A family affair: Stephen (left) and James with children (from left) Talin, Remy and India.
James and Steve are pin-ups for the ‘Gay Dad’ movement. Here they talk frankly about their family, which so far consists of three children – soon to be five through co-parenting – and how the experience has affected their lives.
S: We met 12 years ago at work. I was married. James seduced me.
J: Oh bullshit, I did not.
S: I left my wife not long after that and we’ve been living together ever since. We were together six years or so before we had our first co-parenting child. We always both wanted to be parents, but we didn’t go into it until about six years into our relationship and after our eldest son was born through co-parenting we then wanted to progress to surrogacy given that the co-parenting didn’t work for us as well as we wanted. And that surrogacy was becoming more publicised as an option.