there is no dad. he has two moms.
When a woman has a baby outside of the "traditional" setting (a woman married to a man), questions are bound to arise. I'm going to focus on my situation - in a two-mom household, people ask: how did you decide who would carry? did you know the man? how did you do it? who is the dad? who will be the father figure? (yes, really).
I'm super open and don't mind answering questions at all regarding our fertility journey (you can read about that here) and how we brought our precious Parker to life. However, I do get bothered when people throw around the term "father" or "dad". There is no dad. He has two moms. There is, however, a donor.
A man that we are eternally grateful for and hopefully, one day, we will be able to thank him in person. But he is not a part of our lives now. We don't know him. But we do know a whole lot about him. The cryobank that we used is very thorough in terms of medical history (including his family), blood work, interests, interviews / questionnaires + we even saw a toddler picture and a picture of what he looks like today.
My big question for people to think about is -- why does a boy need a father-figure? Why aren't his moms enough to teach him the ways of life - isn't it the most important that we teach him to be kind, to love, to show him love, to have a love of learning and for his family? Yes, there are close men in his life, but we, his moms, are enough to teach him all he needs to thrive and be a good person (and if we have male-related questions, we have friends, books + the internet!).
I know that people have no ill-intentions when they ask the question about a dad, but I just wanted to bring some awareness to the language that we are using around same-sex couples and single parents by choice. We're past the antiquated "traditional" family mold. It's 2018 and so many families are of different sexes, genders, colors, backgrounds, religions. We're all FAMILIES and that is what matters.