Making an Effort Toward Equal Parenting
Written by a gay man, ‘The Equal Parent’ is about gender-inclusive parenting attitudes
The Equal Parent: How Sharing the Load Helps the Whole Family Thrive, published last month by Paul Morgan-Bentley, describes his experiences as a gay man parenting a baby.
Paul and his husband, Robin, live outside London. They created embryos using Robin’s sperm and an egg from an anonymous donor, and they hired a surrogate birthmother through an agency.
(Who has parental responsibility and parental rights in the UK in such a surrogacy arrangement? In this case, although their son’s birth certificate identified his parents as the surrogate and her husband, this was superseded by a parental order at court.)
Paul and Robin enjoyed skin-to-skin contact with their son, Solly, immediately after his birth and “were both off work with him together for the first six weeks of his life and then Robin took over for most of the second half of the year.” They took turns waking up at night and generally try to take equal responsibility for parenting. It took lots of energy. (“One of Solly’s first words was ‘running’.”) The nursery has both of their phone numbers, and “if they cannot get hold of the dad they called first, they try the other one.”
