Review: Gay "Fatherhood Dreams" Sometimes Come True

At the beginning of Fatherhood Dreams, a new hour-long documentary about gay male parenthood that first aired on Canadian television, random people-on-the-street are asked their opinions about gay families.

Finally, after all that pontificating, someone is asked "Do you know any children raised by gay people?"

The person thinks for a second, then says, "No, not really."

The point is well-made: everyone has a strong opinion about something that most people know very little about and have no first-hand experience with.

The documentary then introduces us to three very different gay families: Randy and Drew, a gay male couple that has adopted a child via open adoption; Steve, who shares parenting duties with a lesbian and her partner, one of whom had once been his wife; and Scott, a single gay man about to become a father of twins via surrogacy.

As the documentary says very clearly up front, the point is not to present facts about an "issue." It's simply to introduce the viewer to these families as the real, complicated people they are.

Director Julia Ivanova does a remarkable job of doing just that. All three stories are both touching and illuminating.

One thing is clear: all these individuals are passionately devoted not just to their own children, but to the whole idea of being parents. This confirms what I've seen in my own social circle: gay men are becoming parents because it's what they're desperate to do — not because, as some conservatives have argued, it's some kind of new fad or trend.

In fact, the gay dads profiled here are often at odds with others in the gay and bisexual male community. When Randy and Drew try to start a group for gay dads, no one responds — even in gay-friendly Vancouver.

In short, life is really complicated when you're operating as far outside of existing social networks as the folks profiled here are.

The movie doesn't have an "agenda" per se — at least not one that's argued with facts and statistics. Still, it's impossible not to notice how normal — and, frankly, healthy — these families are (the teen daughter describes her family of two lesbians and a gay dad perfectly as "one huge, dysfunctional, strange family"!).

Likewise, that family's younger child, a girl who is barely more than a toddler, is asked if another thing conservatives frequently worry about is true: is it confusing having three parents?

"No," she says flatly. "It's not confusing. I'm the luckiest ever, because I have the most parents ever."

Fatherhood Dreams is not a "must-see" documentary, and it probably doesn't say anything you haven't heard before. But if you're interested in the topic of gay parenthood, this is a film very much worth seeing.

Fatherhood Dreams is now available on DVD worldwide.