Two British dads visit the Big Apple with their young daughter in tow, worried about how she’ll behave, wondering how they’ll be received, and remembering they have nothing to be ashamed of.
By Kevin Pittuck-Bennett
Writer, Photographer, Fireplace Contributor
Part One: Welcome to New York
For my husband’s 40th birthday, I spent £3,500 on tickets to fly us to his favorite city in the world.
His reaction? “Couldn’t we have just stayed close to home?”
Michael loves New York. He feels at home there, strutting the pavements like the wannabe fashion model he is while nobody bats an eyelid. His concern was our toddler daughter, Peggy. He didn’t feel a long flight and a city break were suitable and, worse, suggested I hadn’t considered her when booking it. I had, of course. I just didn’t share his fears. At least not those ones. New York is a huge, multicultural city with a gazillion families so there’ll be things for kids to do, right? Besides, she can play happily for hours with an empty box.
Our first test was the 7-hour flight from the UK. Peggy behaved. Ish. She got wriggly and bored near the end, stumbling up and down the aisles like a drunken aunt at Christmas, ping-ponging off passengers, slamming someone’s laptop shut, knocking on the toilet door… and somehow the cabin pressure turned her milk bottle into a sprinkler system. I had to apologize to the row behind me and ask if they were lactose-intolerant. Peggy didn’t make much noise at least, but we worked hard for that. The cabin crew noticed. They handed us some miniatures somewhere over the Atlantic.
Unbeknownst to Michael, however, I had some anxieties I’d not shared with him.
In the weeks before we travelled, British news carried increasing reports on LGBT+ rights in America being rolled back. I’d asked staff in Heathrow if they thought two dads traveling with a child might encounter problems, asked cabin crew the same thing, and both seemed surprised by the question. They assured me we wouldn’t… but I wasn’t entirely convinced.
We were traveling with a raft of paperwork. Our surrogacy documents. A letter from the lady who carried Peggy. Another from the clinic. Our passports all shared the same fabulous-but-awkward double-barreled surname so common in gay marriages. I was prepared for a fight if we had to prove ourselves a family.
I am well aware that some people have a problem with two men being together. Give those people clipboards and responsibilities and it can cause all kinds of problems. I could deal with questions, but the thought of someone challenging our right to be Peggy’s parents in front of her, or — in the darkest reaches of my imagination — separating her from us… was terrifying.
Her buggy somewhere in the hold, I carried Peggy towards an enormous immigration queue at JFK and waited nervously.
Some passengers tried to get our attention. That didn’t feel good. Staff had spotted us with a toddler and wanted to pull us out of the line… But it was to open a new kiosk and speed us through! A sigh of relief. No one wanted the extra paperwork. No one wanted the letters.
“Welcome to America!” I sang.
Explore our picks for the best boutique hotels in New York City.
Part Two: Stonewall
We had a list of tourist essentials to cross off but an 18-month-old who couldn’t read it and might not play ball. The trick, we discovered, was to exhaust her early so she’d be keen to stay in her buggy later.
The High Line is a perfect example. Ten meters above traffic, she could run freely and babble at passers-by without us worrying about roads. She managed about a mile before asking to be carried. She went in her buggy instead, as we reminded ourselves we were in charge.
That gave us the opportunity to visit the birthplace of the modern gay-rights movement, the Stonewall Inn. We sat on the benches outside near the statues. As I attempted to take a nice family photo with the rainbow flags and the Inn behind us, it occurred to me what that photo meant… and why some of the baggage we’d brought to America was mine alone.
I grew up gay in the 90s and spent much of that time desperately hoping I wasn’t. This was the era of government-sponsored AIDS campaigns with giant tombstones and Section 28, a law that stopped schools discussing anything too ‘fabulous’. As a teen, I was so disgusted by my secret that I lied about it in my own diary in case someone read it. A proud gay, I was not.
Even after it all came painfully spilling out, marriage wasn’t on the cards. It wasn’t even legal until Michael and I had celebrated our 10th anniversary, and children hadn’t been an option for most of that. Michael, though, had always wanted to be a dad and, over time, I opened my heart to the possibility. Soon we were with a surrogacy agency.
Now here I was, standing proudly outside Stonewall with my husband and daughter.
I looked at the photo on my phone and wondered what younger me would have made of it. At 13, I’d have been horrified my gay phase still hadn’t finished. At 16, I’d have been amazed that my secret was out and I still looked happy. At 20, I’d probably have been surprised I was giving marriage and fatherhood a go after the disastrous examples I’d grown up with.
Then I looked at it again. Peggy was leaning out the buggy and licking a railing. Not one for a frame.
Part Three: Bringing It All Back Home
Her legs still tired, we were able to wheel her about Manhattan ticking off most of our sightseeing ‘musts’, even taking a water taxi to DUMBO just to walk back via the Brooklyn Bridge. Peggy coped brilliantly. Her dads less so. And that became something of a theme.
Central Park Zoo again exhausted the small person, allowing us to load her up, finish the park and nip up 30 Rock. A reluctant ride on the subway chipped away another anxiety. We’d been told not to make eye contact with anyone ‘just in case’, but Peggy didn’t know that. By the time we reached our stop half the carriage was singing Ms Rachel.
As we stumbled about the Empire State Building observation deck with a toddler on a lead, Michael admitted that maybe his nerves around bringing Peggy to New York were unfounded. That’s not to say the trip was always easy. There were tantrums, from toddler and parents. A downpour that meant hair-drying nappies in our hotel room. Jet lag that occasionally moved Peggy into our bed, where she slept sideways as Michael and I clung to the edges. The Statue of Liberty was mostly an argument about her having to wear a hat. Sometimes Daddy or Papa had to split off just to get anything out of it.
Will she remember the trip? Probably not. But we will.
Peggy is already starting to realize her family is different. She will walk into a room, any room, and announce “I have two daddies!” with gusto. For now, this fact makes her feel special rather than less-than. My responsibility now is to make sure she never learns to be ashamed to speak those words.
Perhaps New York taught both her dads something. Michael learnt that he can still strut his stuff with a toddler in tow. And I realized I needed to ‘unlearn’ some of the self-protecting behaviors I’d built over the years. Because our instincts don’t just disappear when the law finally catches up.
But for now it is enough that Daddy and Papa took her to New York. Was it sometimes stressful? Sure, but sometimes it’s stressful taking her to the shops. Would we do it again? Damn right, and with Michael’s blessing this time. Which has the added bonus of confirming I was right and he was wrong.
And I don’t get many of those.
