With LGBTQ+ marriage also comes LGBTQ+ divorce. With that, kids these days may find themselves not only having two dads or moms but sometimes, as their divorced parents meet new partners, three or four parents, all of the same sex.
One such happy family — content creators who go by “Our Three Dads” on social media — consists of Daddy Moke, Daddy Tom, Daddy Mark, and their twin children. (They also have another baby on the way!)
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Mark and Tom had the twins together before getting divorced, and now Tom lives in the pool house on the property where Mark lives with his new husband — who is also named Mark, but who the kids have come to call “Moke.”
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The three dads raise the kids together, an arrangement they say works perfectly for them. “It’s a hectic, busy, and beautiful arrangement,” Mark Ebinger wrote in a Father’s Day essay for Out.
He said everyone was a little nervous when Moke entered the picture, but that it quickly felt like he was the missing piece of the puzzle. “Our family not only gained another parent but another source of love,” Ebinger said.
Living their lives out loud, he added, has become its own form of activism.
“We didn’t set out to be activists. But by living our lives openly, we’ve learned that visibility itself is a quiet form of activism. Every time we share a slice of our life online, we’re showing the world that family can look a little different – and that’s okay. Simply by being ourselves in public, we’re challenging ideas of what a family ‘should’ be.”
The trio is also vocal about the fact that Tom is 70 and about to have a baby, letting people know they are in on the joke of how it seems, but also that love is all you need to make a family. They also celebrate their surrogate and their nanny, who they say are integral parts of their family.
With another kid on the way, Ebinger is excited that the baby “will be joining a fully formed parenting team.”
“When the twins were infants, it was just Tom and I figuring things out, and later Moke joined in. Now, this little one will arrive to find three adoring dads and siblings from the very beginning.”
Ebinger said his experience has learned that it really does take a village to raise a child, and for LGBTQ+ people, he emphasized, we are often each other’s village.
“We’ve been lucky to have an entire support network become part of our family, and it reminds me that none of us can do this alone. Not everyone has a setup like ours (most people don’t have their ex-husband living out back!), but each of us can be part of a supportive village in our way.”
He ended with a call to action: “Let’s strengthen our community, one step at a time. Perhaps it’s offering to babysit for the two moms down the street so they can finally enjoy a night out or volunteering with an LGBTQ+ youth organization to help more kids find safe, loving homes. And when someone insists, ‘kids need a mother and a father,’ you can gently share stories like ours to show that what kids truly need is love and support.”
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