Transcript
Speaker: you
Speaker: This week, the daddy issue is going to Germany.
Speaker: We're continuing the theme of surrogacy this week, talking to Chris, who's going to talk us through the process he and his husband went through, having a child in Germany.
Speaker: Okay, since our guest is German this week, I'm going to try and say the intro in German.
Speaker: How hard can it be?
Speaker: I speak Dutch, right?
Speaker: Mein Name ist Conor James und du hörst the daddy issue.
Speaker: Chris has his own podcast, which is all about parenting called Zwei Papas.
Speaker: This also meant that when I was Googling gay dads in Europe, he was one of the very first people that I came across.
Speaker: He lives in Germany with his husband and his son.
Speaker: He was conceived via surrogacy.
Speaker: What makes Chris's story a little bit more special is that his surrogate is also his best friend.
Speaker: The daddy issue is produced in the Netherlands and hopefully it will come as no surprise to you that we border Germany to the east.
Speaker: I live in Rotterdam and that is in the west of the country.
Speaker: So if traffic is good, I could be crossing the German border within an hour and a half.
Speaker: Yet, despite being so close, the realities for realising a queer family are quite different depending on which side of the border you stand on.
Speaker: In fact, Germany only legalised same-sex marriage four years ago.
Speaker: That's 16 years after the Netherlands.
Speaker: The point is that Europe is a complicated collection of countries with equally as complicated local politics.
Speaker: While bodies like the European Union are largely united on trade and foreign policy, when it comes to domestic policy, the contrasts between member states can be stark.
Speaker: Countries like Hungary and Poland are persistently eroding queer rights.
Speaker: The Netherlands, which was once a leading example of queer rights, is now stagnating.
Speaker: And it's Malta who takes the crown, having the highest standard of LGBTQ equality in Europe.
Speaker: While I can read you facts and figures for hours, I think it's best you hear it from the horse's mouth.
Speaker: So, the next section of this podcast is the conversation I had with Chris at the start of the year.
Speaker: Chris, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker: I was wondering if you could maybe introduce yourself for the people who are listening.
Speaker: Yeah, sure.
Speaker: My name is Chris.
Speaker: I'm 36 years old.
Speaker: I'm living in Germany with my husband and my little son.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Together.
Speaker: In a relationship and a family like anybody.
Speaker: A real grown up.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Adulting to the max.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So your family construction, you are gay and you're married, right?
Speaker: Correct, yeah.
Speaker: And you chose to have a child through surrogacy.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of surrogacy.
Speaker: My best friend is the mother and we are friends for nearly 20 years.
Speaker: She has a daughter and we tried to foster a kid six years ago and this whole situation, this whole journey was such a pain.
Speaker: I really, really hated this situation.
Speaker: I don't have any kids around me and my
Speaker: husband is very child loving.
Speaker: He loves to be around kids.
Speaker: He works in a few projects with kids.
Speaker: And after we moved from our hometown, we don't really have much direct connections to our family.
Speaker: So after the six years thinking about this foster situation,
Speaker: My best friend came to me and we talked about this whole situation that he is giving birth to our child or could give birth to our child.
Speaker: And she offered this to us or to me at first.
Speaker: After a lot of conversation with my husband about the pros and the cons and what maybe could be a problem between our friendship, we decided to go this path.
Speaker: And if we step back a little bit, why is foster care such a difficult thing in Germany?
Speaker: Yeah, usually it's not, most people say.
Speaker: Yeah, you have to do a lot of courses.
Speaker: You have to deal with these people at the foster agency.
Speaker: And when you have a lot of luck, these people are the same way as you are and you can connect really good.
Speaker: And at the beginning, we had a really nice conversation.
Speaker: Everything was really nice.
Speaker: And it's really complicated to explain this.
Speaker: But after all this, we started to think that's not our way.
Speaker: We don't talk anymore to them and they don't call us.
Speaker: So everything is when silent and we go apart.
Speaker: In the Netherlands, it sounds also like this is a difficult track to become a parent.
Speaker: Like right now, maybe it's on the news.
Speaker: As we're recording, which is March 2021, they've actually put a complete ban on overseas adoptions because of some worries about the safeguarding of parents and children in the process.
Speaker: And even just reaching out to these agencies has been quite difficult because it's not very clear who you need to speak to.
Speaker: We're hopefully going to uncover this a little bit more in the future because I think it's important to know, but it's a shame that they didn't speak to you anymore.
Speaker: But then your friend, did you go to her or did she just come to you kind of unannounced to say, hey, I would really like to be the surrogate?
Speaker: Or did you guys approach her and kind of ask her, hey, are you still interested in perhaps doing this for us?
Speaker: My friend visited us and we talked about this whole children's situation and if we still want to have kids and after, I think
Speaker: The whole day we talked about kids and how it is to be a parent.
Speaker: She announced that it would be great to be pregnant again, but she don't want any kids herself.
Speaker: And she enjoyed the whole process with her daughter.
Speaker: And she offered us to give birth for our child.
Speaker: But first moment I was really shocked.
Speaker: I don't really...
Speaker: I wasn't expecting this because after the whole situation she went through with the birth of her child and I really thought she don't want to get pregnant anymore.
Speaker: And yeah, after this conversation, I speak to my husband and told him everything.
Speaker: We had a really huge list and after a few weeks we met again with my best friend and talked this out.
Speaker: Is she still in into this idea to give birth to our child and what is the consequence of everything when she can't give us the child or have any issues or something else?
Speaker: And after weeks and weeks we talked about this.
Speaker: We went to a lawyer here.
Speaker: told us a lot of things we had to think about.
Speaker: And after this, we started the whole journey together.
Speaker: And this list then, what was this list?
Speaker: Was this a list of questions or a mixture of questions and desires?
Speaker: Both.
Speaker: It was really important that the first thing is that she is feeling good.
Speaker: We are feeling good in this situation.
Speaker: Everything is okay.
Speaker: And her daughter have to be a part of this whole family.
Speaker: From the beginning, it was really important that her kid is also known about this whole thing, that...
Speaker: This is her brother and it's important for us that they have a lot of connections together.
Speaker: So they meet every few weeks or see each other over phone or can call each other or something.
Speaker: This whole sisterhood has to have room for growing together.
Speaker: It was really important for us.
Speaker: So this was kind of a whole list with things we thought it's important to focus on.
Speaker: And after we could manage to go through this list, we were in a mindset that can go through everything happening in the future.
Speaker: I spoke earlier to Sarah Costa, who is quite well known in the Netherlands for the co-parenting circles.
Speaker: And she also has taught me that this list is pretty important.
Speaker: And that when couples meet a couple who are looking for an egg donor or sperm donor, they tend to have a list.
Speaker: And they sometimes play a game of match to list where they see, hey, whose lists match up?
Speaker: Who has the same kind of wishes and desires?
Speaker: But when it comes to making this list into some kind of legal agreement or some kind of, maybe not even legal, maybe just kind of contract of friendship between you two, how do you go about that?
Speaker: How do you make sure that you're both on the same page and that everybody's protected?
Speaker: So you're protected as, of course, the father's, but as the surrogate mother, as the person who has to carry this child, that she's also protected in case something was to go wrong or for whatever reason, you weren't able to take up parenting duties.
Speaker: You can't be sure because the thing we are, it's not co-parenting what we are doing.
Speaker: So right now I am the one that is the father of our son and she don't have any rights anymore.
Speaker: She is giving me at first full custody for our child.
Speaker: And we went to a lawyer and have a piece of paper where she was announced that
Speaker: She wants to give me the whole custody and wants also that my husband is part of this whole situation.
Speaker: And you have to trust her and she have to trust us in this situation.
Speaker: Yeah, of course, because I guess it also works the way around.
Speaker: Like if she gives birth and you go, you know what?
Speaker: Actually, I don't want to have this child.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: then yeah, I can understand trust is really important.
Speaker: But essentially, this contract is you obviously spoken to a lawyer, you've got legal advice, but I'm assuming until the child is born, this isn't kind of in black and white.
Speaker: This is just an agreement of trust between two friends.
Speaker: And the real legal stuff kind of has to wait until the child is born.
Speaker: And when you can do that process of giving custody to yourself,
Speaker: I am the legal father of this child.
Speaker: And we were at the notary to write this down that I am the father and she wants to give me the custody.
Speaker: This is an illegal process.
Speaker: It's quite safe that I am the father.
Speaker: This is written down at the notary.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: She couldn't do anything after this.
Speaker: But that she is giving me all the rights, this is not quite safe with this piece of paper.
Speaker: So you have to go after this to the court and they have to write this down or they have to decide if this is fully legal.
Speaker: And yeah, it's about five minutes and you are out in Germany.
Speaker: Oh, that's pretty quick.
Speaker: Yeah, totally quick.
Speaker: You are really safe after this.
Speaker: But that's the one way.
Speaker: We have to go two ways.
Speaker: My husband has to go through this stepchild adoption.
Speaker: And that's the really hard way.
Speaker: So this is taken over a year or something till we managed to get this through.
Speaker: Was that because of COVID?
Speaker: Or is that just because it's a lengthy process?
Speaker: It is a lengthy process for everybody.
Speaker: So women also go through a step, a child adoption.
Speaker: So this is pretty normal here.
Speaker: And the people that are straight don't have to go through this.
Speaker: We are married and when married people that are straight getting the child into this relationship, it's fully accepted that the husband is also the father of this child.
Speaker: And they ask quite a lot of difficult questions, right?
Speaker: In this process, you get asked a lot of reasons why you're wanting to adopt this child.
Speaker: Yeah, not why, but they ask how this child is coming to life, how this whole situation, they went to this point that we have a kid and they ask
Speaker: really private stuff about us and our family, about our relationship, how we manage through these years, how we talk about problems.
Speaker: Are there any problems?
Speaker: Do we have any mental problems?
Speaker: Do we have legal problems?
Speaker: Are we really healthy?
Speaker: And something like this.
Speaker: It's really quiet, annoying.
Speaker: I would nearly understand if this would be just a thing that my husband have to prove.
Speaker: But I also have to prove that I am healthy and everything is okay with myself.
Speaker: And they really ask private questions about us that are really unacceptable.
Speaker: Our lawyer, we're really mad about these questions because it's not legal to ask this questions.
Speaker: But when you are in our situation, you want to go through this really quick and you don't want to fight everybody.
Speaker: So we accept the questions, answer everything, and hopefully this won't take so long to finish everything.
Speaker: Is it finished already?
Speaker: Are you still going through the process?
Speaker: We still go through the process.
Speaker: We have our first conversation that was an hour long.
Speaker: The second conversation is end of this month and will be a conversation that our kids have to be in the same room with us.
Speaker: And I don't really know what they want to see or
Speaker: ask us but after this there is maybe a third meet up with them but maybe it's our last one so okay we will see and after this we have to go to the court and they have to accept this stepchild adoption or not and this can take a half year or something you have to pay all the legal fees as well for this
Speaker: No, we don't have to pay anything.
Speaker: We have to pay our lawyer.
Speaker: That's everything.
Speaker: In Germany, everything is paid by the constitution.
Speaker: The focus and the situation is on the child.
Speaker: Everything has to be safe for the child.
Speaker: And Germany wants to make it clear or safe that everything is getting through a good way.
Speaker: And it's not a good way when parents that want to adopt a child or have a stepchild adoption that wants the best for the kid to parents have to pay everything.
Speaker: even money for this so when this is all over and done with you're both the legal parents of the child right exactly i hope it goes well for you i hope in a month or so you guys can let me know if it's done or not i would i would a straight couple have to go through the same process if it was a straight couple he would come together with a child from a previous marriage
Speaker: Yeah, when this kid is born before, for example, when a single mother have a child and there isn't any father around and she's getting married, you get through this stepchild adoption too.
Speaker: But when a couple is married, a straight couple, and a third guy is the father, the legal father is still the one that is married to the woman.
Speaker: It's pretty strange because, as I said before, when you are two women and they are married,
Speaker: And there is a child in this relationship.
Speaker: They have to go through this stepchild adoption.
Speaker: One thing that I've heard from every surrogate mother in the Netherlands who I've spoken to is when they have to go through this process of like unrecognizing the child.
Speaker: So saying, hey, this child is my child, but it is going to go and stay with the intended parents.
Speaker: So for example, a gay couple, they have to essentially declare themselves unfit as a mother.
Speaker: So they have to say like, I'm unfit mentally or physically.
Speaker: to take care of this child and in the dutch law is written in a really harsh way where it's essentially saying that this woman is incapable of being a mother for this child is the german process quite so strict i i think so it's not legal here so the way we are going through is a gray zone because we have a strict law against manipulation of the embryo so
Speaker: You usually do this in this process.
Speaker: So you have three people, a semen donor, the egg donor and the surrogate.
Speaker: You have to take the semen and the egg and put it together and put it into the surrogate, right?
Speaker: This is something that is not legal in Germany.
Speaker: So even a straight couple couldn't have a donor egg, for example, for IVF?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: That's crazy.
Speaker: I didn't realize in Germany it was completely forbidden.
Speaker: It's forbidden when the third person is into this.
Speaker: And it's not expensive.
Speaker: I think it's in the health insurance included or something.
Speaker: They pay for this a few times.
Speaker: So you don't have to pay for this.
Speaker: When you're a single mother or you are a gay couple, like our constellation with my best friend, you have to pay this privately.
Speaker: This is legal, but you can't manipulate the embryo with a sperm and put it into a third person.
Speaker: This is not legal here.
Speaker: Yeah, I did not expect that.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: You would think, you assume, like being British, that all these European countries are pretty progressive.
Speaker: I didn't realize it was so strict in Germany.
Speaker: But then again, I guess it's easy to forget that Germany have only recently legalized same-sex marriage.
Speaker: So sometimes we kind of forget that we have a long way to go.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: But hopefully that situation changes, not just for non-heterosexual couples, but also for heterosexual couples.
Speaker: Not all women are able to have their own eggs fertilized.
Speaker: That takes us on quite nicely to getting pregnant.
Speaker: What route did you guys choose for fertility treatment?
Speaker: The home insemination.
Speaker: We don't want to have any third or fourth people around us.
Speaker: It's a very private thing.
Speaker: And as a couple, we are married and we have to go with the help of somebody to get our first child.
Speaker: And I think this is a very private thing to do and to ask somebody else to do this for us.
Speaker: And we don't really know who the real father is.
Speaker: Did you guys have any discussions previously, like who will be the sperm donor?
Speaker: Yeah, we talked about this, but we don't want to decide this because it's not important who is the real biologically father of our child.
Speaker: It's always our child.
Speaker: It don't really care.
Speaker: And yeah, we mixed it together and now we have a child.
Speaker: I think it's quite a nice solution.
Speaker: It wouldn't work for myself and my boyfriend, because my boyfriend, his father comes from Indonesia.
Speaker: So it'd be very clear, potentially, who the biological father is.
Speaker: You're right on the line of it doesn't matter who the biological father is.
Speaker: When I speak to Sarah, she said a lot of times people ask, like, who's the real father?
Speaker: Yeah, and it's annoying.
Speaker: They mean the biological father.
Speaker: Yeah, you don't have to be bound by DNA to be.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: How long did it take to get pregnant?
Speaker: We tried it for three times.
Speaker: So we need four months or everything.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's pretty quick.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And how did your relationship change then with your friend while she's pregnant?
Speaker: I don't think it changed a lot.
Speaker: She's my best friend.
Speaker: So like my sister or something, even more near than my sister.
Speaker: It's somebody when you choose a friend or when you have a friend that is so close to you, I think nothing will change in this process.
Speaker: when you really talk things out.
Speaker: We talked before a lot about the situation and it was always in the room that she can say she wants to quit this.
Speaker: I don't want to give the child to us.
Speaker: It was always an option for her and we always make it really clear that we don't wear angry things
Speaker: on her when this won't go the way we imagine.
Speaker: So it's very open.
Speaker: We always speak things out.
Speaker: We always try to go through a nice interaction together.
Speaker: And it's worked really well.
Speaker: Nothing changed, I would say.
Speaker: It's the same like before, but we have a child right now.
Speaker: I have a son with my son.
Speaker: husband and my best friend.
Speaker: It's a really nice situation.
Speaker: And always when I think about it, when I see our son, it's like the best thing that could ever happen to me.
Speaker: It's nice to hear that you kind of found this perfect situation where you can have a child with your husband and your best friend.
Speaker: And what was it like when it was time for the child to be born?
Speaker: Because I remember when we spoke to the first time, you mentioned that there was some difficulty regarding who could be in the room, which I can imagine was a little bit frustrating.
Speaker: But in terms of the birth, like, how did you experience that as a couple?
Speaker: Well, not just as a couple, how do you experience that, I guess, as, as this construct of a family?
Speaker: It wasn't a natural birth.
Speaker: She don't want to give the birth naturally.
Speaker: So the problem was at the operation theater, you would just allow one people to sit next to the woman that is giving birth through the C-section.
Speaker: And we came to the door and the nurse said,
Speaker: came to us and asked us who's the father.
Speaker: And I said, I'm the father, but we are going through this with my husband and my best friend.
Speaker: She told us that it's not possible.
Speaker: It isn't allowed to go to this process with more than one people in the room.
Speaker: So my husband said, it's okay when I go through this.
Speaker: because I'm her best friend and we have much more relationship than he is having with her.
Speaker: They are good friends, but it's not the same way as my position.
Speaker: So it was okay till the situation that we going through after the birth, our child have to go to the child clinic.
Speaker: because the wait wasn't enough.
Speaker: But they want to make sure everything is fine for the next few days.
Speaker: So our son have to stay at the child clinic for a while.
Speaker: At the child clinic, it's only allowed to go visit the child directly and touch the child when you are the parent.
Speaker: You could go to the window and see the child, but you can't go inside.
Speaker: And my husband wasn't allowed to go inside to our son.
Speaker: And the first two days were...
Speaker: really really stressful for all of us because we talked a lot with the doctors with the people that are working there and
Speaker: From the beginning, we told them, we are three people, we have this child together, and we have to go to this child and take care of them together.
Speaker: And it wasn't allowed.
Speaker: We had a lot of connections in the hospital and have to go through a lot of calls till one doctor came down to the child clinic and managed this for us.
Speaker: So after this, my husband could go inside of the room and
Speaker: take care of our child and this was really stressful annoying and wasn't that quite nice for him
Speaker: Yeah, I'm sorry to hear it went this way.
Speaker: Because the system isn't made for non-heterosexual couples, right?
Speaker: It always assumes that there's a mother and a father.
Speaker: I don't think it's an excuse, but I assume that's why it ends up the way it ends up.
Speaker: But then he gets better and he can come home.
Speaker: How did that work?
Speaker: Did he come straight to you guys?
Speaker: Or did your best friend decide that she went to breastfeed or anything?
Speaker: Or was it kind of a handover straight with you guys to do all that?
Speaker: How did that work?
Speaker: So our child was seven days at the hospital.
Speaker: In this time, my best friend breastfed our child to start production of the milk.
Speaker: And after the seven days when we came home, she had a pump and we fed him all the time with the milk and with the formula.
Speaker: So at night we had the formula, at day we had the breast milk.
Speaker: And even after she left us, I think she stayed three or four months because of the pandemic.
Speaker: We wanted to stay together for the first months.
Speaker: Yeah, till this time, he always gets the breast milk of my best friend or his mother.
Speaker: You mentioned because of the pandemic, you guys all stayed together.
Speaker: Was she there to help you guys if you guys had questions like, hey, how the heck do we do this?
Speaker: Did you kind of let you guys figure things out by yourself?
Speaker: I'm assuming you guys had agreed all this beforehand anywhere.
Speaker: It was really funny because the first days or the first hours, I have to manage this everything by my own.
Speaker: The nurse was in the room and told me, here's your son.
Speaker: You have to change the diaper, did this and that.
Speaker: And I'm coming back.
Speaker: When I stay next to you, you will do everything wrong.
Speaker: So you will do this your way and everything is fine.
Speaker: So we changed the diapers, gave him the milk, hold the child.
Speaker: And she was the mother or is the mother of him, but she was...
Speaker: just around or hold him a few times, but it wasn't like the usual mother-son connection.
Speaker: So that child was always in our hands.
Speaker: So it was like an aunt or something like this.
Speaker: Yeah, is that the role that she has then?
Speaker: Is that kind of the role that she wants to have, is kind of like the cool aunt?
Speaker: She's the mother.
Speaker: She also feels like the mother, but not in the way that she is the mother for her child.
Speaker: So it's really strange.
Speaker: She can't even explain this, but...
Speaker: From the beginning, the child was in her.
Speaker: She always speak about him that this isn't her child.
Speaker: It's our child.
Speaker: The mindset of her were always in this that this isn't her child.
Speaker: Have you thought about words?
Speaker: So like will he use the word aunt or mother or do you not really care like how it turns out?
Speaker: You can just kind of see what happens or have you really agreed on terms?
Speaker: We don't thought that he would call her mother, but after the whole situation we get through, it wouldn't be okay for us when he wouldn't say to her mother.
Speaker: Because it is her mother.
Speaker: It's okay for us and it's okay for her that she is the mother.
Speaker: And I think it's really important for him to have the possibility to know her.
Speaker: to ask her things and to accept that she is his mother but isn't the stereotypical mother like a mother in other situations yeah your child will not know any different so for them this is going to be completely normal so it doesn't yeah at the end of the day it's just a word and the relationship behind that word is unrelated so from what it sounds like there's always going to be a very close bond between your child and your best friend in this case which absolutely
Speaker: I think it's pretty important because from what I've heard, especially on the Dutch side, regardless of the relationship, whether it's that the surrogate mother wants to have a complete distance from the child, the child should at least always have the right to know who their birth mother is.
Speaker: Obviously, with coronavirus, everything for you was probably very different, maybe to how you expected in terms of the home situation.
Speaker: How did you manage that with work?
Speaker: And in terms of like, did you get any support from work for paternity leave or anything like that?
Speaker: This is really complicated because you can split this for two people.
Speaker: And I have the first six months full on parental leave.
Speaker: Then I worked for two months full.
Speaker: My husband worked for two months full on parental leave.
Speaker: And after this, I am one year in half time parental leave.
Speaker: And your best friend also gets on leave too, I guess, as well.
Speaker: No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker: The birth mother is getting, I think, six or four months before she is giving birth.
Speaker: She can't work then, gets the full salary.
Speaker: And after this, a few weeks or a few months, she's safe, so she hasn't to work.
Speaker: That's a lot more generous than the Netherlands where we have, I think, six weeks, which can be used anytime.
Speaker: It used to be, I think, two days.
Speaker: So it's gone up.
Speaker: And that was only last year when this changed.
Speaker: The mother only gets four months in the Netherlands as well.
Speaker: The mother will always have that leave, regardless of whether she's taking care of the child or not.
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Speaker: Now, back to this week's episode.
Speaker: What's life like now?
Speaker: Your child is almost one year old, right?
Speaker: Or have they just passed the one-year milestone?
Speaker: He is one year old, yeah.
Speaker: And how is your relationship with your best friend now?
Speaker: Do you see each other every few weeks and have her daughter play with her brother?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, we're still living in a pandemic, so we can't travel and she is living in a different city.
Speaker: So the problem is that our family is living in a different city.
Speaker: So we just FaceTime all the time.
Speaker: We can't visit anybody.
Speaker: So this is the only possibility we can use right now.
Speaker: Yeah, when we could see each other every few weeks, we would do this.
Speaker: So we have a really, really strong relationship together still.
Speaker: And nothing changes when I think back.
Speaker: No, really, it's the same thing we have the last few decades.
Speaker: And what's it like being the dad of a one-year-old who's approaching the toddler, yes?
Speaker: Getting near the terrible twos.
Speaker: How is that?
Speaker: It's strange.
Speaker: I still have moments that I don't realize that we have a kid.
Speaker: And when I look over to him when he is sleeping, it's always like seeing this kid and thinking about the few years without him.
Speaker: And I can't imagine don't have him around us.
Speaker: It's...
Speaker: It's so much fun.
Speaker: Yeah, we have some days that are really stressful and nights that are really annoying.
Speaker: But you always have this kid around you that are smiling, that is having fun and is sometimes such a goofball, really.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's the greatest thing we could really do.
Speaker: Even when you have the situations that you ask yourself, why did you do this?
Speaker: Because it's really stressful.
Speaker: We had a really silent, good life without any worries about money or future or anything.
Speaker: We have good jobs.
Speaker: We have everything is fine.
Speaker: We have a nice home and two cats.
Speaker: But it's like, I don't know, did you ever have pets before?
Speaker: Yeah, I've had a dog.
Speaker: You know, when you don't have any pets at home, it's like really clean.
Speaker: It's silent.
Speaker: It's really empty.
Speaker: When you start getting pets, the home is getting warm.
Speaker: It's fulfilled with love or with living inside of it.
Speaker: And it's the same way when getting started to have a kid.
Speaker: Everything before is feeling so empty.
Speaker: And right now is every day we have kids.
Speaker: such funny times and such stressful times, but it's something I don't want to change for anything.
Speaker: Even when I'm really sleepless and I'm really tired and you see me right now.
Speaker: So I am really tired.
Speaker: You don't look as tired as I do.
Speaker: I don't have any children or a dog.
Speaker: Wait for it.
Speaker: It's beyond everything I thought it could be.
Speaker: These tired situations or moments that you will experience, it's over the top.
Speaker: But it's okay.
Speaker: It's fun and everybody is healthy.
Speaker: So we couldn't have any better positions right now.
Speaker: How did your family respond to you becoming parents?
Speaker: Of course, with Corona, it's difficult.
Speaker: I suppose they can't really visit so easily, but were they excited, nervous?
Speaker: They loved it.
Speaker: They knew we love kids and kids love us.
Speaker: So like I said before, it's so natural.
Speaker: We have a lot of fun with kids around.
Speaker: We are still little kids inside.
Speaker: So our parents and our family and friends are really excited for us because they knew that we wanted to be parents and we like to have this time with other kids together.
Speaker: So they are really excited about this.
Speaker: Have you guys had many opportunities to be out in public and have you guys maybe experienced any strange reactions from people or had to explain that you're a same-sex couple or anything like that or has been relatively straightforward where people ever don't ask or maybe because of coronavirus you're not going anywhere anyway?
Speaker: Our neighbors are really open, ask a lot of things, but we're really acceptable and helped us in a lot of things.
Speaker: Like in the first weeks when the pandemic started, a neighbor appeared and used that the diapers is getting worse.
Speaker: She was shopping and she bought us diapers and a lot of other stuff without asking us and putting them in front of our door.
Speaker: That's so sweet.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And we don't have such a strong connection to her.
Speaker: And a lot of neighbors gave us clothes for our kid and things like this or toys or something.
Speaker: And it's really, really nice to be accepted around them.
Speaker: I have a theory why this is the way.
Speaker: When you are a same-sex couple, you have a lot of options.
Speaker: And a lot of things gay people do or can do frightens straight people.
Speaker: I don't know why.
Speaker: And after they see that we are married, we're getting a child, it matches the whole world of them again.
Speaker: We are suddenly something that they can relate to.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And we are normal for them.
Speaker: I see some people react kind of different or open to us since we have a child.
Speaker: Maybe it's just because we have a child or maybe it's because they think, okay, we are just normal people like them.
Speaker: It's complicated to see the truth behind this, but it's kind of a theory that I have.
Speaker: And we don't have any negative reactions in public or something else.
Speaker: Most of the people are very kind, are very interesting.
Speaker: Most people don't ask stupid questions.
Speaker: Some people, like colleagues at work, ask very private things, like how we did this exactly.
Speaker: Like when they ask who's the man in the relationship?
Speaker: Yeah, things like this.
Speaker: Not so close friends that aren't close anymore because we know each other for years, but asking things like, how is it to have sex with the best friend of your husband?
Speaker: Oh, because there's no other way of fertilizing an egg, right?
Speaker: That's the only way.
Speaker: Absolutely, yeah.
Speaker: Wow, okay.
Speaker: Yeah, and you don't see this as somebody that is open to these different ways of getting a parent.
Speaker: You see every single step.
Speaker: As a straight couple, you just see one step to get a child.
Speaker: I think it's ignorance, right?
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: They have questions, but they don't have the language to ask them in a respectful way or don't even... Think about it.
Speaker: I think a lot of people listening who aren't straight can relate to that because...
Speaker: I've been asked a lot of inappropriate things.
Speaker: A lot of times, you know, who's the man in the relationship, you do get these questions.
Speaker: And I was actually curious if you ever got any negative feedback from people within the community, because I've heard from people that they've received some pushback for heteronormative behaviors, like the whole idea of having a child to conform to like a heterosexual life, you know, like you're fitting into that mold.
Speaker: Have you ever experienced that?
Speaker: Not in this way, but a few friends from before that are quite close or wear quite close and had also a few years back or have this imagination of having a child themselves.
Speaker: But when they came out, they closed this chapter for them and said,
Speaker: never open it again.
Speaker: From one to another, they don't answer calls or texts.
Speaker: And it's pretty strange and annoying to see this because, you know, they like children, they like to be around children, and they are happy for other couples.
Speaker: to have children, but I think they don't accept that it was pretty easy for us to get our child.
Speaker: And living in the fantasy, in quotes, that is the world that they want to live in.
Speaker: So they think that this shouldn't have been so easy or they don't believe that it was so easy.
Speaker: Maybe it's just jealousy because people can react in very strange ways.
Speaker: It's a shame to hear that.
Speaker: When my friend who I will be interviewing, he has adopted two children with his husband.
Speaker: When he mentioned this, I was so jealous.
Speaker: At the same time, I was so happy for him because I knew how important this was for him.
Speaker: So of course you go, you think, how dare you just...
Speaker: go and have, do this adoption thing when I'm in the Netherlands and I can't.
Speaker: But at the same time, like I'm a gay person and I know this isn't easy for same sex couples.
Speaker: He's the same sex relationships.
Speaker: I was so proud of for him.
Speaker: And I know how important this was for him because I think one of the very first things that we discussed was like kids.
Speaker: I don't know why, just a random work discussion.
Speaker: I think a coffee when you decide to talk about things that aren't working.
Speaker: And I think one of the first things he said was, I want to be a father.
Speaker: And I was quite young at the time.
Speaker: So I was like, what?
Speaker: whatever dude but he did it i'm i'm so proud of him yeah i do sometimes wonder how my queer friends would react because some of them have very strong opinions about heteronormative behavior um yeah but i feel like um this is kind of a chance uh to prove that heteronormative behavior is not is not exclusive to being heterosexual it's actual just human behavior you know
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And the important thing about this whole situation, you see, our best friend is the mother of our child.
Speaker: And everything we are doing, we're doing our way.
Speaker: The thing with the daycare, we started to bring our kid really early at eight months to a daycare.
Speaker: It's not very common in German.
Speaker: So it's
Speaker: quiet controversy.
Speaker: And you also have a lot of people around us and around also the gay father community that are looking quite skeptical about this because
Speaker: They know how hard it is to get a child.
Speaker: And after eight months to give our child to a daycare, because we also have to work and we also think it's really important to have connections for him to other children.
Speaker: We have the chance for us to work.
Speaker: be in the relationship we want to be.
Speaker: We can build our relationship on the values we put together, we talked about, and we want to live together.
Speaker: And we have the values that we can give our child and we can open things up for him.
Speaker: When he's getting older, he will know who is RuPaul's Drag Race.
Speaker: He will...
Speaker: Very important.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: He loved the music.
Speaker: You have to see him.
Speaker: He is quite smiling after a few seconds.
Speaker: RuPaul is starting to sing.
Speaker: Or if he sees any drag queen or something.
Speaker: And it's quite important for me and for us to show him the queer community, the queer relationship to each other.
Speaker: And even if he is getting straight, and I think he's getting straight, it's...
Speaker: He's getting into a really quiet, colorful world and a lot of options are open for him.
Speaker: He can be and do everything he wants to do.
Speaker: And this is our way to show the world and also the queer community that it's important to do things
Speaker: we have to do for us to become a really lucky and happy person.
Speaker: If you want to have children and give them the home we wanted always to have, it's important to do this.
Speaker: It's nothing straight or heteronormative or something else.
Speaker: It's just the thing we want to do.
Speaker: And I don't really care
Speaker: what other people is thinking about this or judging us because we fear it's our way and we feel good in this situation right now with our kid and our family with a lot of funny days and a lot of possibilities to build this family.
Speaker: I think what's funny is your child maybe will not know.
Speaker: I wouldn't say lucky, maybe lucky is wrong to be part of the queer community, but they maybe won't know how special it is to be brought up within this kind of open-minded community, which I'm not saying that all gay people are open-minded because that's not true.
Speaker: But I think definitely when you're h aving a child, you are more open-minded because you're expanding your horizons beyond what is biologically possible between two men in this case, for example.
Speaker: I think it's really great to hear that you're obviously exposing your child to important things like RuPaul's Drag Race, which is an essential part of being part of the queer community these days.
Speaker: It's the Olympics of drag, but also that he's not going to have these negative perceptions of queer culture that perhaps we had when we were growing up because we were always told it was a bad thing to be feminine.
Speaker: It was a bad thing to enjoy doing X, Y, or Z, playing with dolls.
Speaker: I feel as
Speaker: queer parents that's the sort of stuff that tends to be avoided or parents who are maybe you know in co-parent relationships as well i can imagine um if you are a mother and you've had a child of a gay couple your children will be brought up with a certain type of respect because that's all i know and that's normal and i think that's a beautiful thing to make that normal
Speaker: yeah of course we can't all have children and i think it's important to say that we don't have the right to have children and if we can we want to and that's what we need to make us whole then i think we the queer community we've suffered so much already and we've had to give up and sacrifice so much already and growing up we've had to sacrifice so much already why should we continue to sacrifice more and that's not to say that we should all be given children immediately because
Speaker: That's not how it works, but we should at least be allowed to explore that world, right?
Speaker: And we should at least, if we can, if we have the means to make it happen, we should be able to.
Speaker: Absolutely right.
Speaker: Well, I have one final question, and that is if you have any advice for people listening who are maybe considering parenting, and also for myself as I go on this kind of crazy self-inflicted journey into the world of queer parenting.
Speaker: It's important to focus on the situation with your child.
Speaker: You don't need any things.
Speaker: You don't need anything.
Speaker: You don't even have to have a lot of money to grow a child.
Speaker: You just have to be careful.
Speaker: conscious into the situation and you have to be with your child and always be present.
Speaker: Everything else is optional.
Speaker: It's important to stay in focus on the child and everything else isn't that big a deal.
Speaker: And don't listen to any advice that you have to buy expensive things.
Speaker: The kids don't need anything.
Speaker: Happiness is free, right?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And it's hard to work on this and focus on this.
Speaker: And you don't need anything that is putting your focus out of the range of your child.
Speaker: I think that's very good advice.
Speaker: Ignore capitalism.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I think we should apply it to every walk of life.
Speaker: Chris, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker: It's been an absolute pleasure.
Speaker: And it's been really inspiring to talk to you and hear your story.
Speaker: So thank you very much.
Speaker: Thank you for your invitation.
Speaker: So, it turns out Germany is just as complicated as the Netherlands, and has some additional limitations when it comes to surrogacy due to the country's incredibly strict embryo protection laws, which date back to 1991.
Speaker: The law limits the number of embryos that can be used per cycle to free, and forbids them from being frozen or discarded, meaning all embryos have to be used in that cycle.
Speaker: If this isn't making any sense to you right now, don't worry, we're going to be exploring the world of IVF later in the series.
Speaker: Now, I'm also really pleased to announce that Chris and his husband have finalised the foster parent adoption process.
Speaker: Which means that Chris's husband now has the same legal status that he has.
Speaker: So, in the eyes of the law, they're finally both fathers of their child.
Speaker: Congrats guys, I am really happy for you.
Speaker: Next week, we're going to continue the theme of surrogacy.
Speaker: I'll be sitting down to talk with another surrogate mother on her experiences carrying a child for a gay couple.
Speaker: Until then, thanks for listening, and don't forget to subscribe to the show and follow us on social media.
Speaker: My name is Conor James, and you've been listening to The Daddy Issue.
Speaker: The Daddy Issue
Speaker: The Daddy Issue is an independent podcast.
Speaker: Produced and presented by me, Conor James.
Speaker: Music by Willem de Boij.
Speaker: Fact-checking and editorial support from Emma Vogt.
Speaker: Our original artwork is by The Incredible K-Toys.
Speaker: And a very special thanks to Chris for giving up an evening of beer and bratwurst to answer my questions.
Speaker: We're available on Instagram at thedaddyissuepod, Twitter at daddyissuepod, and you can find us on Facebook too by searching for The Daddy Issue.
Speaker: Thank you.
