On Father’s Day, Kansas residents Jen and Whitney Wilson will pack up their three children — ages 9, 7, and 3 — and head to Titterington's Missouri house to celebrate the man who helped make their family possible.
Like other LGBTQ+ couples, they and their sperm donor, David Titterington, have created their own traditions around Father’s Day.
“We just have decided to celebrate him,” said Jen Wilson, who works as the executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Modern Family Alliance.
For LGBTQ+ people, single-parent households, other nontraditional families, or those with strained family relationships, Father’s Day and Mother’s Day can be painful and confusing. Events featuring those holidays at school can make some children feel isolated. Jen Wilson noted that many schools are working toward being more inclusive, such as turning events like “Donuts with Dads” into “Donuts with Grown-Ups.”
“There are families who don’t have a David, who can’t really point to, like, this is what it means to be a dad or have a father figure. So I consider us really lucky," Whitney Wilson said. She added, “I think we’re really lucky in that we have lots of people in our lives to point to. Not just David ... grandpas and uncles and all kinds of people who are also fathers."
Between 2 million and 3.3 million children under age 18 have an LGBTQ+ parent, according to the group Family Equality.
Such families are becoming more visible in recent years, said Cathy Renna, the communications director of the National LGBTQ Task Force. Most Pride events now include family-friendly activities, like climbing walls, she said.
“Now we see families of all kinds and shapes and sizes, and that’s really important. It’s important not just for us," Renna said. "It’s also important for kids to understand, you know, that families do come in many different configurations and that families are about love."
When it comes to Father’s Day, Jen Wilson emphasized, “People focus so much on just their own father instead of highlighting the fact that there are a lot of really great fathers in the world in lots of different communities and just celebrating them for stepping up and ... being the great dads that they are.”
Jen Wilson and Titterington have been friends since childhood. When Jen and her wife began planning for a family, Titterington offered to be a sperm donor, and he was overjoyed when the couple later made the ask official.
Titterington sees his role in the kids’ lives as more akin to a godfather than a father. He and his husband attend school events and birthday parties, and Titterington described their role as “coaching them from the sidelines.” He prefers the title “blood father,” but the Wilsons said the children more often refer to him as their “bio dad” or “donor dad.”
“I am their father, but I’m not really their parent,” Titterington said. “Because Jennifer and Whitney are the two parents, and they’re doing an amazing job.”
Even with David, the idea that the children don't have a dad can be hard for them, Whitney Wilson said, but it isn't “something that keeps anybody in our house up at night.”
“There are a lot of people that would love the opportunity to tell our children how terrible it is that they don’t have a father figure in their life,” Jen Wilson said. “We know that’s not true.”
For Titterington, fatherhood means the weight of the Wilsons' firstborn falling asleep on his chest, receiving scribbled artwork that can never be thrown away, and cleaning up after a toddler in potty training. But after a tiring weekend slumber party, he can send the children home to their mothers.
“There’s so many ways to be a father,” Titterington said. “We get to celebrate all kinds of fathers on Father’s Day.”
Source:
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