Mother's Day
Mother's Day as a gay dad is complicated. Not painful — just complicated. Here's how I navigate it honestly with my daughters.
Mother's Day arrives every year and I watch other families celebrate and I feel something that isn't quite sadness and isn't quite joy. It's more like standing outside a window, looking in at something that doesn't quite apply to you — and being okay with that.
What My Daughters Ask
They're six now. They understand more than they did. They see their friends making cards for their moms and they ask me — gently, curiously — what they should do.
I tell them the truth: they don't have a mom. They have a dad who loves them completely. And they have a surrogate who carried them, and an egg donor who gave them half their DNA, and a family that chose them with everything it had.
The Honest Answer
We celebrate the women who made them possible. Not with the same ritual as Mother's Day — we don't have cards or brunches or flowers. But with gratitude. With acknowledgment. With the truth that their story involves women who gave them something irreplaceable.
And we celebrate what we are: a family. Different from most. No less real.
The World Is Theirs
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What I've Learned
That the holidays designed for traditional families don't have to be painful for non-traditional ones. They can be an opportunity — to tell your children their story, to name the people who made them possible, to celebrate love in whatever form it takes.
My daughters don't have a mom. They have a dad who shows up, every day, with everything he has. On Mother's Day and every other day.
Joseph Tito
Creator of The Dad Diaries. Gay dad of twins. Writing about fatherhood, surrogacy, and the beautiful mess of real life.