Gay Parents Tell How They Handle the Child-Rearing Challenge

From the time he was a boy growing up in North Dakota, Adam St. James of Anaheim always expected that he would be a father someday. That was also what was expected of him.

“I grew up in a traditional kind of Midwestern family,” he says, “where the expectation was that I would grow up, get married, have a career and live the American dream.”

So he went to college and became a computer programmer. At 26, he married the woman he loved. Four years later, his wife gave birth to a daughter.

Then something unexpected happened. Happy as he was with the life he had built, St. James had known for years that something was not quite right. Finally, six years ago, he figured out what it was. For the first time, at age 38, St. James acknowledged to himself and the rest of the world that he is gay.

On some inner level, St. James says, “I’ve been aware of it all my life. But when I was growing up, I didn’t even know what gay was. I was in my late 30s before I realized I could talk about it to anyone.

“The hardest part was to realize after all those years that I had put myself and others through so much pain and anguish to get to a place I could have been at when I was 15.”

There was one consolation: “If my life hadn’t happened the way it did,” he says, “I wouldn’t have had my daughter. And I can’t imagine what my life would be like without her.”

Most of us tend not to think of gay men and women as parents. But many of them do have children.

“There’s a surprisingly large number of gay men who are fathers,” St. James says. “A few months ago I was with a group of 30 (gay) guys, and we started talking about it. Twenty-seven had been married, and we had 47 children” altogether.

“I’d say more of my gay and lesbian friends have children than don’t,” says Megan Ross, administrator of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Garden Grove. “But I guess it’s just like that out in the straight world. If you have kids, you tend to hang around other people who have kids.”

For the most part, life for these alternative families is pretty much the same as it is for other county families. Although some gay parents must worry about what the neighbors think, go through bitter battles with former spouses or face rejection from their own extended families, “not everybody has a nightmare,” Ross says.

“The straight world tends to disbelieve that (gay parents) exist,” St. James says. “Or they think you can’t be a good parent.”

Ross, who lives in Fountain Valley, discovered her sexual orientation early. “I’ve known I was a lesbian since I was in the fourth grade,” says Ross, 46. “I didn’t know there was any name for it, but I knew that’s what I was.”

She knew, also, that someday she wanted to have children. “So I married a gay man. He had been in the Marine Corps, and I wanted to get to know him, and find out why he was different too. Neither of us had had hardly any experience with the opposite sex, but we became really close friends. Then he suggested that we ought to get married because that would satisfy his family and mine.”

The couple had two daughters, then separated. “I haven’t seen him since,” Ross says.

The parting was amicable, Ross says; it was agreed from the beginning that the children would be her responsibility.

“He really wasn’t interested (in being a parent). But I always wanted to be a mother. I just never wanted to be a wife.”

Ross is now not only a mother but a grandmother. Her older daughter, now 28, is married and the mother of two children.

Ross and St. James are open about their homosexuality with their children, neighbors and co-workers.

But Lauren and Elizabeth, who also live in Orange County, believe that they can’t be so open, for their children’s sake as well as their own. They agreed to talk about their situation only if their real names are not used.

Lauren already had a daughter by the time she and Elizabeth got together 16 years ago. Like St. James, she did not realize that she was gay until after she was married.

She and Elizabeth functioned as partners to care for Lauren’s daughter, now grown, but Elizabeth always wanted to be a mother herself.

“After we were together about five years, we decided to have a child,” Lauren says.

Elizabeth went to a gynecologist for what the couple prefer to call “assisted insemination.”

“The word artificial makes it seem unnatural or something,” Elizabeth said.

They considered asking someone they knew to be the father but ultimately decided that it would be simpler to use an anonymous donor. “The doctor told me it would probably take about six months,” Elizabeth says, “but I got pregnant the first time.”

Lauren was closely involved in the pregnancy, listening to the baby’s heartbeat, attending childbirth classes and serving as Elizabeth’s labor coach.

Elizabeth’s daughter is now in elementary school. Years ago, after noticing that her playmates’ families are different, she asked about her father.

“I told her there were several ways to get pregnant, that the father could plant the seed, or the boyfriend could plant the seed--I didn’t want her to think you had to be married--or there was a special way that a lot of people don’t know about where the doctor could plant the seed,” Elizabeth says.

“I told her that’s how I had her, and that she was special and wanted.”

“I really can’t think of any curiosity that (she) has had about it,” Lauren says. “With adopted children, they may wonder, ‘Why didn’t my mother and father want me?’ But (our daughter) doesn’t have that.”

St. James is still married, although he and his wife have been separated for more than five years. “It was really painful for both of us,” he says. “But we’ve more or less worked it out. I don’t think she’s happy about it, but we get along well. We help each other and take care of each other.”

After revealing his homosexuality to his wife, St. James felt he had to tell his daughter, then 8.

“I took her for a ride and tried to explain it to her,” he says. “I told her that some families had two parents, one male and one female, and they loved each other and took care of each other. But there are other kinds of families, and some of them have two men instead.

“She understood, and she didn’t seem at all disturbed,” St. James says. “She asked me two questions. She wanted to know whether I was going to stop being her daddy, and when she was satisfied that I was not, her only other question was whether or not she could tell her friends.”

Although St. James is generally open about being gay, he cautioned his daughter that “you have to be real careful (about whom) you tell this to.”

“I don’t think it’s made her life more difficult,” he says. “I think it’s made her much more aware of how difficult life is for gay people.”

St. James’ daughter lives with her mother in south Orange County; he visits her there frequently.

“I never considered trying to get custody,” he says. “She’s a girl, for one thing. If she were a boy, maybe, but in any case I don’t know how much confidence I have in my ability to raise a child. I was raised to be a straight man, but that’s not what I was. Everything I learned turns out to have been false for me.

“I guess the only wish I’ve ever had is that I could have been a better father to her. But I guess all fathers wish that, whether they’re straight or gay.”

“We’re very open with our kids,” Elizabeth says. “And they’re both open with us.”

Lauren adds: “We have friends who don’t tell their kids, who sleep in separate rooms and then switch at midnight. But we’re really not ashamed of it.”

“I think it has really been an enhancement of my children’s lives,” Ross says. “They have friends of every nationality and walk of life. They were raised to be open-minded.”