The Life of Dad

by Anna Machin

  So, the biological dad is but one solution to the need for a father in a child’s life. While not many societies follow the Aché’s lead and extol the virtues of multiple fathers, many do follow traditions that mean the single father of a child is as likely to be a social father as a biological one. And in these societies, and many others like them, a biological father will step aside – willingly or by force – because it is for the good of his child and, ultimately, his genes. So, the biological dads of the Nāyar tribe are content to see their role given to someone else because they know that, in this strongly matriarchal society, their children will have a better chance of survival and success within their mother’s family than within their own. They will give up the opportunity to be involved in their children’s lives and cede their role to the children’s maternal uncles because they know that, by doing this, their children will have access to all the financial and political resources necessary to ensure their success in the deeply stratified world of Indian society.

  The fathering practices of the Nāyar and Aché encompass the idea that a father can be many things, even many people, during a child’s lifetime. Ultimately, what is important is not biological relatedness, rather that a father figure is present to ensure the child’s survival. But such practices are not solely the preserve of distant tribes.

  We are as likely to find a social father in the West as we are within the forests of Paraguay or the expanses of India – we simply call them by a different name. If you were to ask a South African child to reflect on their father, what would quickly become apparent is that while they talk repeatedly about their father being present, being there for them, they are not necessarily referring to their biological father. In their study of black South African fathers, Kopano Ratele, Tamara Shefer and Lindsay Clowes of the University of the Western Cape report that adult children had a very clear picture of who a father was, but it was not bound by biological relatedness or the Western concept of the nuclear family. The extended family is key. Indeed, it is the tradition that biological fathers are more often than not absent for long periods from the family home, fulfilling their role as breadwinner; caring and nurturing the child and being a role model and teacher is the responsibility of the grandfathers, uncles and male members of the community. This is not a short-term solution to a short-lived jobs shortage but the norm – when today’s fathers become grandfathers, they will in turn assist their sons by raising their grandchildren. And for the children of these families, such an arrangement is often seen as ideal – they have the support of a whole raft of players whose importance may grow or recede depending upon the child’s changing needs. For many, this is an advantage as compared to depending solely on a single biological father, as different fathers bring different skills to the table. In recent years, much has been said about the crisis of family within South Africa, a crisis that is driven in part, many argue, by a culture of absent biological fathers. But as Ratele and her colleagues put it, if we step outside our restricted concept of the father and family for one minute, we can see that many South African children do have a father present. In fact, they have a whole team.

  In many cases, the non-nuclear family arrangements highlighted by these non-Western and newly industrialized examples are centuries old and are of interest precisely because they sit in stark contrast to our focus on biological parenting in the West. However, today in the UK a father may not be genetically related to his child for several reasons, including as a consequence of infertility, leading to the need for donor sperm, or because he has adopted his child or because he makes up one half of a gay couple who want to become fathers. The child of a lesbian couple who have chosen to co-parent with a gay sperm donor and his partner may have both a biological mother and father and a social mother and father. It is wonderful that changes in science and society have enabled men who in the past couldn’t conceive of being fathers to fulfil long-held dreams to parent and become dads. But while all fathers can experience the transition to fatherhood as a journey beset by a myriad number of challenges and delights, for social fathers an additional challenge presents itself – how to assert their identity as a dad in a society that is still determined to champion the supremacy of the biological father above all others.

  Before 2005, children born via donor insemination (DI) in the UK were not entitled to know anything about the identity of their biological father, and all donations made to sperm banks were anonymized. Authorities conceived of this rule because it was felt that the absolute priority throughout this process of assisted fertility must be to protect the integrity of the nuclear family and the man’s role as father at its head. It is not an exaggeration to state that the belief was that society was founded on the bedrock of the nuclear family, and allowing the identity of the donor to be known would undermine the position of the social father within the family. If the possibility were to exist that the sperm donor may materialize and move from the abstract to the real at some point in the future, then the functioning of the family would be continually compromised by the threatening presence of this shadowy ‘third parent’. Fathers of children born by DI would know that their child or children were not biologically related to them, but they could come to terms with this reality in the knowledge that they were the sole identifiable father figure and, if they chose, present this scenario to both their child and the wider world. However, with the increase in understanding of genetic inheritance and the acknowledgement that children born by DI have the right to know what their genes may have in store for them, particularly with respect to congenital illness, the law was changed whereby any child born by DI after 1 April 2005 has the right to access information about their biological father at the age of eighteen.

  Such a change in the law has meant that both the individual and society have had to grapple with the fact that the role of the father may not rest with one man but be split between the absent biogenetic father and the nurturing, and present, social father. Other societies may have embraced, and extended, this idea long ago, but for us in the West, required to dismantle centuries of ideology regarding the nuclear family, such a change in outlook has not necessarily come easily. At the level of the family, the fathers of DI children, who must confront this challenge on a daily basis, have tackled this new reality in a range of ways. In their study of the fathers of DI children in New Zealand, associate professor Victoria Grace and her colleagues from the Department of Gender Studies at Canterbury University encountered a considerable ambivalence with respect to the donor. On the one hand, fathers were grateful for the donor’s altruistic act, but on the other their continued presence led them to be characterized as a threat. For many fathers, the route out of this tension was to deny the existence of the donor, minimize his contribution or to make only jokey or light-hearted reference to his existence. Grace quotes one father as saying, ‘He’s donated sperm, end of connection’, while another comments, ‘There is no face, there is no personality that goes along with the donor.’

  However, issues do arise when the inevitable discussions about similarity begin. All parents delight in discussions about where their children have inherited their impressive, quirky or downright annoying traits from and, where one of the cohabiting parents is biologically related to the child, such discussions cannot be avoided. For the social fathers in these families, these discussions can be an unwelcome reminder that their partners, male or female, have a genetic connection to their child while they do not. For heterosexual couples, this is a genetic connection that the mother shares with another man. Some families tackle this issue by emphasizing those behaviours that the child has learnt from their social father – the turns of phrase or mannerisms – while others openly acknowledge that the child has gained skills or traits from a third, absent parent, often when the child shows an interest or aptitude for something for which neither parent has ever shown a talent. Indeed, for some couples, the oft-repeated belief that many sperm donors are hard-up medical students is seen as a positive benefit
, increasing the chance of conceiving a clever child. For many couples, a focus on trying to find a donor who shares physical traits with the social father is an attempt to align the child with the non-biological father as closely as is possible in the circumstances – to allow for the suggestion that a genetic relationship does exist between father and child. Social scientist Lucy Frith’s study of non-biological parents in the US found that, beyond ensuring good health, non-biological lesbian mothers identified the donor’s interests as key to their selection, while non-biological fathers prioritized the physical attributes of colouring, build and height. This stark sex difference is perhaps understandable if one considers that while the non-biological social mother cannot hide her lack of genetic relatedness to her child, the non-biological father has the option of attempting to blur the boundaries by aligning himself physically with the child.

  The complex thought processes that the fathers of DI children have to go through to become comfortable with their role as a social rather than biological father is in part because of our discomfort as a society with the idea of splitting the role across two or more individuals. Among the Aché, the Nāyar and the contemporary population of South Africa, the idea of dispersed fatherhood – multiple, social or both – is supported by society as entirely normal, but within the West we do not provide social fathers with such affirmation. It is probably a consequence of individual personality and experience combined with the wishes and opinions of the wider family that determines how a social father in the West navigates his role. At one extreme, fathers are happy to acknowledge the donor and the contribution he has made to the family while, at the other, some dads find acknowledging that someone else had a role in their child’s conception difficult to accept, to the extent that a couple may take the decision not to tell their children about the nature of their conception and deny them full knowledge regarding their origins. Fathers in the latter position often worry that by allowing their child to know their conception story, they may no longer view their social father as their parent or, should biological and social father meet, such a meeting would impact upon the social father’s security in his role as a father in a negative way. Whatever the decision regarding disclosure, it is an undeniable fact that navigating the role of social father in the West, often working against the zeitgeist, is an emotionally and psychologically complex task for which social fathers deserve our empathy, acknowledgement and support.

  In heterosexual couples where artificial insemination has been used, biological and social father exist at a physical distance from each other. However, in gay couples the possibility exists for social and biological dad to live side by side. Further, the fact that only one man can be the biological father of the child means that the act of becoming a gay father is considerably less spontaneous than it is for the vast majority of heterosexual men – there are many choices to be negotiated and decisions to be made. Not only does a suitable surrogate need to be identified – does one employ an agency surrogate or make an informal arrangement with a female friend or lesbian couple? – but the discussion has to occur regarding paternity – will a conscious decision be taken as to who is to be the biological and who the social father, or will the possibility of actively confusing paternity be considered? In her study of gay fathers, Australian social scientist Deborah Dempsey reports several ingenious ways of allowing both fathers to have an equal shot at being the biological dad: couples have employed artificial insemination with mixed sperm; IVF where both men have their sperm injected into separate eggs and both eggs are implanted into the surrogate; and alternating the role of donor each month until the surrogate becomes pregnant. By utilizing these techniques that blur paternity, gay fathers are moving some way towards mirroring the process of heterosexual conception, where the biological material of both parents contributes to the conception of a baby. However, going to these lengths to confuse the identity of the biological father emphasizes that for some gay parents being the biological parent is still seen as the ultimate prize, with the social father being regarded as very much the secondary role. Where it is clear which of the parents is the social father, many gay fathers go to great lengths to ensure that the parenting scales are ‘rebalanced’. In some cases, the social father is listed as the legal father on the birth certificate, while in many cases, even though the couple are aware of the identity of the biological father and the social father, they work hard to keep this information within the couple, even to the extent of not telling the child, to ensure that they are treated equally within the family.

  The fact that gay men have to go outside their partnership to become parents means that the families they create always exist outside the traditional stereotype of mum, dad, 2.4 kids and a Labrador with which our society has been historically more familiar. They are always challenging our assumption that a biological dad is somehow different, superior, to a social dad. Writing in the Journal of Homosexuality, Tor Folger from the University of Bergen in Norway described a family that consisted of five adults and two children. It consisted of a lesbian couple, one of whom was the biological mother, a gay couple, both of whom were social fathers, and a known biological father who did not have any input into the children’s lives but whom the children knew of and could visit if they so desired. Tor’s study subject, Bard, and his partner had chosen not to be biologically involved in the act of conception because they were concerned that this would introduce imbalance into their relationship. By using a sperm donor, their standing within the family was equal; they were both social fathers to their two children. Interestingly, once their child was born their views changed starkly as they realized that the relationship with their children was based on presence and involvement rather than mere genetics; their previous obsession with the standing of the biological father evaporated.

  I never believed blood was thicker than water. I [thought if] I had children, I would adopt. I was quite firm about that in my mind, because I just thought there are enough children in the world. I have never believed that a child has to have your blood . . . [M]y family is horrific and I thought, I’m amazing, [even though] they are horrible, so [blood] doesn’t really matter!

  Noah, dad to Judy (seven)

  The loosening of adoption laws in some countries, enabling gay couples to adopt, has meant there is an increasing number of families in the world whose parenting team does consist of two social fathers. In the US, current figures estimate that 65,500 children had been adopted by gay or lesbian couples by 2015 and the number of gay couples raising adopted children rose from 5 per cent in 1990 to 20 per cent in 2000, a quite colossal and swift increase. Within the UK, since records began in 2006, 2,317 children have been adopted by lesbian, gay or bisexual couples. For the gay fathers I have studied, the decision to adopt has been driven by the belief that genetic relatedness does not trump a relationship based on nurture, care and love, and that the number of children awaiting adoption in the UK makes choosing this route, rather than surrogacy, a bit of a no-brainer; why produce more children when there are so many who need a loving home? Adoption is not an easy route – within the UK, it involves being willing to bare your life and soul to intense scrutiny, attending courses, completing self-reflective and practical assignments and providing evidence that you are a ‘kid’ person. All this before there is even a suitable child anywhere on the horizon, and knowing that you will soon have to start answering the frequently asked question about how your child copes with being raised without the (assumed) practical, steadying hand of a mum. But with all these added challenges and questions, for the adoptive gay fathers I have interviewed, it is the most wonderful and rewarding of experiences. And that’s without a single gene in sight.

  Adrian: I mean, our neighbours do it. ‘Oh, you have done an amazing job.’ And I know they mean she’s a great girl, but there is always this edge of ‘for two men’.

  Noah: It is totally patronizing, and you get that a lot. You get a lot of questions; you get a lot of . . . ‘Who does what?’
And ‘who does . . .?’

  Adrian: ‘Who got the mum role?’

  Noah: Yeah, ‘who got the mum role?’ And Judy gets questioned as well.

  Adrian: And some people are a bit like, ‘Because we know you two men, we thought you would get her and just stick her in a cupboard and hope she grew . . .’ But actually, we have had some ideas about how to raise a child.

  Noah: And we have absolutely loved it. It is the best thing we ever did.

  Noah and Adrian, dads to Judy (seven)

  As this book progresses, I hope you will come to understand the many roles a father can play, the myriad influences he is under as he shapes his role and how vital he is in creating a world in which his child can live, grow and thrive. I hope that if you are reading this as a social father, your experience chimes with those of the fathers I have described here. That, while you may have concerns regarding your lack of genetic relatedness before your child arrives – concerns you should speak freely about with those who are close to you or who have travelled a similar path – once you have got stuck into the daily tasks and experience of being a dad, these concerns will fade away and you will realize that by doing you are a dad. And for many men, the real job of being a dad begins with birth.

  PART THREE

  Birth

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A Father Is Born

  Dads, Birth, Health and Well-being

  A man walks towards a tree, eyes focused firmly on the ground before it. At its base is a pile of firewood. Arranged as a pyramid, the stack of wood is protected by a substantial barrier of thorns. The man crouches by this pile and begins to dig. Once he has dug a small, shallow hole he removes a package wrapped in white linen from his bag. He unwraps the parcel to reveal half a coconut shell. Within the shell is a large, fleshy pink object – a placenta. He places the shell and its contents in the hole and backfills it with soil. Finally, he sets aside the thorns, takes the firewood and builds a fire on top of the shallow grave. He lights it, stands back and watches as the individual sticks catch light and the flames grow. He will leave the fire to burn for a while, but will return regularly night and day to tend to it and ensure it never goes out. After five days he will return, remove the embers and dig the coconut shell and its contents back up. This he will rebury in a site he has selected on the corner of his street, close to his home. He is a new father and the placenta is that of his newborn son.