I’m a huge fan of reading and writing men with kids. My very first published series, Life Lessons, is focused as much on two men and two unrelated children and the building of found family based on love, as it is on the murder mysteries.

Having children in the mix opens a window to a man’s character. Children need you to put them first (if you’re any kind of decent parent) which can be a conflict in a newly developing romance. They try your patience, carve a notch in your heart, and force you to develop a sense of humor. In books, we can figure out a lot about the MCs by how they respond to the kids, and to the obstacles, inconveniences, mess, and hurt that goes with parenting.

In genre romance, it’s tempting to make a baby the gold star on top of the romance— love, marriage, and the baby carriage in the epilogue HEA. In M/M, it has the added bonus of thumbing our noses at the “gay men shouldn’t be around children” haters. But it’s important IMO to remember what real kids demand of their parents, which sometimes isn’t so pretty.

I’ve read a baby epilogue for a challenged couple who were so newly reconciled it felt like impending disaster to me, not a cute closure. I read one book where a couple really bonded through their BDSM sex, including a fair bit of physical pain, and very strict D/s. And then they were given a baby, in the final chapters. I wished I had a better window into how they coped with this huge constraint on the sex and dominance that had just become central to their lives, because I couldn’t see the child as entirely a wonderful development, especially as it grows out of infancy. That would’ve been an awesome sequel to read.

I love books where the kids feel real, where in addition to being cute, they cockblock and get sick at inconvenient times and create a mess and misbehave. It’s that part of parenting— not the cuddling of a sweet baby— that’s the measure of the man.

I also love books where the way the baby comes into the man’s life feels uncontrived. As a genre, we abound with negligent (child-rejecting) ex-wives or ex-lovers, and dead sisters. We’re still a bit short on foster parents/adoption and surrogates and co-parenting divorces with ex-wives who do a good job, of trans men as birth parents, and some of the other ways that gay men act as fathers in real life.

I’m guilty of this, too— a dead or bad mom lets us sweep her out of the picture, simplifying the story and the bonding of child and dad. But I’m always up for stories where the relationships are more messy.

As a genre, I think we’re constantly expanding the envelope of story variety. And this is another arena where we’re starting to see a move away from the child as a simple plot element. I’ve read stories with interesting kids; one who was acting out in illegal ways, another running with the wrong crowd, several who are LGBTQ and face bullying the parent can’t always prevent, some kids who have psychological or physical disabilities. Parenting’s never simple, but when our kids are hurting, it’s a lot harder.

While we don’t want to overwhelm the central romance with the parenting element, I do appreciate seeing two men fall in love while working through difficult situations with no easy answers. Love is sweeter, when “in good times and in bad” has been tested in ways large and small, from a baby crying five minutes from Dad’s impending orgasm, to chewing gum in the hair, to a trip to the ER.

And now, in US society, we’re fighting once more against “Drag queens shouldn’t be around kids” and “LGBTQ = sexualization” which means gay romance with kids is also a tool in our arsenal against this propaganda. Readers loving our fictional couples and their kids just might make one more person here or there stand up for LGBTQ parents and children. Books change hearts and minds.

– Kaje Harper

May 2023