A better breed of dad

Aspen and Saffron Drewitt-Barlow, the twins fathered by two gay Essex millionaires, could be luckier than they know. For the first ever study of gay dads in Britain suggests that gay men are more committed to caring for their children, and get on better with their children's mothers, than many straight ones.

Barrie Drewitt, 32, and Tony Barlow, 35, last month won the right from the US supreme court to be officially recognised as "parent 1" and "parent 2" of their five-week-old boy and girl twins. Becoming fathers cost them an estimated £200,000 over four years in expenses and legal fees before they eventually succeeded, using their own sperm, a donor egg and an American surrogate mother. Home office officials will rule early next month on whether Aspen and Saffron, who were recently granted temporary entry to Britain, will be allowed to stay.

Before they decide, they may want to look at evidence collated by Dr Gill Dunne, senior research fellow in the gender institute of the London School of Economics. She has produced a study based on interviews with 100 gay fathers and would-be fathers, to be published shortly by the economic and social research council. It suggests not only that gay fathers may be positively choosing to have children and to look after them, but also that their family relationships could be a model for the future.

The experiences of the fathers who contacted Dunne, mostly via email, varied enormously. Some had "come out" as gay, having already fathered children in a heterosexual marriage. Of these, some remained married, while others were divorced but still looked after their children. Some were fostering or adopting children: these foster fathers often had a background in social work, and had been fostering for between eight and 25 years. Younger men in particular were more likely to have children by donating sperm to lesbian couples. They found these mothers either because they were already friends, or through advertisements.

There were also a few men who, like the Essex couple, used surrogates. Sometimes this was done commercially in US states where surrogacy is legal. Others found volunteer surrogates: one man adopted the baby granddaughter of a lesbian friend, while another's sister agreed to carry and hand over a child created with her egg and the sperm of his male partner.

If the conception arrangements were complicated, so too were some of the family homes. Several men lived in families that included their male partner as well as their own wife or ex-wife, and the children. One father lived with two heterosexual women and all their children. One gay man and heterosexual woman with fertility problems have moved in together temporarily so they can have IVF but, once they are parents, plan to live separately, possibly with their own lovers, in the same block of flats or in the same street.

In several cases, the homes were organised around the children - part of a consistent commitment to childcare which saw a quarter of Dunne's sample fathers working under 30 hours a week, and quite a few giving up paid work entirely to be the main carer. One gay man and his ex-wife practised "nesting": their child stayed in the same home all the time, while they took it in turns to spend half the week in the house with her.

Where gay fathers donated sperm or used surrogates, they tended to spend a long time working out the arrangements for looking after their children, says Dunne. If they changed their minds, it was often because they discovered they wanted to be more involved as parents than they had expected. One Bristol man, for example, fathered a child for a lesbian couple in Brighton. He had anticipated being a "kindly uncle", visiting every few months. Instead, she says, "he found he liked being a father so much that he asked one of the women to have another child for him. He will give up work and move to Brighton when the child is born, so it can be breastfed, then will take it back to Bristol to live with him."

Men who came out as gay within a heterosexual marriage often faced initial anger and hostility from their families. One man had cards he had sent to his children returned: where he had signed "Dad", his daughter had added "biological only". But even then, says Dunne, the vast majority re-established good relationships. Several men said their ex-wives were their best friends. Almost none had lost contact with their children; many took part in daily childcare or looked after their children at least two days and nights a week.

This positive picture may be because the study sample was self-selecting. It may also be partly because these men's marriages were based more on friendship than sexual attraction in the first place, suggests Dunne, and because their wives felt less undermined by their husband's "new" sexual orientation than they would have done if replaced with another woman. The fact remains that these gay dads contrast strongly with most British fathers, who work more hours, do less childcare, and half of whom - if they get divorced - lose all contact with their children within two years.

That does not mean they were entirely happy. Many were lonely, finding it difficult to integrate into gay social circles - because they had children in tow - into toddler groups, where the other parents were women. Nevertheless, Dunne believes young gay men in Britain increasingly feel fatherhood is within their reach, to the extent of anticipating a "gayby boom".

Fifteen men who hope soon to become fathers through sperm donation have agreed to keep diaries for her, she says. Most anticipate an active and happy fatherhood which will benefit not only their own children, but all of us: "I think it will be lovely for children to grow up with lots of people to talk to, in families based on friendship," she says. "Historically, we have grown up in extended families: the isolated nuclear family is a very short-lived phenomenon. These guys offer us some very interesting models about how men can be parents. They are men who are proud of being men, who are in the forefront of change. We can learn a lot from them."

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