On a recent morning, Nathan Yungerberg found himself navigating a battle familiar to many parents: trying to wrangle wiggling, whining, uncooperative toddlers into their clothes and off to daycare on time. I didn’t want to repeat that generational trauma of having the fatherless son syndrome.” “I knew that I was going to stand by my son no matter what.
“I wanted to raise a Black child,” says Langford, whose own parents separated when he was very young. And for two, his goal was bigger than pushing a stroller. For one, he’d done enough diaper duty as an uncle and welcomed a youngster who was potty trained. “I just saw the soul in his eyes that told me that I should go to the next step.”īut the little boy he had set his eyes on was three years old-far older than the newborns many adoptive parents hope to snag. It was a black-and-white picture of him and he had these huge eyes,” Langford says, remembering the first time he saw Xee. Langford says he looked at just one picture. “We would meet once a month or so in support and brotherhood and talk about challenges and rewards and benefits.”Ĭertain he could handle being a dad, Langford went to a private adoption agency and began the lengthy process of qualifying to adopt, including a 10-week class, certification, and an extensive background check. “I also at the time had a circle of other single fathers, some adoptive and some not,” he says.
A school teacher at the time, he had years of experience with children under his belt. But he wasn’t willing to let that stop him. “My siblings had had children and relationships and what not and I just felt the need to create a forever bond, family, relationship with someone I could help,” he says. In the ‘90s, Alexander Langford, then living in Oakland, Cali., realized he had a home, a great career, and financial stability-but no family of his own. “When I got to my late 40s I just thought God, I’m gonna be 50 really soon and time is just moving so fast,” says Yungerberg, who is finalizing the adoption of a 2-year-old girl and a 17-month-old boy. But as he entered middle age, the busy creative found himself single and increasingly worried the window for fatherhood was shrinking. Yungerberg always envisioned a husband in his parenthood fantasy. That means 29 percent of single parents are fathers- up drastically from years past.Īmong children raised by single parents, some 60,000+ are estimated to be raised in homes headed by a single gay man, though researchers say numbers are limited by data collection methods.įor adults LGBTQ+ and otherwise, experts say rises in single parenthood align with increased divorce rates amid shifting cultural beliefs surrounding the centrality of marriage to parenting. That number has been on the rise for decades, with the type and age of men entering single fatherhood also evolving.Īccording to Census data, in 2021, 2 million men lived without a spouse or partner and their minor children. One-in-four American parents living with a child are unmarried in 2022, a number that increasingly includes single men. “A lot of people are intimidated by the prospect of doing it solo,” the elder Langford says. More than two decades later, adopted son Xee Langford is a thriving musician. They’re men like Alexander Langford, an Atlanta-based author and baby boomer who, at age 40, felt the importance of raising a Black child in America mattered more than whether he had a mate along for the ride. Among them are an increasingly visible number of gay men and male figures, many of them casting aside traditional timelines and methods of creating their family and redefining when and how one should become a parent.
This spring, millions of men will celebrate Father’s Day as single dads, part of a trend that has exploded over the past few decades. Among the most useful “P," many would agree, is a partner-someone to nudge at night for their turn to bottle feed, take on soccer practice duties or handle any of the other million tasks that come with raising a child to adulthood.Īnd yet for Black gay men, the dearth of marriage-worthy partners has put the dream of a nuclear family far out of reach. From pampers and potties to pimples and proms, anyone who’s raised another human will tell you there are a lot of “Ps” that come along with parenting.