
outside the gay community. Participants saw themselves as pioneers in modeling more expansive definitions of gayness for a new generation of gay
men.
As noted in the introduction, a great deal of the research on gay fathers
has focused on men who came out in the context of straight relationships.
For these men, redefining their sexuality often meant losing their families.
In contrast, these participants narratives suggest that fathering carried the
liberatory potential of reintegrating into the larger community. Participants
described being more out as gay men. Yet, paradoxically, fathering afforded
them greater levels of social equality and privilege. The common experience
of child rearing offered these fathers an opportunity to connect with their heterosexual counterparts in a manner that was not available, or needed, prior
to being parents. They no longer could afford to hide within the confines of
a supportive gay community, albeit one that supported homosexuality but
not gay fathering.
Fathering offered new developmental opportunities to challenge internalized oppression and redefine and expand the territory of socially acceptable love. Motivated by a commitment to offer their sons a healthy environment, participants challenged long-held assumptions about being gay.
Fathering catapulted them into a second coming-out process that helped
them shed more layers of internalized oppression. Their narratives suggest
that their loving attachments to their sons were the primary motivator for no

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longer hiding core aspects of self. For these men, being out as gay fathers
helped them clarify assumptions others made of them, validate and honor
their family, and model to their children a sense of pride and self-acceptance.

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Limitations and Suggestions for Future Research

This research employed a narrative study of lives informed by ethnographic
observations and interpretations that recognize the social science prejudices
against gay men. This methodology was used because it focuses on restoring voice to members of socially devalued communities and highlights the
process by which gay fathers creatively resist and liberate themselves from
compulsory heterosexuality. In taking a principled political and ethical position on the human rights of gay men, we located this research within
emancipatory disciplines including feminist, critical race, and postcolonial
studies (Lugones, 2003; Naples, 2003) that problematize social/cultural assumptions designed to subjugate oppressed groups. When combined with
narrative life study methods, these emancipatory research models seek to
combine open-ended narrative and intersubjective dialogic methods to create new spaces for understanding experience. While these approaches can
be accused of introducing new forms of researcher bias and do not eliminate
the need for scrupulous critical inquiry and self-questioning, they do promote, at least, a first step in counterbalancing decades of collusion between
the social sciences and a heterosexist society.
Given the small sample size, findings from this study do not reflect
the diversity of all adoptive gay families. Participants in this study were all
volunteers eager to talk openly about their journey to fatherhood over several
in-depth sessions to an interviewer (first author) whom they knew shared
their experience of adoptive gay fathering. Their decision to participate in
this time-consuming study is a source of possible bias as it may reflect a level
of motivation associated with successfully negotiating becoming a father. Gay
men who have had less successful parenting experiences, or who are not as
invested in their fathering roles, may have been less willing to participate in
this study. Survey research may prove more useful in accessing less motivated
populations.
In this research, we set out to challenge both the assumptions of a
dominant, androcentric white perspective in the psychology literature as well
as the methods employed in studying non-dominant families. However, this
study ultimately represents the voices of white, well-educated, and uppermiddle- to upper-class men. Furthermore, within the multiple themes of
each of the participants narratives, we focused primarily on strength and
resilience. Our goal was to understand the struggle of defining a complex
homosexual masculinity within a heterosexist culture. This focus, however,
may have overshadowed the important social realities that being white, male,
and affluent offers a position of privilege not available to many in our culture.

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For this early stage of qualitative research, selecting a homogenous

group of participants offered the advantage of limiting potential complexity
and diversity, which permitted a more focused thematic analysis. However,
for future research, it will be important to include fathering experiences
of gay men from other socioeconomic, racial, and cultural backgrounds.
The narratives of diverse gay fathers will illuminate different dimensions of
gay parenting. For example, work in feminist research and intersectionality
(Pryse, 2000) suggests that intersecting oppressions can amplify the impact
of social inequality in ways that have been understudied due to assumptions
of a dominant white perspective found in both feminist and gay studies
literature.
This study was part of an emergent area of research on gay families
that offered the opportunity to shed light on gay mens pioneering work
creating new masculinities and transforming family life. Understanding how
gay fathers negotiate the entrapments of oppression from within as well as
outside the margins of our society is another promising area of emancipatory
and liberation research.

NOTE
1. The authors do not report the race, ethnicity, and nationality of participants children because
participants requested to keep this information confidential for fear that it may prevent other gay men
from adopting internationally.

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