Preview: Gay Fatherhood Looms on “Brothers & Sisters” and “Modern Family”
Posted by Brent Hartinger on September 16, 2009
There’s a gay “baby boom” in entertainment coming this fall, as gay men are featured as fathers of babies in a number of different projects (see our accompanying article).
Two of the most prominent examples are the ABC shows, Modern Family and Brothers & Sisters.
What exactly do the producers of these two shows have in mind for their fictional gay dads?
Modern Family is a “mockumentary” sitcom about three very different families who are supposedly being taped for a reality show to be aired in The Netherlands. One of the families consists of Cameron and Mitchell, a gay couple that has adopted a baby from Vietnam.
Mitchell and Cameron
“It’s all the firsts for them,” says the show’s co-creator Christopher Lloyd of the gay couple and their child. “We’re doing an episode this week where they go to their first ‘Mommy and Me’ class. We’re doing an episode where it’s the first time they bump their daughters head against a door-frame. A lot of those kinds of things. For them, it’s the transition from one kind of lifestyle to a very different kind of lifestyle. From being carefree – from having it be all about them.”
As for the fact the show is groundbreaking when it comes to showing gay parents on network television, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who plays Mitchell, says, “I don't want to put too much pressure on the show to be a platform right now. I just want to let it be what it is. I think it needs to have that space to breathe, but it is very exciting. There's isn't a way to really ignore that. It is groundbreaking.”
Adds Eric Stonestreet, who plays Jesse’s partner on the show, “From the moment I saw the script, before they'd seen me for an audition, I wanted to be a part of this show. I just think it's a great opportunity to bring attention from every walk of life to show people are pretty much the same.”
Cameron and Mitchell won’t be the only gay parents on the show. The second episode sees the two men attending that ‘Mommy and Me’ class where they encounter Anton and Scott who have adopted a baby from Africa and seem to do everything a little better.
Meanwhile, on the returning family drama Brothers & Sisters, gay couple Kevin and Scotty will spend the first part of the season debating if they even want to be parents.
As in Modern Family, the couple must explore if they’re ready for the responsibility of parenthood. But the issues they confront are also unique to the specific characters of Kevin and Scotty.
“Given the dynamics of this relationship, what does it mean when one of them is more successful in terms of his career?” Owusu-Breen asks. “Does that necessarily mean that the other one’s going to be staying home more? It’s all fine and good when it’s hypothetical: ‘I want a child. I want to be dad’ It’s a whole other thing [when it’s real]:‘Do I want to be a dad? Am I ready to be a dad?’”
Once the couple does decide to go through with it, the show will feature their search for a birth mother and their exploration of egg and sperm donation – the details of what it means to start a family.
So will there be an actual child this season? “Things change quickly in television, so I don’t want to say definitively that there won’t be a child,” Owusu-Breen says. “But we’re not planning for it this season. Right now the plan is next season.”
She’s also quick to point out that the issue of gay parenthood is a very personal one for many of those involved with the show.
“There are gay writers on our show that are trying to have children, and heterosexual couples who have adopted,” Owusu-Breen says. “All the many permutations of becoming a parent are reflected on our writing staff. This is an issue close to the writing staff’s heart. There are a lot of stories being told that come from truth.”
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