Hi! We are Stephen & Darryl from South Miami, Florida. Becoming parents has been one of our biggest lifelong dreams. As a gay couple, we have had to get creative and plan carefully to make this happen. And, we have to rely on the kindness and generosity of a birth mother like you. We are college professors and have worked very hard in our careers. We recently got married, and we have finally reached a point where we have the financial and emotional resources as well as the professional flexibility to provide for a child. We are so honored and forever grateful to be considered to raise your child.

We are both close with our nieces and nephews and have loved getting to babysit and play with them as they grow up. We can see in each other our commitment to fatherhood and our openness to helping children become who they want to be. As gay men who didn't come out until adulthood, we dreamed of being fathers before we really believed it could happen. Now that we are in a position professionally, financially, and emotionally to be ready to provide for a child, we are so excited to be on the cusp of this step. Becoming fathers would be a lifelong dream fulfilled.

We are a recently married gay couple. We've been together for 6 years. Darryl is from New Orleans; Stephen is from Maryland. We are both college professors who focus on engineering, education, and diversity. We met at a conference on improving diversity and inclusion in engineering education. We lived in different states and didn’t know each other, but the day after we met many mutual friends started introducing us to each other. And then our work lives happened to bring us in the same place for a year. It felt like fate. After that, we were committed to each other and to building a future together. We moved to Miami, FL together for jobs as tenure track professors. After all these moves and hard work, we’re ready to deepen our commitment to our family by expanding it through adoption. Our jobs offers us paid parental leave and the flexibility to take additional time off, work from home, and rearrange our teaching schedules to prioritize our new roles as parents.

I come from a big family — I’m one of 6 kids. I’ve always loved family and think I am a nurturing person. I was always babysitting younger siblings growing up and for friends at church. Later I also channeled this desire to nurture and mentor into teaching — I taught music lessons in high school. I play piano and percussion, and I can take requests of most pop songs or Disney songs people would like to hear. In college, I majored in engineering and went on to study acoustics because I liked the way my music interests and fascination with physics could combine. I worked in London, England and Silicon Valley, California as an acoustical consultant helping design buildings for sound issues. As I started to realize I was gay, in my 20s, I realized this part of me that was always interested in nurturing and mentoring. I started more actively dreaming of becoming a father and I transitioned to a career in education. I have been a college professor for 6 years and I get to focus on mentoring and helping others be more supported as they study engineering.

There are so many things! The day we got married, I described Stephen to our wedding guests in my vows as follows: a man of strongly held core values; a man of great wisdom and intelligence; a man with a quick wit, funny, and fun; a man who is beautifully expressive in many different ways; a man who has a lovely vision for the future and who moves constantly, relentlessly towards it; and a man who cares deeply and loves deeply. And a man who is dedicated to being a great person and becoming a great father. I have many enduring memories of Stephen as this phenomenal person, especially in seeing his thoughtfulness and interaction with his sisters’ children. When we get the opportunity to visit, they light up when they see him and they fall into conversation like no time has passed. He knows each of the children and knows how to engage them – to get each of them talking about their interests and their lives without presumption of who they should be. Instead, he takes great care to make them comfortable in expressing who they are as individuals. It is awesome to witness!

Those who know me best describe me as dedicated, focused, observant, and a problem solver. One of my best friends says that I am the ultimate advocate - willing to do whatever is necessary for those around me who ask for my help. Those descriptors from others mean a lot to me because they reflect some of the ways I try to live - as a relatively quiet person who observes the world and works very hard to contribute in ways that makes it better for those people I care about. Those qualities have been important drivers in what I do personally and professionally - from creating national programs to help provide positive engineering experiences for students, to my work now as a professor of engineering focused on creating new materials to improve health.

Darryl is so committed, principled, and compassionate. Darryl has a talent for listening to people and finds that people are often opening up to him and that he is great at keeping their confidences. He looks after his nieces and nephews from far away, he taught them how to play card games over the last Christmas holiday. Darryl gives of himself to everyone around him and takes on a lot of important projects to help people and society. People tend to look towards him for direction, and he is great at making decisions when other people are unsure. To let loose, he has fun playing tennis. When he was a kid he used to hit a tennis ball against his house for hours to practice. One day his sister did the same, and he realized hitting the ball on the wall made a huge noise in the house, but no one had told him! One of the biggest things I appreciate about Darryl is our shared values and commitments to making the world a fairer and better place. He’s also my best friend and spending time with him always makes my day better.

Two things we like doing together are going on hikes in nature and doing jigsaw puzzles. We’ve combined our puzzle and hiking interests before— Darryl has taken pictures of our hikes and turned them into 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles. That way we can do the puzzles and remember the lovely view from the hikes while we’re stuck inside a snow day (or a tropical storm day now in Miami). Darryl plays tennis every weekend and would love to teach his future child. Stephen goes on runs outside. We also sometimes get into weightlifting— Darryl is much more serious about it than Stephen! Stephen has family Zooms with his family who live far from Miami. When he lived closer to his nieces he enjoyed going over to their house and playing Legos or hide and seek. Darryl likes to play spades with his nieces and nephews when they congregate together. Darryl also likes to cook and bake. Stephen plays many musical instruments and in the past he has been a director of a church children’s choir. He likes to play piano

We own a home in a suburban community called South Miami, a few blocks from South Miami High School. We love our house and living in Miami— we like to eat breakfast by our pool, we are half an hour from the beach, and it’s never really colder than 60 degrees! When we moved into our house, we painted it in our favorite colors of the beach and the sun— sky blue, sun yellow, palm tree green, and sand marbled beige. Our neighborhood is diverse and mostly Hispanic, Cuban and Venezuelan people. When we have guests in town we like to go ride bikes at the Everglades National Park to see the alligators, or go to a quiet beach to read and listen to music. We like meeting and learning from people different from us. We may move across the country in the next year or so for our next professor jobs and to be closer to family further north. We would miss the warmth, but we like exploring new places.

Stephen is one of 6 kids and grew up with his mom and dad in Maryland near Washington, DC. Darryl is one of 4 kids and grew up most supported by his mom in New Orleans, Louisiana. We make sure to go visit both families every Christmas. Stephen’s family also congregates a lot on Zoom and for other events throughout the year. Darryl recalls how his family didn’t have much money growing up. His mom made sure to make them feel loved and supported their educational development by taking them to free museums or the library each Saturday. He wants to help support his future child in the same way. Darryl’s family usually congregates around food or card games. Stephen’s family likes to get together and talk for hours—when we visit Stephen’s, sometimes we sit down in the morning and talk all day long! We are loved and supported by both of our families, even though sometimes we have had to be brave and patient in helping family members understand having a gay child. The extended family is inherently interracial and cross-cultural, and we think this makes it fun and interesting and a nice environment to bring a child into.

Our main parenting philosophy is we want to help our child become whoever they're meant to be. When growing up, gay children are often made to feel more out of place, like they can’t live up to expectations. We are excited to meet our future child and help them discover who they’re meant to be. We care a lot about education and curiosity, we want to help support the intellectual, personal, and emotional growth of our child. We believe in age-appropriate honesty about tricky or challenging topics in the world. We believe that discipline happens naturally through giving feedback and responding with natural consequences to behavior, we would not hit or punish our children in disproportional ways. We would hope to introduce our children to music and sports we love, but we would not push them towards achievement in those area unless they want to. We grew up with some expectations to succeed or achieve for our parents or communities— we would like to emphasize for our child that they can become whoever they need to be and are unconditionally loved.

We think that our perspective makes us uniquely ready to care for your child. As educators, we consider each student we meet and mentor and how best to support them. As an interracial couple, we are open to and aware of the unique perspectives and circumstances different identities can bring. As a gay couple who had to help our families understand our coming out, we have thought a lot about the ways we can help a child become who they are meant to be. As professionals who have reached certain career milestones and success, we have the resources to provide care for a child and we would love a chance to give that to them. More than any of these circumstances, please know that we have dreamed of this day for a long time and are so grateful for the chance to meet you and your child.

Wishing you the best, with love,

Stephen and Darryl