Following the award of my parental order for Miles a number of news outlets picked up the story on Thursday 28th January. For anyone wanting to know some of the stigmas associated with being a single dad by choice, or having a child born through surrogacy, dive into the comments section on some of these news articles.
This demonstrates to me why there is a need for the continued reporting of positive surrogacy stories like ours. My thinking in doing media is not to seek to justify why I have made the decision about becoming a single dad, neither is it to deliberately court controversy. I simply want to put out another positive image of a different kind of family as visibility is key. If our families go unseen then archaic attitudes will always persist as assumptions and stereotypes fill in the gaps. I also wanted to reach out to other men who are in my position - to connect and to show them that creating a loving family this way is possible. When I first started my family, I couldn't find anyone out there who had done similar. Now I know there were men like me who were on their own separate father adventures, but we had no real way of connecting or finding out about each other. Already these news items have put me in touch with men who are considering becoming a single parent by choice, and some women who have already made this happen.
Here then are a few of the articles that have run so far:
The Times:
Front page on the Times website and an article can be found on page 13 of the paper.
The Mail Online:
The Mail's article here
The Metro:
The Metro also included our story on their website their Facebook page.
The piece also has cropped up on Yahoo News
For my full journey to Dadness, read my blog on DadBe here: