Jesus has Two Daddies: Meeting our Dadelgängers

I was contacted by Sean to write a review for his upcoming book “Which one of you is the Mother” the other day, and after reading the hilarious and moving book, I realized we had finally met our dadelgängers in Sean and Todd. Seriously. We have yet to meet these two, but I found myself looking over my shoulder for surveillance cameras as I read about their exploits and adventures with their two boys.

This is the review I wrote for the book:

Sean Michael O’Donnell and his husband Todd gave up their lives of endless clubbing, leather chaps, and glow sticks to become parents. The party bus is now a minivan, the chaps have been replaced by #dadbod appropriate jeans and t-shirts and the endless clubbing is now an endless quest for a clean house and a decent night’s sleep.

I don't like to think of us as boring, just profoundly unremarkable…, writes O’Donnell in the first chapter, but I beg to differ. Their story of starting their relationship to adopting their children is remarkable, considering all they had to go through as a gay male couple. Their story is one for anyone, a story of true love, commitment and what it means to be a family in the US in 2015.

Upon reading “Which one of you is the Mother?” I realized that my husband Tod and have our own dadelgängers in Sean and his husband Todd. There may be one less D, but their story is remarkably similar to our journey to parenthood. We’re just older and have cuter kids.

O’Donnell is a natural story teller who puts the reader front and center in their daily lives. It’s a story of hope, a story of compassion, and a story for anyone who has ever wondered what those Club Kids from the nineties are up to these days.

A synopsis of the book here:

After fifteen years of up-all-night gay disco dance parties, Sean O'Donnell and his longtime partner Todd decided to trade in their leather chaps for mom jeans and start a family. In August 2012 the not-so ambiguously gay duo walked into a Pittsburgh-based adoption agency and said, "We'd like a child, please." For the next several months they attended parenting classes, subjected themselves to probing FBI background checks, and completed enough paperwork to reforest the whole of the Amazon River basin. Despite lacking a magical baby-making vagina the pair successfully made omelets without eggs when in July 2013 they flew to Oregon to meet their seven-year-old son for the first time. No longer Sean and Todd they would now be forever known as Dad and Papa to the observant boy ("So that's how you sleep.") with a million questions (“Do you have a girlfriend?”, “Where do babies come from?”, “What’s gay?”) No sooner had they settled into their new roles when the stork returned the following year, delivering another boy who quickly proved that five-year-olds were basically talking babies who could use the toilet. Which One of You is the Mother? is the story of how two gay guys finally met the two kids who were always meant to be their sons. This is a book that celebrates a different kind of family who just happens to be like every other family on the block. Only gayer. And funnier.  