San Diego physician Ian Jenkins describes his family’s home life as pretty boring and domestic. But its very uniqueness has drawn the attention of both the California courts and a national book publisher, which will release Jenkins’ eye-opening memoir, “Three Dads and a Baby.”
Jenkins, who is an internal medicine doctor, is part of a “throuple,” the word for three people in a committed polyamorous relationship. Together with his longtime partners Alan and Jeremy, Jenkins is raising two children — 3-1/2-year-old daughter Piper and 20-month-old son Parker.
Jenkins’ book, being released by Cleis Press on Tuesday, details the trio’s years-long journey into parenting, with the help of in vitro fertilization, surrogates and a precedent-setting legal battle to have all three of their names on their children’s birth certificates.
But the 45-year-old Jenkins said the subject most people are interested in reading about isn’t parenting but how he ended up in a throuple in the first place and how a relationship like that works.
“Three Dads and a Baby: Adventures in Modern Parenting” book jacket.
(Cleis Press)
Many Americans may have had their first exposure to a throuple last year with the three-man wedding ceremony in the often-outrageous Netflix documentary series “Tiger King.” But Jenkins said his personal life is far less entertaining.
“It’s a bit amusing to me because we’re so domestic and ordinary,” he said. “We want to remind everyone that love makes a family, and if it doesn’t look like the one next door, that doesn’t make it strange.”
Jenkins was in his third year of residency at a Boston hospital in 2003 when he met his partner, Alan, now 43 and a San Diego clinical psychologist. Eight years into their relationship, they jointly decided to explore the possibility of dating someone together. Through an online dating website, they met Jeremy, now a 38-year-old zookeeper. The relationship with Jeremy proved to be such a three-way love match that they’re all now equal legal partners in a shared legal trust. (For privacy reasons, Jenkins asked that his partners’ last names not be used and no recent photo of the children be shared.)
As for how the relationship works, Jenkins writes that the throuple keys to harmony are honesty, constant communication and a complete lack of jealousy. Arguments are rare, but any vote of two against one is always final. The book itself was a three-way negotiation about what could be shared and what was kept private. The partners agreed that what happens in the bedroom is off-limits, but Jenkins wrote humorously that he, Alan and Jeremy almost never sleep in the same bed because it would be too crowded and hot with three men and two large goldendoodles fighting for a sliver of mattress.
“Any relationship I was fated to have would be nontraditional,” Jenkins writes in the book on the merits of monogamy versus polyamory. “I picked a lifetime of nontraditional relationships before I picked a college. From one boyfriend to two, it’s just a question of human nature. ... Most of us expect to have a number of relationships over our lives. ... Why give up everything wonderful about one relationship to experience the joys of another?”
One thing that changed in the relationship after Jeremy’s arrival was the question of whether to have children. Jeremy always dreamed of becoming a father and Alan brought it up many times over the years. But Jenkins worried how it would change their relationship and the logistics of making it happen seemed insurmountable enough to table the subject for many years.
Then one day at a backyard barbecue, some friends who had successfully had three children through IVF offered to donate their unused frozen embryos to the men if they could find a surrogate to carry their baby. Suddenly the impossible seemed probable and their “adventures in modern parenting,” as Jenkins’ book is subtitled, began.
But having a child proved to be a marathon rather than a sprint. The frozen embryos were no longer viable and the first pregnancy failed. Undaunted, they found a close friend named Meghan who was willing to donate her eggs for two rounds of IVF treatment. All three men donated sperm with the agreement that may the fastest swimmers win. Two healthy embryos were conceived, one for a girl who is Jeremy’s biological daughter, and the other for a boy who is Alan’s biological son. Through two different surrogates, Delilah and Latisha, daughter Piper was born in August 2017 and son Parker arrived in June 2019.
In the book, Jenkins details the mountain of costs they racked up having a child through IVF and surrogacy — more than $120,000 for Piper alone — but none of them have any regrets. Jenkins is grateful that they had the means to afford it. But he included the tally sheet in the book to critique how the extensive — and he feels often unnecessary — tests, fees, counseling sessions and legal hearings make IVF out of reach for most aspiring parents.
Jenkins said they have no plans for any more children. They like that both of their kids have the same biological mother, but Meghan is now 40 and is no longer able to donate her eggs. She also now lives on the East Coast, but she stays in touch with the children by regularly uploading to her YouTube channel videos of herself reading them bedtime stories. The children also have a daytime nanny who takes Piper to school and is teaching her Spanish and sign language.
The benefit of three dads, Jenkins said, is that the children never lack for undivided attention and no parent is locked into performing the same tasks night after night. All three men share evenly in household chores, cooking and children’s bath and bed times. But each dad also has their own specialty. Jenkins’ personal favorite activity these days is teaching Piper to read.
Because the three men share everything evenly, they agreed that all three of their names should be on their children’s birth certificates. There was just one problem. As far as their lawyers were able to find, there was no record of a birth certificate anywhere in the U.S. that allowed three parents to be listed on a birth certificate.
While there were past legal cases where step-parents, grandparents and new partners successfully petitioned courts to have their names added to a birth certificate after the child was born, no three-name form existed for a child on the day of birth, attorneys said.
To change the rules before Piper was born, the men hired an attorney who petitioned a San Diego surrogacy court judge to approve their three-name birth certificate request. She refused due to a lack of precedent, but in an appeal before a San Diego Superior Court judge, their request was approved, just in time for Piper’s birth. When Parker was born in 2019, getting the three-name birth certificate was a slam-dunk.
Jenkins said their legal case is now a topic of discussion at judges conferences. Sharing the story of their precedent-setting legal victory with other nontraditional families was one of the main reasons he wanted to write the book. While their case can help other families in California, it can’t be used in other states, so more trailblazers will be needed nationwide.
“We do hope that people might benefit from telling our story,” Jenkins said. “We want the word to get out so people can press their case.”
In recent weeks, Jenkins has been doing press interviews for the book. Feedback from the stories and podcasts has been “95 percent strongly positive and enthusiastic,” he said, although he’s received some criticism from an unexpected place. Some members of the LGBTQ community worry that Jenkins’ book will draw negative attention to gay parents who don’t want attention drawn to their families’ lives.
But Jenkins said he thinks it’s important that people understand that parenting and families in America are changing, and that’s not a bad thing.
“What stands out to me is the importance to all of us about raising the kids with a loving attitude and mindset that we all need to be good to each other to have a functional society because it’s so divided right now,” Jenkins said. “We want them to grow up with an appreciation and love for everyone.”
“Three Dads and a Baby” by Ian Jenkins (Cleis Press, 2021; 286 pages)
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