Eric Rosswood - The Ultimate Guide for Gay Dads: Everything You Need to Know About LGBTQ Parenting But Are (Mostly) Afraid to Ask

Copyright 2017 Eric Rosswood

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017951054

Eric Rosswood

The Ultimate Guide For Gay Dads: Everything You Need to Know About LGBTQ Parenting But Are (Mostly) Afraid to Ask

ISBN: (paperback) 978-1-63353-491-9, (ebook) 978-1-63353-488-9

BISAC - FAM006000 FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS / Alternative Family- SOC064000 SOCIAL SCIENCE / LGBT Studies / General

Printed in the United States of America

All content in this book, including medical opinion, and any other health-related information, is for informational purposes only and should not be considered to be a specific diagnosis or treatment plan for any individual situation. Use of this book, and the information contained herein, does not create any doctorpatient relationship. Always seek the direct advice of your own doctor in connection with any questions or issues you may have regarding your own health or the health of others.

The same goes for legal content. All legal tips and advice in this book are for informational purposes only. Use of this book, and the information contained herein, does not create any attorneyclient relationship. Always seek the direct advice of your own lawyer in connection with any questions or issues you may have regarding your own legal situation.

To my husband, Mat.
07-07-07

Praise

This is the parenting book gay dads have been waiting for! It takes the basic information youll find in other parenting books and enhances it by including things specific to gay dads, like finding LGBT-friendly pediatricians, legal steps to protect your family, examples for how to answer questions like, Wheres the mother? and tons of other valuable information gay dads will appreciate. If youre a gay dad, or youre going to be one soon, youll definitely want to add this timely book to your library.
Stan J. Sloan, Chief Executive Officer, The Family Equality Council

A fantastic resource and an entertaining read of essential things that gay/bisexual men should know before becoming dads together. Chaz Harris, Co-Author of Promised Land

The Ultimate Guide for Gay Dads is an informative and practical book that covers a lot of the essential parenting tips! It includes advice from many parenting advocates, including professionals and gay dads who have helped pave the way for future gay dads. Rosswood has created a valuable resource and tool that should be read by all gay men considering parenthood. And for the existing gay dads out there, there are plenty of wonderful tidbits in the book for you too! Dr. Ron Holt, best selling author of PRIDE: You Cant Heal if Youre Hiding From Yourself

The journey to parenthood is not easy for anyone. For same-gender couples, this journey embodies many twists and turns that are not often documented or discussed in traditional parenting guides directed towards heterosexuals. Rosswood has created an invaluable resource for parents that not only covers traditional topics such as changing diapers and childproofing the home but also more nuanced topics, including traveling as a same-gender family, navigating birth certificate details, and deciding what your child will call you. Whether you already have kids, are deep in the process of starting a family, or only beginning your journey, you will find yourself referring to this book over and over again. J. B. Blankenship, author of The Christmas Truck

The Ultimate Guide for Gay Dads is a soup-to-nuts guide for gay fathers and covers all the small and large issues germane to two parents who are men. From choosing a baby name to selecting a physician, from changing diapers to bringing the right toys for airplane rides, from what to call each other to answering invasive questions, this book answers so many questions a gay dad might not even realize he has about raising kids, from babies to toddlers, from children to adolescents. Real-life examples are peppered throughout the book and offer more than one way of handling the many challenges that come up for parents, especially gay dads who face their own unique hurdles. This fun and accessible guide takes the anxiety out of becoming a gay dad. Told in the spirit of love and joy, this guide would make any gay man consider becoming a parent. Kathleen Archambeau, Author of Pride & Joy: LGBTQ Artists, Icons and Everyday Heroes and Climbing the Corporate Ladder in High Heels

Thank you for reading The Ultimate Guide for Gay Dads . Gaining exposure as an independent author relies mostly on word-of-mouth, so if you see the value in this book and think others will benefit from reading it too, please consider leaving a short review online.
Thank you.

Contents

Since I was a child I knew for certain three things about the adult life I imagined for myself. Most people would call these things dreams or aspirations and perhaps they were just that, hopes disguised as premonitions. But for what its worth, I cant name any vision for my own future Ive experienced before or since with the same degree of clarity and definitiveness. So here they are:

The first thing I was certain of as a kid growing up in New York was that I would spend my adulthood in California, and more specifically, Los Angeles. It wasnt because I wanted to work in the entertainment business, that dream was not yet hatched. When I was thirteen my family took a trip to Hawaii and we got stuck in Los Angeles for a layover for a few hours. I went exploring and came across a Welcome To Los Angeles sign above the down escalator into baggage claim. Though Id never seen the sign before it looked familiar to me. And for a very brief moment, I wondered what it must be like to live in a city like Los Angeles with the beaches and Hollywood and the sunny days and warm nights. Ill live here one day, I thought to myself. That was it. The dream remained but the memory of the sign drifted to the recesses of my brain until almost a decade later when I got an internship during college for a talent manager in Los Angeles. Upon my arrival at the airport, I saw the very same sign and that childhood memory flashed back along with the same feeling of familiarity. It is the same feeling Ive had each of the hundreds of times Ive seen the sign sincealthough now I just call that feeling home.

The second thing of which I was one thousand percent sure was that my career would involve writing. I wrote a lot as a kid, acted in plays, built puppets and performed puppet shows, and like most Gen-X nerds made short films with my neighbors first Betamax camera. Whether it was on a theatrical stage or behind a puppet theatre or with a camera on my shoulder, no profession or hobby has ever made me happier than dreaming up and crafting a story for an audience. However it is a craft that never came easy to me and still doesnt. And though Ive gotten older, and those plays and puppet shows have become television shows and films that studios actually pay me to write, creating stories has never ever gotten easier. Like most if not all the writers I know, I find there is still nothing more daunting than sitting down to face a blank page. So why do so many of us torture ourselves by choosing a profession that makes us feel inferior for the majority of the time? I cant speak for the others, but for myself, in very fleeting moments where everything works and the story comes together and communicates emotionally exactly what I was feeling or trying to say, in those moments I feel certain, more certain than ever, that Im doing what Im supposed to do for a profession. I feel home.