When I was coming of age, that identity and being a father seemed incompatible. The unlikely prospect of being a gay parent troubled me then because I thought that growing up with a gay father would make my putative children figures of fun. This perception contained elements of internalized homophobia, but it was also consistent with social reality. I was learning to become militant on my own behalf, but was anxious about implicating others. As a child, I had been teased mercilessly for being different, and I didn't want to foist a version of that experience on anyone else. In the twenty years that followed, social reality changed enough so that I no longer felt those compunctions. It changed largely because other gay people made the leap to having children before I was prepared to do so. Nonetheless, when I more recently expressed a wish for biological children, that wish was repeatedly devalued, often by people who reminded me earnestly that loads of abandoned children needed good homes. I was struck by how regularly these arguments were made by people who had produced biological progeny and had never contemplated adoption. The wish to create a child often struck other people as quaint or self-indulgent.

Since homosexuality does not appear to be transmissible, I was consigning my presumed children to the potential discomfort of coming from a strange place rather than of being a strange thing, and some critics felt that this mitigated the problem. I dislike the implication that since my children were likely to be straight, it was okay for me to produce them. Acceptance of horizontal identity only so long as it never becomes vertical is chauvinism. I would not have been dissuaded from having children if I had known that they were likely to be gay; nor was I dissuaded by the likelihood that they would be straight. Nonetheless, my apprehension about being a gay father far outstripped any concerns that a biological child of mine would be at risk for dyslexia, depression, or the types of cancer from which my mother and grandfather died.

The right to reproduce should be among the inalienable ones. Yet the prejudice against anomalous people is revealed most clearly when members of horizontal identity groups who have the potential to pass on aberrant traits decide to have their own children. Many people are outraged when a disabled or challenged adult produces a disabled or challenged child.

Newscaster and actress Bree Walker was born with ectrodactyly, or lobster-claw syndrome, which results in deformities of the hands and feet. She bore a child with the syndrome, and when she became pregnant again in 1990, she knew that her second child might also inherit the condition. She chose to keep the pregnancy and became the fodder of outrage. "It was shocking to me that anyone would make such negative public assumptions about an unborn child and his ability to cope with the world, regardless of the shape of his hands or feet," Walker said later. She herself has had a successful career and marriage, is telegenic, and has many strengths to pass on. "Is it fair to pass along a genetically disfiguring disease to your child?" one talk-show host asked. "People judge you by your appearance. They judge you by the words that you use. God knows they're going to judge you by the shape of your hands, and the shape of your body, and the shape of your face. They just do." Implicit in many of these criticisms was that Walker had had no right to get pregnant, even that she was morally obligated to abort-no matter how much she wanted her child, or how competent she was to raise it. "I felt that my pregnancy had been terrorized," Walker later said. feet. She bore a child with the syndrome, and when she became pregnant again in 1990, she knew that her second child might also inherit the condition. She chose to keep the pregnancy and became the fodder of outrage. "It was shocking to me that anyone would make such negative public assumptions about an unborn child and his ability to cope with the world, regardless of the shape of his hands or feet," Walker said later. She herself has had a successful career and marriage, is telegenic, and has many strengths to pass on. "Is it fair to pass along a genetically disfiguring disease to your child?" one talk-show host asked. "People judge you by your appearance. They judge you by the words that you use. God knows they're going to judge you by the shape of your hands, and the shape of your body, and the shape of your face. They just do." Implicit in many of these criticisms was that Walker had had no right to get pregnant, even that she was morally obligated to abort-no matter how much she wanted her child, or how competent she was to raise it. "I felt that my pregnancy had been terrorized," Walker later said.

The talk shows reduced Walker's children to their disability. As polio survivor and disability activist Bill Holt said, "For anyone to determine that Bree Walker should not have children because of one physical characteristic is to ignore all of the other wonderful things about the woman. Why not say she should should have lots of children because she has one of the liveliest intellects and prettiest faces on television?" The media condemnation largely failed to acknowledge that veterans of a condition their children may inherit are uniquely qualified to understand the risks and rewards of life with that condition. Their choices are better-informed than our judgments of them. have lots of children because she has one of the liveliest intellects and prettiest faces on television?" The media condemnation largely failed to acknowledge that veterans of a condition their children may inherit are uniquely qualified to understand the risks and rewards of life with that condition. Their choices are better-informed than our judgments of them.

Some people, however, conceive children as a means of validating their own lives. Joanna Karpasea-Jones, an English disability activist, chose to have five biological children. She did so in part as a means of asserting the social model of disability, saying that within her household, impairments were not disabilities. She and her husband, like most people, wanted biological offspring. "Nor did adoption seem a choice," she wrote, "as then I would never be pregnant or give birth-a thought that was heartbreaking to me." Karpasea-Jones has cerebral palsy caused by premature birth; it is not hereditary. Her partner, however, has hereditary motor and sensory neuropathy, which causes muscle wastage and severe bone deformations. Any biological child would have a fifty-fifty chance of inheriting that condition. "Nearly everyone in our family was disabled anyway: me, my partner, his brother and father, my aunt and uncle," Karpasea-Jones wrote. "If the child was affected, she certainly wouldn't feel the odd one out. Normality is subjective; to us, disability was normal."

The vertical identities within her family doubtless guarantee a sense of belonging, as in a family of dwarfs or deaf people. But her lack of engagement with the likely reality of her children's hurting bodies is distressing. In her extensive writings, she acknowledges that her condition and her partner's have caused them considerable physical pain, which she seems to have been unambivalent about passing on. She subverts her children's bodies to the social model of disability. I have met many proud people with special challenges and seen their happy families. I have also seen pervasive aching, not all of it owing to external circumstances. In fact, Karpasea-Jones's decision was not well received by her own family. "My own mother told me we had been irresponsible to take such a risk and asked me to get an abortion," she wrote. "My partner's mother said that I wouldn't be able to carry a baby to term. I felt pleased when I found myself 11 days overdue without so much as a twinge. That'll show them, I thought." Ego confusion between parents and children is pervasive in every demographic; it's no mean feat to find the difference between helping your children formulate their dreams and trapping them in your own. Karpasea-Jones's children are unlikely to be distressed that they exist, but may well be resentful if they conclude that she bore them in pursuit of an agenda. Yet self-absorbed parents everywhere exploit their children for reflected glory on the soccer field, in the chess club, at the piano. Narcissism is a myopia hardly limited to disability activists.

Deciding whether to have a child is a loaded question for anyone whose genetics are considered suspect. The disability scholar Adrienne Asch wrote in a 1999 essay, "Chronic illness and disability are not equivalent to acute illness or sudden injury. Most people with spina bifida, achondroplasia, Down syndrome, and many other mobility and sensory impairments perceive themselves as healthy, not sick, and describe their conditions as givens of their lives-the equipment with which they meet the world." There is truth in what Asch says, but it is not the whole truth. In 2003, I was sent to interview a young woman named Laura Rothenberg about her cystic fibrosis, and we ended up enjoying a brief friendship that was a function of her illness. Even though both her parents were carriers (CF is a recessive genetic condition), she had a horizontal experience of the illness because neither of them had manifested the disease. She wrote a poignant memoir, Breathing for a Living, Breathing for a Living, in which she praised many things inherent in the identity that CF gave her and announced how many things she valued in her life as it had been. Nonetheless, she did not see herself as healthy and would have welcomed a cure-not because she was rejecting this part of herself, but because she wanted to feel good and live long. Her in which she praised many things inherent in the identity that CF gave her and announced how many things she valued in her life as it had been. Nonetheless, she did not see herself as healthy and would have welcomed a cure-not because she was rejecting this part of herself, but because she wanted to feel good and live long. Her deterioration and death at the age of twenty-two bore little similarity to the experience of a healthy achondroplastic dwarf. Yet, consumed with grief just after her death, her father said to me, "When Laura was conceived, they didn't have an amniocentesis test for CF. But they developed one. If we'd known, Laura would not have been born. I still have the thought, 'My God-she could have been denied life.' What a tragedy that would have been." deterioration and death at the age of twenty-two bore little similarity to the experience of a healthy achondroplastic dwarf. Yet, consumed with grief just after her death, her father said to me, "When Laura was conceived, they didn't have an amniocentesis test for CF. But they developed one. If we'd known, Laura would not have been born. I still have the thought, 'My God-she could have been denied life.' What a tragedy that would have been."

Whether to consign someone else to struggle with the extraordinary burdens you have carried is a personal moral issue. Yet all parents make that decision on some scale. Most choose to procreate even though the affluent could conceive children in vitro with donated Superman sperm and Wonder Woman eggs. Asinine people gamely produce asinine children even though stupidity makes life terribly hard; morbidly obese people often produce corpulent children who may be marginalized because of their body weight; depressive parents produce children who may grapple with chronic sadness. The poor have children despite the obvious disadvantages of poverty.

It is not a great leap from choosing to keep a pregnancy despite a prenatal diagnosis to selecting for difference. An article in the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times pointed out, "Creating made-to-order babies with genetic defects would seem to be an ethical minefield, but to some parents with disabilities-say, deafness or dwarfism-it just means making babies like them." In a survey of nearly two hundred American clinics that offer preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), a process that has been available for two decades, 3 percent admitted having used the test to select for an embryo with a disability. Dr. Robert J. Stillman, of the Shady Grove Fertility Center, which has offices in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, said he had denied requests to select for deafness and dwarfism. "One of the prime dictates of parenting is to make a better world for our children," he said. "Dwarfism and deafness are not the norm." pointed out, "Creating made-to-order babies with genetic defects would seem to be an ethical minefield, but to some parents with disabilities-say, deafness or dwarfism-it just means making babies like them." In a survey of nearly two hundred American clinics that offer preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), a process that has been available for two decades, 3 percent admitted having used the test to select for an embryo with a disability. Dr. Robert J. Stillman, of the Shady Grove Fertility Center, which has offices in Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, said he had denied requests to select for deafness and dwarfism. "One of the prime dictates of parenting is to make a better world for our children," he said. "Dwarfism and deafness are not the norm."

By what logic does making a better world have to do with hewing to the norm? Michael Berube, whose son has Down syndrome, writes, "The question is whether we will maintain a social system that makes allowance for unpredictability, variance, competing moral imperatives, difficult decisions, private decisions, and even perverse decisions." The debate about embryo selection pertains to that most elusive and most socially determined of human rights, which is dignity. In 2008, Britain amended the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act to make selecting for a disability illegal. People who choose PGD to avoid Down syndrome, for example, would get a full genetic profile and would not be permitted to implant an embryo with any known disability. Deaf activists were horrified. "There is no going around this," wrote one blogger. "We are being devalued, unworthy to be humans simply because we are imperfect." permitted to implant an embryo with any known disability. Deaf activists were horrified. "There is no going around this," wrote one blogger. "We are being devalued, unworthy to be humans simply because we are imperfect."

Sharon Duchesneau and Candace McCullough, lesbian Deaf women, wanted a child, and in 2002 they asked a friend who was fifth-generation deaf to be their sperm donor. They produced two deaf children, Gauvin and Jehanne. They decided to share their experience with a reporter from the Washington Post, Washington Post, fomenting an onslaught of attacks much like those on Bree Walker. Fox News ran a story under the headline, "Victims from Birth: Engineering Defects in Helpless Children Crosses the Line." Letters published in the fomenting an onslaught of attacks much like those on Bree Walker. Fox News ran a story under the headline, "Victims from Birth: Engineering Defects in Helpless Children Crosses the Line." Letters published in the Post Post were similarly hostile. One reader wrote, "That three people (I include the sperm donor) could deliberately deprive another person of a natural faculty is monstrous and cruel and reveals their basic resentment toward people who can hear. There are laws that give access to medical care for children of parents who would deny it on religious grounds. There should be similar protections for children subject to the abuse of being genetically programmed to replicate the disabilities of misguided parents." were similarly hostile. One reader wrote, "That three people (I include the sperm donor) could deliberately deprive another person of a natural faculty is monstrous and cruel and reveals their basic resentment toward people who can hear. There are laws that give access to medical care for children of parents who would deny it on religious grounds. There should be similar protections for children subject to the abuse of being genetically programmed to replicate the disabilities of misguided parents."

Legal scholar John Corvino pointed out that the public rage was rooted in a fundamental metaphysical fallacy. "They could have chosen a different donor," he argued. "Or they could have chosen adoption rather than pregnancy. But neither of those choices would have resulted in Gauvin's having hearing. On the contrary, they would have resulted in his not being born at all." The Deaf activist Patrick Boudreault said, "No one is talking, ever, about deliberately deafening a child born hearing."

Few people would assert that a Deaf married couple should not procreate because of the risk of producing deaf children. Some would stipulate that the line be drawn between what one accepts and what one seeks, arguing that the deaf children of heterosexual deaf parents occur by "natural" process-but love and rules do not mix well, and the concept of natural natural is itself a constantly shifting, unnatural idea often used to veneer prejudice. Those who objected to Duchesneau's and McCullough's choice may also not have understood the life experience of those two women, who are college-educated, professionally successful, apparently happy, socially active, and in a good relationship. The original article explained, "At the same time that many would-be parents are screening out qualities they don't want, many are also selecting for qualities they do want. And in many cases, the aim is to produce not so much a superior baby as a specific baby. A white baby. A black baby. is itself a constantly shifting, unnatural idea often used to veneer prejudice. Those who objected to Duchesneau's and McCullough's choice may also not have understood the life experience of those two women, who are college-educated, professionally successful, apparently happy, socially active, and in a good relationship. The original article explained, "At the same time that many would-be parents are screening out qualities they don't want, many are also selecting for qualities they do want. And in many cases, the aim is to produce not so much a superior baby as a specific baby. A white baby. A black baby. A boy. A girl. Or a baby that's been even more minutely imagined. 'In most cases,' says Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, 'what the couples are interested in is someone who physically looks like them.' In this sense Candy and Sharon are like many parents, hoping for a child who will be in their own image." A boy. A girl. Or a baby that's been even more minutely imagined. 'In most cases,' says Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, 'what the couples are interested in is someone who physically looks like them.' In this sense Candy and Sharon are like many parents, hoping for a child who will be in their own image."

This is a difficult argument to buck. Sharon said, "It would be nice to have a child who is the same as us." Candy said, "I want to be the same as my child; I want the baby to enjoy what we enjoy." These don't seem like radical statements until you learn they came from deaf people. In an article in Nature Nature, Carina Dennis offers further insight into the two women's motives: "Communication and the pursuit of intimacy are central to being human. If you genuinely believe that your children will have at least as rich an emotional life if they cannot hear, and that you will be better able to communicate with them, why not make this choice?" Candy had grown up in a deaf household with uneducated, working-class parents; Sharon had grown up with hearing parents and did not come into herself until she entered the signing world of Gallaudet. Both women looked up to the educated Deaf of Deaf. They felt they had worked to find their version of happiness and could convey it to the next generation. Parents want children who will be able to benefit from what they have to give.

William Saletan, national correspondent at Slate, Slate, wrote, "Old fear: designer babies. New fear: deformer babies." Of course, "deformer" babies are designer babies, too; they just don't follow the most popular designs. And designer babies aren't going anywhere; they will undoubtedly become increasingly common as technology advances. The very phrase wrote, "Old fear: designer babies. New fear: deformer babies." Of course, "deformer" babies are designer babies, too; they just don't follow the most popular designs. And designer babies aren't going anywhere; they will undoubtedly become increasingly common as technology advances. The very phrase designer babies designer babies is pejorative, but not so long ago is pejorative, but not so long ago test-tube babies test-tube babies was used with disdain, before IVF became standard operating procedure for an aging middle class. In 2006, nearly half the PGD clinics surveyed by the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University offered a gender-selection service. In 2007, the Bridge Centre fertility clinic in London screened embryos so a baby wouldn't suffer from a serious squint that afflicted the father, and University College London recently announced the birth of one of the first babies selected to be free of a genetic breast-cancer vulnerability. The Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles declared that they were planning to help couples select for gender, hair color, and eye color, though such a salvo ensued that they suspended the program. Such choices are inevitably the future. How different are they from standard protocols for sperm and egg donors, which screen donors for undesirable hereditary traits and provide information on physical attractiveness, coloring, height, weight, and college entrance test scores? Most people are attracted to was used with disdain, before IVF became standard operating procedure for an aging middle class. In 2006, nearly half the PGD clinics surveyed by the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University offered a gender-selection service. In 2007, the Bridge Centre fertility clinic in London screened embryos so a baby wouldn't suffer from a serious squint that afflicted the father, and University College London recently announced the birth of one of the first babies selected to be free of a genetic breast-cancer vulnerability. The Fertility Institutes in Los Angeles declared that they were planning to help couples select for gender, hair color, and eye color, though such a salvo ensued that they suspended the program. Such choices are inevitably the future. How different are they from standard protocols for sperm and egg donors, which screen donors for undesirable hereditary traits and provide information on physical attractiveness, coloring, height, weight, and college entrance test scores? Most people are attracted to others with desirable traits; our very impulse toward sexual congress is a subjective screening process. others with desirable traits; our very impulse toward sexual congress is a subjective screening process.

A 2004 study conducted at Johns Hopkins notes that the growing debate about reproductive genetic testing has largely been framed by two opposing views: those who see it as "an opportunity to prevent suffering and who oppose limitations on research, technological advance and reproductive choice," and those who "believe that reproductive genetic testing will have adverse ethical and social impacts and who support restrictions on its development and use." In The Case Against Perfection, The Case Against Perfection, the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel writes, "Prospective parents remain free to choose whether to use prenatal testing and whether to act on the results. But they are not free to escape the burden of choice that the new technology creates." the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel writes, "Prospective parents remain free to choose whether to use prenatal testing and whether to act on the results. But they are not free to escape the burden of choice that the new technology creates."

Human beings like to fix things; if we learn to control the weather, we will soon be blind to the majesty of hurricanes and intolerant of the implacable silence of a blizzard. Forty years ago, the toxicologist Marc Lappe cautioned, "It would be unthinkable and immoral if in our zeal to 'conquer' genetic defects, we failed to recognize that the 'defectives' we identify and abort are no less human than we." And yet in 2005, the journalist Patricia E. Bauer described in the Washington Post Washington Post the pressures she had had to negotiate when she decided to keep a daughter prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome. She wrote, "Prenatal testing is making your right to abort a disabled child more like your duty to abort a disabled child." No one should be forced to keep a pregnancy she dreads, and no one should be pressured to terminate a pregnancy she desires. Those who are prepared to love children with horizontal qualities give dignity to them, whether or not they have used prenatal testing. With access to reproductive technologies, we are conjecturing what kind of children will make us happy, and what kind we will make happy. It may be irresponsible to avoid this guesswork, but it is nave to think it is anything more. Hypothetical love has little in common with love. the pressures she had had to negotiate when she decided to keep a daughter prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome. She wrote, "Prenatal testing is making your right to abort a disabled child more like your duty to abort a disabled child." No one should be forced to keep a pregnancy she dreads, and no one should be pressured to terminate a pregnancy she desires. Those who are prepared to love children with horizontal qualities give dignity to them, whether or not they have used prenatal testing. With access to reproductive technologies, we are conjecturing what kind of children will make us happy, and what kind we will make happy. It may be irresponsible to avoid this guesswork, but it is nave to think it is anything more. Hypothetical love has little in common with love.

Which parents should have children and which children should be born will always be debated. We question the decision of people with HIV to produce kids they may not live to raise; we try to prevent teen pregnancies; we judge whether people with disabilities should pass on those differences. It is possible to sterilize people with opprobrium as well as with a scalpel, and it is almost equally cruel. Educating people on the challenges their children may embody is sensible, but preventing them from having children because we think we know the value of those lives smacks of fascism. It is not happenstance that you need a license to get married, but not to have a child.

The United States has less upward mobility than ever before, and less than most other industrialized nations. A 2011 report from the Brookings Institution said, "American mobility is exceptional; where we stand out is our limited mobility from the bottom." Nearly all the families I met are victims of the beliefs that have spawned that crisis of mobility: the assumption that betterment is a project undertaken by individuals on their own, in which the rest of us need not implicate ourselves. Yet, no one in any of the categories this book explores would have had a better life a half century ago. The dizzying technological advances that threaten many of those identities have coincided with an identity politics that shapes a more tolerant world. We live in an increasingly diverse society, and the lessons in tolerance that come with that diversity have extended even to populations too disenfranchised to make their own claims-a change larger in scope than any that the suffragettes or the civil rights activists envisioned. Disabled people are on television; transgender people hold public office; members of the helping professions are working with criminals, prodigies, and people conceived in rape. Jobs programs exist for people with schizophrenia or autism.

The idea that we live in a shameless time is widely lamented. Why are so many people going on TV to talk about and manifest their idiocy, their pathos, even their cruelty? Why do we embrace rich people who have stolen their fortunes? We may not be ashamed enough of what is authentically reprehensible, but we are likewise increasingly unashamed of what never should have discomfited us in the first place. The opposite of identity politics is embarrassment. We are closer than ever to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Fewer and fewer people are mortified by who they truly are.

Extraordinary is a numbers game. You may argue over whether something extraordinary is good or bad, but you cannot viably argue about whether it is extraordinary-and yet the term is endlessly subject to false claims. Ordinary people insist that they are unique, while extraordinary people maintain that they are really just like everyone else. Dull people would like to be thought remarkable, while exceptional people long for the modest comforts of fitting in. Everyone whose baby is typical can recount the incredibly special things his child does, and everyone whose baby is unmistakably peculiar will explain why grave illness or astonishing gifts do not really create a chasm between such offspring and other children. This mutual counterfeiting reflects a larger ambivalence, which is that we long for and resist difference; we aspire to and fear individuality. A child's most challenging differences from his parents, by definition, manifest in areas that are unfamiliar to is a numbers game. You may argue over whether something extraordinary is good or bad, but you cannot viably argue about whether it is extraordinary-and yet the term is endlessly subject to false claims. Ordinary people insist that they are unique, while extraordinary people maintain that they are really just like everyone else. Dull people would like to be thought remarkable, while exceptional people long for the modest comforts of fitting in. Everyone whose baby is typical can recount the incredibly special things his child does, and everyone whose baby is unmistakably peculiar will explain why grave illness or astonishing gifts do not really create a chasm between such offspring and other children. This mutual counterfeiting reflects a larger ambivalence, which is that we long for and resist difference; we aspire to and fear individuality. A child's most challenging differences from his parents, by definition, manifest in areas that are unfamiliar to them. Our tendency to misrepresent children as more or less original than they are reflects our misgivings about the relationship between individuality and happiness. them. Our tendency to misrepresent children as more or less original than they are reflects our misgivings about the relationship between individuality and happiness.

In 2008, the Associated Press reported that a baby with two faces had been born in a village in northern India. Lali Singh had diprosopus, or craniofacial duplication, a rare condition in which a single head has two noses, two mouths, two pairs of lips, and two pairs of eyes. The director of the hospital where she was born said, "She is leading a normal life with no breathing difficulties." Whatever constitutes a "normal life" in Saini Sunpura, it almost certainly does not include "doing well and being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess of valor, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms." A hundred people a day were flocking to the house to touch Lali's feet, offer money, and receive blessings; the village chief had asked the state government for funds to build her a temple. The article mentions only parenthetically that craniofacial duplication is often linked to serious health complications.

Had Lali been born in Duluth or Wichita or Beijing or Paris, her birth would have been a worrisome situation rather than a cause for celebration. Lali's mother, Sushma, said, "My daughter is fine-like any other child." Her father, Vinod, took Lali to a New Delhi hospital, but turned down the offer of a CAT scan to determine whether her internal organs were normal and did not pursue treatment for her cleft palate, which interfered with her ability to feed. "I don't feel the need of that at this stage as my daughter is behaving like a normal child," he explained. Lali died two months later, mostly of problems that might have been assuaged had she received appropriate early medical care.

The newspaper account of Lali's short life was less surprising to me than it would have been ten years ago because I encountered versions of it again and again in my research. The beauty of this story-the parents' apparently instantaneous acceptance of their unusual offspring-became tragic when they confused the rightness of their child with normality. Lali's parents believed that their love and tolerance defined their daughter, when those qualities really only defined them as loving parents. When broad-mindedness blinds us to our offspring's needs, our love becomes denial. Acknowledging difference need not threaten love; indeed, it can enrich it.

Ideally, profound acceptance allows children to become most fully themselves. Within his or her own family, someone's dwarfism or autism or prodigiousness or transgenderism may be secondary. Such people are ideally, first and foremost, the children of their parents, fully recognized citizens of the tiny nation that is family. Parents need not merely love their children despite their defects but may find the surprising rightness in those imperfections. A wise psychiatrist once said to me, "People want to get better, but they don't want to change." But I would propose that only by allowing people born with horizontal identities merely love their children despite their defects but may find the surprising rightness in those imperfections. A wise psychiatrist once said to me, "People want to get better, but they don't want to change." But I would propose that only by allowing people born with horizontal identities not not to change does one allow them to get better. Any of us can be a better version of himself, but none of us can be someone else. to change does one allow them to get better. Any of us can be a better version of himself, but none of us can be someone else.

Mainstreaming, inclusion, deinstitutionalization, the disability rights movement, identity politics-all these forces both emphasize and normalize difference. They focus on securing accommodation of unusual needs, while asserting that our most basic needs are all the same. They aspire to change the world so that more people can feel unremarkable in it. Many of the parents I interviewed were dedicated to extending the optimal conditions they had achieved at home into the larger community, and so they had become activists-some as a life's calling, others merely by agreeing to speak on the record. They did so in hopes that a kinder society would help their children across their life span. An integrated educational system benefits many people with horizontal identities; it likewise helps those who share a classroom with them. Similarly, building a compassionate society benefits not only those who are newly tolerated, but also those who are newly tolerating. Incorporating exceptional people into the social fabric is expensive and time-consuming. The emotional and logistical calisthenics can be draining. Yet if parents often end up grateful for their problematical children, then so, in the end, can we all be grateful for the courage such people may embody, the generosity they may teach us, even the ways they complicate the world.

In common parlance, diversity diversity means that clubs should admit racial minorities and that colleges should admit some gay people. Selflessness is not the sole engine in honoring diversity, as is clear when the term indicates a balanced investment strategy or refers to the multiplicity of species in our forests, seas, and wetlands. The town where I went to college was long famous for its elm trees; indeed, it was called the Elm City until Dutch elm disease reached North America and denuded the town's streets and parks. When change happens, monoculture is a problem. In an era of accelerating transformation, when social values are shifting dramatically and the physical environment is altering at a breakneck pace, it is impossible to foretell what will prove adaptive. I am not championing dwarfism or deafness or criminality or gayness as the answer to any pivotal problem. What I do know is that it would be a mistake to turn us all into elms. It can look pretty, the long alleys of matching trees, their noble trunks aligning in symmetrical resemblance, but it is an irresponsible way to plan. means that clubs should admit racial minorities and that colleges should admit some gay people. Selflessness is not the sole engine in honoring diversity, as is clear when the term indicates a balanced investment strategy or refers to the multiplicity of species in our forests, seas, and wetlands. The town where I went to college was long famous for its elm trees; indeed, it was called the Elm City until Dutch elm disease reached North America and denuded the town's streets and parks. When change happens, monoculture is a problem. In an era of accelerating transformation, when social values are shifting dramatically and the physical environment is altering at a breakneck pace, it is impossible to foretell what will prove adaptive. I am not championing dwarfism or deafness or criminality or gayness as the answer to any pivotal problem. What I do know is that it would be a mistake to turn us all into elms. It can look pretty, the long alleys of matching trees, their noble trunks aligning in symmetrical resemblance, but it is an irresponsible way to plan.

I began work on this book at about the same time I met John, who is now my husband. I had always wanted children, had contemplated having a child with an old friend, had dabbled in research on fertility-but the possibility had lingered in abstraction. John gave me more courage to be extraordinary, and more confidence about being ordinary, but from the stories of these hundreds of exceptional families I gradually understood that those were not incompatible goals, that being anomalous does not deprive anyone of the right or ability to be typical. Emily Perl Kingsley helped get children with Down syndrome on television so that no one else would feel as alone as she had. Neurodiversity and Deaf rights activists claimed the acceptance of aberration as their due. Ruth Schekter said, "Children like ours are not preordained as a gift. They're a gift because that's what we have chosen." Sue Klebold said, "Columbine made me feel more connected to mankind than anything else possibly could have." Anne O'Hara talked about how helping her transgender daughter "has brought more blessings into my life than I could possibly give back to her." Their tenor of persuasive wonder resonated deeply with me.

I had struggled for years with childlessness, and just when I had reconciled myself to that sadness, I began to see its inverse hope and started to figure out how I could be fruitful and multiply. What I couldn't know then was whether I truly wanted wanted children, or whether I simply wanted to prove wrong everyone who had pitied my sexual orientation. When you have longed for the moon and are suddenly offered all its silver light, it's hard to remember what you intended to do with it. I had a history of depression. Was I giving up on that cheerless self in favor of some new happiness, or was I going to be stuck with a lot of sadness for which I would need to find new structures? I could not bring children into the world if I could not protect them from my adventures in despair. Knowing that parenting is no sport for perfectionists, I had sought lessons in humility from the families I interviewed. In my anxiety, I also kept remembering something my mother said to me when I was heading off for my road test: that two things in life look incredibly daunting until you realize that almost everyone does them-driving and having children. children, or whether I simply wanted to prove wrong everyone who had pitied my sexual orientation. When you have longed for the moon and are suddenly offered all its silver light, it's hard to remember what you intended to do with it. I had a history of depression. Was I giving up on that cheerless self in favor of some new happiness, or was I going to be stuck with a lot of sadness for which I would need to find new structures? I could not bring children into the world if I could not protect them from my adventures in despair. Knowing that parenting is no sport for perfectionists, I had sought lessons in humility from the families I interviewed. In my anxiety, I also kept remembering something my mother said to me when I was heading off for my road test: that two things in life look incredibly daunting until you realize that almost everyone does them-driving and having children.

I had been unpopular as a child, and children continued to intimidate me. I felt that in their eyes, I was still bad at dodgeball, with a funny gait, and emotionally gauche-that I had retained all the qualities that had made children shun me in my own childhood, qualities I had eventually understood to be aligned with my sexuality. I was still afraid of being called gay gay by children; my secure identity resonated like by children; my secure identity resonated like an insult when spoken by a child. I avoided children because of how an insult when spoken by a child. I avoided children because of how much much they made me feel. Like any powerful feeling, it was hard to read; what was manifest was its strength rather than its nature. I was usually relieved to leave other people's children after a few hours. Would I feel otherwise if I had my own? My persistent dark fantasy was that I would have children and wouldn't like them and would be stuck with them for the rest of my life. My link to my parents had been a source of great joy to me and to them, and I wanted to carry that forward, but much of my desolation had also drawn on the dynamics of my family, where emotions could run so high that it was hard to tell the difference between what happened to me and what happened to them. I had been consumed by being a son; recently emerged from that whale's mouth, I was afraid to be swallowed by being a father. I was also afraid of becoming the oppressor of a child who was different from me, as I had at times felt oppressed. they made me feel. Like any powerful feeling, it was hard to read; what was manifest was its strength rather than its nature. I was usually relieved to leave other people's children after a few hours. Would I feel otherwise if I had my own? My persistent dark fantasy was that I would have children and wouldn't like them and would be stuck with them for the rest of my life. My link to my parents had been a source of great joy to me and to them, and I wanted to carry that forward, but much of my desolation had also drawn on the dynamics of my family, where emotions could run so high that it was hard to tell the difference between what happened to me and what happened to them. I had been consumed by being a son; recently emerged from that whale's mouth, I was afraid to be swallowed by being a father. I was also afraid of becoming the oppressor of a child who was different from me, as I had at times felt oppressed.

John already had a biological son when I met him. He and the child's biological mother, Laura, had been coworkers, and Laura had observed him for years before she and her partner, Tammy, asked him to help them have a child. Though not especially close to them, he had agreed, and they signed legal documents in which he forswore paternal rights and they forswore claims to support. He had offered to be in the child's life to the extent he was able, if the child and his mothers so wished, but in deference to Tammy's position as adoptive mother, he had remained largely uninvolved. He did not immediately make a point of introducing me to Tammy and Laura, but a few months after our relationship began, we ran into them with their toddler, Oliver, at the 2001 Minnesota State Fair. Oliver, unable to comprehend donor dad, donor dad, called John called John donut dad, donut dad, which made everybody laugh. But then who was I? Eighteen months later, they asked John to be their donor again, and Laura subsequently gave birth to Lucy. I was wary of John's connection to this family, and also fascinated. John had fathered which made everybody laugh. But then who was I? Eighteen months later, they asked John to be their donor again, and Laura subsequently gave birth to Lucy. I was wary of John's connection to this family, and also fascinated. John had fathered children, children, and I looked at them for clues to who he really was. I didn't like them yet, but that was irrelevant to this grip of emotion and biology. and I looked at them for clues to who he really was. I didn't like them yet, but that was irrelevant to this grip of emotion and biology.

I had been considering the possibility of having my own biological children for some years. In 1999, during a business trip to Texas, I attended a dinner that included my college friend Blaine. Blaine had always been magical to me: reflexively kind, with an acute intelligence that she never shows off, and possessed of timeless grace. She had recently divorced and shortly thereafter lost her mother, and she mentioned that the best tribute she could pay to her happy childhood was to become a mother herself. I said, in a lighthearted way at a table full of other people, that I'd be game to be the father to her child. She countered, brightly, that she might just take me up on the offer. That she might actually want to have a child with me was unimaginable; I suggested it with the rhetorical politesse with which I'd invited new acquaintances in remote countries to stop by for a drink if they ever found themselves in Greenwich Village. When I got home, however, I wrote her a letter and said I knew she'd probably been joking, but that I thought she would be the best mother in the world, and I hoped she'd have a child with someone. countered, brightly, that she might just take me up on the offer. That she might actually want to have a child with me was unimaginable; I suggested it with the rhetorical politesse with which I'd invited new acquaintances in remote countries to stop by for a drink if they ever found themselves in Greenwich Village. When I got home, however, I wrote her a letter and said I knew she'd probably been joking, but that I thought she would be the best mother in the world, and I hoped she'd have a child with someone.

Four years later, Blaine flew to New York in 2003 for my surprise fortieth birthday party. We went out to dinner the following night and realized that we both wanted to follow through with the baby project. I had never been so honored or so alarmed. Our arrangements would be similar to John's with Tammy and Laura in some ways, but different in others; I would be the legal father of a child who would bear my last name. Though our child would live in Texas with Blaine, the relationship would be explicitly paternal.

I wasn't ready to tell John right away, and when I did tell him, he exploded, as I had feared he might. He had been a sperm donor. I would be in an ongoing, profound relationship with Blaine that he feared might lethally triangulate our own. So began the most difficult epoch of our relationship. We talked about it for months-John and I, Blaine and I-and the negotiations escalated to Balkan intensity. It took three years to iron out the details, but John, whose benevolence always triumphs, finally relented, and Blaine and I created a pregnancy, working through an IVF clinic. Blaine, meanwhile, had met her partner, Richard, putting a reasonable if unusual balance in place.

The more curious our arrangements became, the more traditional they started to feel. John had previously proposed that we get married, and I decided to honor the idea, though I was still a leery convert to gay marriage. Marrying was in part my way to reassure John of his centrality as we moved forward with the Blaine plan, but it soon became, more profoundly, a means for me to celebrate his handsomeness, wit, and sense of moral purpose; the fact that my family and friends adored him; and the way he could see the same things in their hearts that I did. We tied the knot on June 30, 2007, at a wedding in the countryside, and I thought how if all my traumas had led me to this day, they were not so bad as they had seemed in the instant. In my wedding toast, I said, "The love that dared not speak its name is now broadcasting." Tammy and Laura and their children came; Oliver served as John's ring-bearer. Blaine, four months pregnant with the child she and I had conceived, came with Richard, and John ventured that we'd had the first gay shotgun wedding.

In October, some complications in the pregnancy emerged, so John and I hurried to Fort Worth a month early for the delivery by Caesarean section on November 5, 2007. I watched the obstetrician pull little Blaine out of the convex surface of her mother's swollen belly and was the first person to hold her. I kept trying on the idea that I was now a father, and I didn't know what to do with it; it was as though I had suddenly been told that I was still myself and also a shooting star. I held the new baby; Blaine held her; Richard held her; John held her. Who were we all to this thrilling creature? Who was she to all of us? How did that alter who we were to one another? Already deep in my research, I knew that every child has a touch of the horizontal and reshapes his or her parents. I scanned my daughter's small face for clues as to who she was, and for hints of whom she would make me become.

John and I headed back to New York ten days later. When we got home, I was preoccupied with my new child, but kept imagining that I was being supportive of something wonderful Blaine had done, rather than being engaged with something I had done. I didn't yet understand that the biological thrill of dawning parenthood was only a ghostly suggestion of the passion that is parenthood itself. I had to separate the relief of having escaped that defining tragedy to which my parents had given so much airtime from the more enormous reality of a new human being for whom I was responsible. I did not want to be so attached to little Blaine that her living in Texas became intolerable; I did not want to be so unattached that she felt neglected. I was just self-aware enough to know that what I wanted of my emotions was irrelevant.

Getting married and having babies are both public events. Like many public things, they reify what they expose. I had had a vision of our life, and suddenly everyone else had a vision of it, too. Implicating others in your reality strengthens it, and we had dragged a large number of friends and family into the process through which love creates a household, a process in which interior truth receives a carapace that protects and sustains it. I was grateful that our friends had celebrated our marriage; I was grateful that John welcomed the daughter he had dreaded; I was grateful, too, that John and Blaine had begun to trust each other. I finally noticed how much Blaine had in common with my own mother-the same ability to find humor in the dailiness of life; the same careful restraint with her own emotions; the same wild imagination hidden from almost everyone by decorous elegance and obdurate reserve; the same intelligent empathy tinged with sadness. I had, like many men, found an echo of my mother to produce my child. Blaine's eighty-six-year-old father, whose values I had thought might be challenged by our arrangements, was delighted, and my father was thrilled.

I soon realized that I wanted to bring up a child at home with John, to be a pledge between us. John's original arrangement with Tammy and Laura had answered a question; the arrangement with Blaine was more intimate; and the prospect of having a child who would live fulltime with the two of us was an explosion of everything we'd been taught to expect from life as gay men. I hadn't wanted to get married; then the reality had entranced me. I exacted a child as fair trade, believing John, too, would end up entranced. Because John was less sure about wanting this child than I professed to be, I had to act as cheerleader for the enterprise. I was full of hopeful infatuation with a person who did not yet exist and sure that fatherhood would exalt everything I already cherished about John, but the conversation stalled there. Our love for each other was a prerequisite for a child, but not a reason for one. We could not procreate as a social experiment or a political statement or to make ourselves whole, and I could not be the sole enthusiast in our decision. Then John gave me an antique cradle tied up with a bow for my birthday and said, "If it's a boy, can we call him George, after my grandpa?"

A lawyer laid out the legal advantages of having one woman provide the egg and another the womb, so neither would have a full claim as mother. John had proposed that I be the biological father of this child and said that he might sire the next, if there were one. Like many middle-age couples with fertility issues, we began the blind-dating egg hunt. We flew to San Diego to ingratiate ourselves with our preferred donor agency. Joyful though our decision was, I felt sorry that I would never see what might come of mixing John's genes with my own. I was thankful we could get an egg, regretful that neither of us could produce one; happy we could have a child at all, and sad about the aura of manufacturing that clung to the venture. Without assisted reproductive technology, I would not have the children I have, but it would have been fun to produce them in an ecstatic moment of physical love rather than through draining bureaucracy. It was costly, too, and though the money was well spent, we both rued that economic privilege was the necessary condition of what we preferred to consider an act of love.

My research made me acutely conscious of the quasi-eugenic aspect of the donor search-the ways we were opting for a donor who conformed to our standards of intelligence, character, health, and appearance. For me, these personal decisions had worrisome political overtones. I did not want to devalue the extraordinary lives I had come to respect, yet I couldn't deny that I wanted a child who would be familiar enough so that we could soothe him or her with our mutualities. At the same time, I understood that genetic lineage comes with no guarantees. The catalog of attractive attributes touting each donor made me feel as though we were choosing online a car we would be driving the rest of our lives. Sunroof? Good highway mileage? Red hair? High SAT scores? Grandparents who lived past eighty? The whole quest was absurd, depressing, morally troubling. Yet, the care of choosing the egg donor seemed like one concrete gesture we could make in a time of petrifying abstraction, an iota of knowledge in this vast mystery. of attractive attributes touting each donor made me feel as though we were choosing online a car we would be driving the rest of our lives. Sunroof? Good highway mileage? Red hair? High SAT scores? Grandparents who lived past eighty? The whole quest was absurd, depressing, morally troubling. Yet, the care of choosing the egg donor seemed like one concrete gesture we could make in a time of petrifying abstraction, an iota of knowledge in this vast mystery.

We told Laura and Tammy about our plan, and Laura said to John, "We couldn't have had Oliver and Lucy without you, and we'll never be able to thank you enough for that, but I could be your surrogate to show how much you and Andrew mean to us." It was a gesture of spectacular generosity, and we accepted it. There followed medical screenings of Laura, the egg donor, and me; samples (the bright hospital room, the leatherette briefcase of dated girlie magazines provided by the staff); fertility treatments for Laura; embryo transfers; and ultrasounds. Like many of the families I had met, mine was touched in equal measure by changes in social norms and changes in technology. Their fortunate concurrence was the precondition of our children.

We got pregnant on our second IVF protocol. Although we had been extremely deliberate in egg selection, we ultimately decided not to have amniocentesis. This decision caught me by surprise when I made it with John and Laura. The risk of having a disabled child (highly unlikely according to less invasive but less conclusive tests) no longer seemed frightening enough to risk a miscarriage. I could have imagined terminating if we had received bad amnio results, but I could no longer have done so with the logic that would have guided me before I wrote this book. My research had shattered that clarity, so I succumbed to avoidance.

You never know anyone as admiringly as you do when she is carrying your child, and I marveled at the way Laura wove the life she was building for us into the life she had built for herself. We drew inexorably closer to her and to Tammy and the kids. Oliver and Lucy referred to the yet-to-come baby as their brother. I was shy of their enthusiasm at first, but John and I went to Minneapolis for the late stages of the pregnancy and ended up staying there for more than a month, seeing the four of them almost every day, which gave me a chance to observe how Oliver and Lucy echoed John's wit and gentleness. When they learned that little Blaine called us Daddy and Papa John, they told their mothers they wanted to call us Daddy and Papa, too.

I was not prepared for the idea that all of these children were in various degrees mine, but the sweetness with which John had come to celebrate the Blaines modeled a path to acceptance. Having set out to have two children, I was suddenly contemplating four, and I now believed that I could love them all profoundly, even if I loved them differently. To bring us closer had been part of Laura's purpose in helping us, and it worked. John's insistence that we were all one family made it happen. Without my campaigning, we wouldn't have had little Blaine, or this new child, but without John's optimism, we'd have stayed compartmentalized. That would have been the easier path, and I mistook it for the better one. I taught John a great deal about doing things instead of simply imagining them, and he taught me a great deal about experiencing those things once they were done. By little Blaine, by the imminent baby, by Oliver and Lucy, and by the extraordinary families I'd come to know, I had been changed, and children no longer made me sad. two children, I was suddenly contemplating four, and I now believed that I could love them all profoundly, even if I loved them differently. To bring us closer had been part of Laura's purpose in helping us, and it worked. John's insistence that we were all one family made it happen. Without my campaigning, we wouldn't have had little Blaine, or this new child, but without John's optimism, we'd have stayed compartmentalized. That would have been the easier path, and I mistook it for the better one. I taught John a great deal about doing things instead of simply imagining them, and he taught me a great deal about experiencing those things once they were done. By little Blaine, by the imminent baby, by Oliver and Lucy, and by the extraordinary families I'd come to know, I had been changed, and children no longer made me sad.

The day of George's birth-April 9, 2009-was emotionally charged before it began. My awareness of the perils of childbirth outstripped Laura's and John's; I had heard too many stories that started, "The pregnancy seemed to go so well, and then suddenly, when she went into labor..." I tried to quell my anxiety, but by the time George's head showed, my palms were damp with fear. Laura had chosen to deliver without pain medication, and I found myself newly in awe. For nine months, I had felt the favor she did us as though someone had offered to carry an increasingly heavy bag of groceries up an increasingly steep staircase, but suddenly I understood that she had made a life life for us. Seeing her give birth, I witnessed the pain of the final dilation and pushing and felt the radical newness coming out of her. I saw clearly for the first time something wild and heroic in her, an acreage of heart and valor beyond anything male experience had taught me. Then she pushed twice and out George popped, instantly proving the strength of his lungs with a good cry, and wiggling his arms and legs. The obstetrician pronounced him healthy. And then we noticed his umbilical cord, which was knotted. for us. Seeing her give birth, I witnessed the pain of the final dilation and pushing and felt the radical newness coming out of her. I saw clearly for the first time something wild and heroic in her, an acreage of heart and valor beyond anything male experience had taught me. Then she pushed twice and out George popped, instantly proving the strength of his lungs with a good cry, and wiggling his arms and legs. The obstetrician pronounced him healthy. And then we noticed his umbilical cord, which was knotted.

George had come out at just the right time. If the labor had gone on longer or we had waited a few more days to induce, the knot might have tightened, depriving him of oxygen, destroying his brain, and giving Laura a potentially fatal placental hemorrhage. I looked at that knot the way one often looks at fate-as a thing so nearly missed-and I cut the umbilical cord below the knot, so that danger could be kept far away from our miraculous baby. All I wanted was to hold him and look at him, to try to take from his small and squirming body the transient illusion that he would bring nothing but euphoria into the rest of our lives.

We went through all the semimedicalized and personal rituals that follow a healthy birth. Many photos were taken, and we took off our shirts so he could be on our skin, and we watched him be weighed and measured, and we saw ointments put on his eyes, and we introduced him to Oliver and Lucy. I handed around a box of champagne truffles that Blaine's brother had sent me from London (you can't bring actual champagne into a delivery room), and we called my father and stepmother, my brother, Blaine, and a few others who matter deeply to us. John was instantly enraptured, as I knew he would be, because birth is so mysterious and so much weirder than sorcery or intergalactic warfare that it humbles you instantly. I had felt it with little Blaine and I felt it again here. This person hadn't existed before, and now he did, and I remember thinking what everyone had always thought, that his coming into the world made up for all the previous losses. follow a healthy birth. Many photos were taken, and we took off our shirts so he could be on our skin, and we watched him be weighed and measured, and we saw ointments put on his eyes, and we introduced him to Oliver and Lucy. I handed around a box of champagne truffles that Blaine's brother had sent me from London (you can't bring actual champagne into a delivery room), and we called my father and stepmother, my brother, Blaine, and a few others who matter deeply to us. John was instantly enraptured, as I knew he would be, because birth is so mysterious and so much weirder than sorcery or intergalactic warfare that it humbles you instantly. I had felt it with little Blaine and I felt it again here. This person hadn't existed before, and now he did, and I remember thinking what everyone had always thought, that his coming into the world made up for all the previous losses.

By the time John and I had settled in our hospital room and the nurse had given George his first bath, it was two thirty in the morning, and we all fell blissfully into our beds. I am the heavy sleeper in the family, so I slumbered peacefully while John got up every few hours to check on George and feed him. When I woke up, John had taken George into Laura's room down the hall; Tammy and the kids were there, eating cinnamon rolls, and the air was festive. John said he was going to lie down for a bit and that I should talk to the pediatrician. I'm the one in the family who deals with everything medical, and I thought this was the predictable stuff of day one in George's life-a hearing test, what to do about the hepatitis-B vaccine, and so on. Blithely I sat there eating, helping Oliver and Lucy hold the baby safely, and then the pediatrician came in and said she was concerned.

George had not been drawing his legs up the way that babies are supposed to and was instead holding them out stiff and straight for up to three minutes at a time. She referred to this as "inappropriately high muscle tone" and said that it might reflect brain damage, and that she wanted to order a CAT scan. I asked whether this was unusual, and she said, simply, that it didn't frequently occur at this stage. Laura brightly volunteered that George was going to be fine, and everyone else went on with the cinnamon rolls, and I felt the inside parts of my body that are usually warm go cold, while the parts exposed to the air suddenly seemed to be on fire. The pediatrician calmly explained that the baby's unusual behavior could signal bleeding in the brain, and that such bleeding might resolve itself or might need to be alleviated surgically. She mentioned the knot in the cord and said we needed to be certain that it hadn't had an impact. She noted that his head was unusually large, which could be related to hydrocephalus or the presence of tumors. She added that he was stiffening one leg more than the other, which might mean that he had asymmetrical brain development or a mass in his brain. She was young, and I could tell that this was the steady, competent manner she had learned for the purpose of being honest with people. other, which might mean that he had asymmetrical brain development or a mass in his brain. She was young, and I could tell that this was the steady, competent manner she had learned for the purpose of being honest with people.

From the time George was conceived until that day, I had kept thinking how ironic it would be if, in the midst of writing about exceptional children, I were to produce such a child. I knew, though, that nature is no stranger to irony. Now, I asked how soon the CAT scan could be done, and the pediatrician said she'd set it up as soon as possible, and in her brisk and pleasant way she left the room. I looked at George and knew I loved him by how hard I suddenly tried not to love him. I remembered all the parents who had described spreading the news about their thriving baby and then picking up the phone a day or two later to report a different tale. A rational piece of me was trying to decide under what circumstances I would support whatever heroic measures might be called for. A terrified piece of me was contemplating giving him up into care. My strongest impulse was to hold him tight and not let him go for the tests at all. I wanted him to be well, but I wanted me to be well, too, and even as I formulated that divide, it collapsed, and I saw that one thing could not be true without the other.

I called my father and spoke to my brother and e-mailed a few friends. My brother immediately checked with pediatric neurologists in New York; my father got a physician who is a family friend on the line, and we talked the whole thing through. So many parents had told me how the need to deal with such situations upstages the emotions of them, and I was relieved to settle into problem-solving mode. I would do everything right, which would postpone anguish. I remembered parents saying that they don't tell you at the beginning that your child will need thirty major interventions; they tell you he will need one, and then a little later that he will need one more, and then another-that the gradualism deprives you of volition. I was determined to be awake at each choice to what might come next.

I called the nurses' station to find out when we were having the scan and found out that because of a computer glitch the request had been lost. The pediatric nurse explained that she had to do an arterial blood draw; she drove a needle deep into his wrist. An arterial blood draw? Had any of the five hundred parents I had met mentioned an arterial blood draw? Finally, the news came that we were set for the CAT scan. Alas, our nurse had cycled off, and we were now assigned a pretty young woman with the bedside manner of a flight attendant, her banal friendliness not quite masking an irritable boredom. I asked if she'd assisted at such a procedure before. "A CAT scan on a newborn?" she said. "No, I've never even heard of anyone doing one before." I felt two conflicting guilts: first that I had produced a child who might suffer, and second that despite all the stories I'd heard from parents who found deep meaning in bringing up exceptional children, I didn't want to join their number. Of course, most of those other parents had not opted into their circumstances; I also remembered that valor cannot be achieved on a schedule. assisted at such a procedure before. "A CAT scan on a newborn?" she said. "No, I've never even heard of anyone doing one before." I felt two conflicting guilts: first that I had produced a child who might suffer, and second that despite all the stories I'd heard from parents who found deep meaning in bringing up exceptional children, I didn't want to join their number. Of course, most of those other parents had not opted into their circumstances; I also remembered that valor cannot be achieved on a schedule.

The imaging room was grim, despite touches intended to make it cheerful and friendly; indeed, its cheerful friendliness was part of what made it grim, as though the festive decor would have been unnecessary in less gruesome circumstances. We watched helplessly as George was positioned in the machine. He was more or less asleep and did not stir as his head was locked into place with several blankets wedged next to it and straps fastened across his forehead. They let us stay, wearing big lead aprons, and we tried to comfort George, and I was suddenly aware of how uncomforting I was to someone who had not yet learned to turn to me for comfort.

Back in our room, so recently cozy, we waited. A new nurse came on shift, and I begged her to get the results. The on-call pediatrician phoned radiology. The results weren't in, so we waited some more. Finally, I fought my way past the nurses' station and cornered a newly arrived on-call pediatrician, who told me that the results had been there for an hour. "I think we should talk about this with your husband," he said gravely. We walked back to the room where John was waiting, and I blurted out sweatily, "Is there bleeding in his brain?" and the pediatrician said there was not. Then he launched into what they had been testing for and what each image showed, and he eventually revealed that the scan was completely clear. George was fine. The whole thing was over.

I think all love is one-third projection and one-third acceptance and never more than one-third knowledge and insight. With my children's births, I had projected and accepted so much, so fast. I remembered Sara Hadden's wanting to baptize her son after she found out how severely disabled he was, as a way of formalizing her belief that he was nonetheless a person. I realized that George, who had done nothing more admirable than cry and feed, was richly and permanently human to me, possessed of a soul, and no alteration could change that. The tree doesn't grow far from the apple.

John and I became fathers when gay parenting was a thrillingly new advance. I understood the day George was declared well that hope is not a thing with feathers, but a squalling, pink thing newly arrived, that no other optimism is so great as having a child. Our love for our children is almost entirely situational, yet it is nearly the strongest emotion we know. This book's stories were to my love for my children much as parables are to faith, the concrete narratives that make the greatest abstractions true. I am the parent I am in the wake of this book's epic narratives of resilience. no other optimism is so great as having a child. Our love for our children is almost entirely situational, yet it is nearly the strongest emotion we know. This book's stories were to my love for my children much as parables are to faith, the concrete narratives that make the greatest abstractions true. I am the parent I am in the wake of this book's epic narratives of resilience.

When I was born, the common view was that nurture decided almost everything. In the decades that followed, the emphasis shifted to nature. In the last twenty years, people have talked more broadly about the intricate ways that nature and nurture propel each other. I was intellectually persuaded by this nuanced integration, but the experience of having my own children has made me wonder if a third element is involved, some unknowable inflection of spirit or divinity. One's children are so specific, and the notion that they wouldn't exist if one hadn't conceived them at the moment one did feels impossible. Most of the parents I interviewed for this book said they would never want other children than the ones they had, which at first seemed surprising given the challenges their children embody. But why does any of us prefer our own children, all of them defective in some regard, to others real or imagined? If some glorious angel descended into my living room and offered to exchange my children for other, better children-brighter, kinder, funnier, more loving, more disciplined, more accomplished-I would clutch the ones I have and, like most parents, pray away the atrocious specter.

Roger Penrose, a British mathematical physicist, asked whether our physical world and the Platonic realm of ideas might be one and the same. He has suggested that the anthropic principle may demonstrate that the universe has a structural need for consciousness-effectively, that the existence of anything proves its inevitability. Counter to the Copernican revolution, the anthropic principle suggests that human beings are not incidental; that our existence is evidence that we had to be; that the comprehensibility of anything is a function of our comprehension as much as the other way around. Subjectivity may be truer than objectivity. The idea has some resonance with parenting. Most of us believe that our children are the children we had to have; we could have had no others. They will never seem to us to be happenstance; we love them because they are our destiny. Even when they are flawed, do wrong, hurt us, die-even then, they are part of the rightness by which we measure our own lives. Indeed, they are the rightness by which we measure life itself, and they bring us to life as profoundly as we do them.

After George arrived, the question arose of how all these relationships might constellate. John and I have complete charge of George; Blaine and I had agreed in advance that we would make the major decisions about little Blaine together; Laura and Tammy have separate parental authority, and we do not set the course for Oliver and Lucy, nor Laura and Tammy for George. The three arrangements are different, and in the same ways most parents try to suppress sibling rivalry, we struggle to avoid situational comparisons. Occasional frictions are sparked by conflicting priorities and boundaries, disparate resources, myriad parenting styles-but they are dwarfed by the reality that it all somehow functions. We have fought hard for the familial relationships into which others stumble, and there is a veteran's peace in our mutual devotion.

It must be easier to lead a life in which you are not constantly inventing all the roles, in which there is a script to follow. We have often felt like Christopher Columbus landing for the first time on the wilder shores of love, and while being a pioneer can be thrilling, sometimes one would prefer a place where the roads have already been built and the Internet access is wireless. Most people expect to have children, and certain susceptibilities are attached to that; I had expected not to have children, and the reversal contains stranger ones. We have made many careful, thoughtful decisions, but so much of how we've worked it out wasn't actually rooted in choice. Like other parents, I simply lived my life from day to day, until the unusual became quotidian. I have said that parents do not reproduce, but create. In fact, we also discover. I sometimes think of my life as forty years of toil up some steep hill, and then I joined hands with John, and then with Blaine, and then with Tammy and Laura, and in a different way with everyone else chronicled in this volume. Somehow the lot of us made it to the crest, and when I looked out, I saw all creation spread at my feet. I had no idea, when I was hiking, that this was what I was climbing toward; forty years in the wilderness has never prepared anyone for this view.

John and I sent out birth announcements that included a picture of us with George. One of John's cousins returned her copy with a terse note that began, "Your lifestyle is against our Christian values," and ended, "We wish to have no further contact." Some people scorn the idea of calling five primary parents and four children in three states a family, or fear that the existence of our family somehow undermines theirs. An old friend said to me over lunch one day, "Isn't it wonderful how your father accepts your children?" I pointed out that my children were his grandchildren, and she said, "Yes, but even so." That presumptive caul of negativity is onerous. Some people are trapped by the belief that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones. My journeys toward a family and this book have taught me that love is a magnifying phenomenon-that every increase in love strengthens all the other love in the world, that much as loving one's family can be a means of loving God, so the love that exists within any family can fortify the love of all families. I espouse reproductive libertarianism, because when everyone has the broadest choice, love itself expands. The affection my family have found in one another is not a better love, but it is another love, and just as species diversity is crucial to sustain the planet, this diversity strengthens the ecosphere of kindness. The road less traveled by, as it turns out, leads to pretty much the same place. that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones. My journeys toward a family and this book have taught me that love is a magnifying phenomenon-that every increase in love strengthens all the other love in the world, that much as loving one's family can be a means of loving God, so the love that exists within any family can fortify the love of all families. I espouse reproductive libertarianism, because when everyone has the broadest choice, love itself expands. The affection my family have found in one another is not a better love, but it is another love, and just as species diversity is crucial to sustain the planet, this diversity strengthens the ecosphere of kindness. The road less traveled by, as it turns out, leads to pretty much the same place.

One resolves cognitive dissonance by assimilating what it is too late to change, and in that spirit I wonder whether I would have found as much joy in marriage and children if they had come easily-if I had been straight or had grown up thirty years later in a somewhat more welcoming society. Perhaps I would; perhaps all the complex imagining I've had to do could have been applied to broader endeavors. I believe, however, that the struggle has given me a vision as a parent that I would not have had without it. So much of me had been consecrated to loneliness, and now I am not lonely anymore. Now, children make me happy. A generation ago, this love would have stayed dormant and unrealized. But so, too, would much of the love described in this book, the love of all these parents for children who would once have died young or been put away or lived unacknowledged as fully human. My family is radical for a different reason from most of the others I have chronicled, but all of us are exponents of revolutionary love against the odds.

Pain is the threshold of intimacy, and catastrophe burnishes devotion. I know this, yet I am routinely surprised to discover it. One may be infuriated and depressed by vulnerability and still be drawn to its seductions. While I mostly fell for the friends I adore because they are wise, kind, generous, and fun, I have loved them most acutely when they or I have been most sad, because there is a psychic proximity in desolate times that happiness does not match. My depression hatched an intimacy with my father that I'd never have known if he hadn't helped me through that struggle. As a parent, for all that I relish glee, I know that attachment happens when things turn dark. Parenting is an exercise in safety, and the perpetual menace of danger is what exalts parental love above affection; without the night terrors, the spiking fevers, the litany of bruises and woes, it would be a second-rate entertainment. It took me some time to understand that attention to one's children's needs is the essence of gratification. From that perspective, it made sense that the difficult loves of these pages are so deep. I want more than anything for my children to be happy, and I love them because they are sad, and the erratic project of kneading that sadness into joy is the engine of my life as a father, as a son, as a friend-and as a writer. children's needs is the essence of gratification. From that perspective, it made sense that the difficult loves of these pages are so deep. I want more than anything for my children to be happy, and I love them because they are sad, and the erratic project of kneading that sadness into joy is the engine of my life as a father, as a son, as a friend-and as a writer.

For many years, my primary identity was as a historian of sadness. Pictures of despair are widely admired, and perfect bleakness is generally thought to reflect the integrity of the author. But when I've tried to write about happiness, I've had an inverse revelation, which is that you cannot write about it without seeming shallow. Even when one emphasizes the sorrowful or the joyful, one is being honest, just as one is honest when one says that the sky above is blue without getting into the brownness of the earth below. The families I met mostly emphasize the craning art of looking up, but they do so with integrity. I am unabashed by this book's occasional whiff of rapture and reject the idea that beauty is the enemy of truth, or that pain can't be the hare to joy's tortoise.

The realist writer William Dean Howells once wrote to Edith Wharton that "what the American public always wants is a tragedy with a happy ending." The implication of his remark was that we didn't have the stomach for Lear mad upon the heath with no redemption in sight. I would offer a different reading. I would say that it is increasingly our character to seek transformation. Early psychoanalytic models are about accepting life's problems; modern therapies focus on resolving them, eliminating them, or redefining them as something other than problems. Does some artifice creep into this brazen triumphalism? People often affect a happiness they do not feel; people whose neurosis has turned to misery are not only miserable, but also believe that they have failed. But the vital piece of this inclination toward the light is the unshakable belief that catastrophes properly end in resolution, that tragedies are frequently a phase rather than an endgame.

This book seeks the nobility buried in Howells's disparagement. It is predicated on an even more optimistic notion, which is that the happy endings of tragedies have a dignity beyond the happy endings of comedies, that they not only transcend the mawkishness to which Howells alludes, but also produce a contentment more cherished than one untempered by suffering. Sometimes, people end up thankful for what they mourned. You cannot achieve this state by seeking tragedy, but you can keep yourself open more to sorrow's richness than to unmediated despair. Tragedies with happy endings may be sentimental tripe, or they may be the true meaning of love. Insofar as I have written a self-help book, it is a how-to manual for receptivity: a description of how to tolerate what cannot be cured, and an argument that cures are not always appropriate even when they are feasible. As the jagged Alps are to the romantic sublime, so this curious joy is to the character of these families-nearly impossible, terrible, and terribly beautiful. how to tolerate what cannot be cured, and an argument that cures are not always appropriate even when they are feasible. As the jagged Alps are to the romantic sublime, so this curious joy is to the character of these families-nearly impossible, terrible, and terribly beautiful.

Given how unimaginable my family would have been fifty years ago, I have no choice but to champion progress; change has been good to me, and I am indebted to it. I hope these stories will contribute to the cataract that is honing the rough surface of the world. Until the planet grows smooth, however, love will continue to toughen under siege; the very threats to love strengthen it even as they suffuse it with pain. In the harsh moments of loss that are my topic here, love manacles a tender heart. I felt something brilliant and terrifying for my son as he lay in that Star Trek Star Treklike CAT scanner that I had not yet felt for little Blaine, who had not encountered such adversity, or for Oliver and Lucy, who were already themselves when I got to know them. It changed my relationship to them all. Children ensnared me the moment I connected fatherhood with loss, but I am not sure I would have noticed that if I hadn't been immersed in this research. Encountering so much strange love, I fell into its bewitching patterns and saw how splendor can illuminate even the most abject vulnerabilities. I had witnessed and learned the terrifying joy of unbearable responsibility, recognized how it conquers everything else. Sometimes, I had thought the heroic parents in this book were fools, enslaving themselves to a life's journey with their alien children, trying to breed identity out of misery. I was startled to learn that my research had built me a plank, and that I was ready to join them on their ship.

Acknowledgments

A book such as this one is a group enterprise, and I am grateful, first and foremost, to the individuals and families who agreed to be interviewed, in many cases speaking about painful experiences at considerable personal cost. Far from the Tree Far from the Tree would not exist without them, and neither would the world it documents. I am humbled by their grit, wisdom, generosity, and truthfulness. would not exist without them, and neither would the world it documents. I am humbled by their grit, wisdom, generosity, and truthfulness.

The original impetus for this investigation came from an assignment to write about Deaf culture for the New York Times Magazine, New York Times Magazine, and I thank Adam Moss and Jack Rosenthal for proposing that topic to me, and Annette Grant for editing my article. I engaged with the question of prodigies when I was assigned to write about Evgeny Kissin for the and I thank Adam Moss and Jack Rosenthal for proposing that topic to me, and Annette Grant for editing my article. I engaged with the question of prodigies when I was assigned to write about Evgeny Kissin for the New Yorker, New Yorker, and I am grateful to Tina Brown, Henry Finder, and Charles Michener for encouraging me in that work. Leslie Hawke came to my house one night in 2001 with a screening copy of Lisa Hedley's astonishing film and I am grateful to Tina Brown, Henry Finder, and Charles Michener for encouraging me in that work. Leslie Hawke came to my house one night in 2001 with a screening copy of Lisa Hedley's astonishing film Dwarfs: Not a Fairy Tale Dwarfs: Not a Fairy Tale; from our conversation that night, this book took shape. In 2007, Adam Moss suggested that I write about the neurodiversity movement for New York New York, an assignment that turned out to be pivotal in my evolving understanding of the people I was writing about; Emily Nussbaum was my editor for that story. I thank them both.

I was lucky enough to have guides who helped me enter many of the communities I wished to document. Jackie Roth opened up Deaf culture to me starting in 1994 and arranged many interviews I've included here. I Gede Marsaja and I Gede Primantara were my guides in Desa Kolok. Betty Adelson was my chief adviser on dwarfs, and I thank her for reading and correcting drafts of that chapter. Suzanne Elliott Armstrong and Betsy Goodwin were helpful as I worked on Down syndrome. Daniel M. Geschwind, Thomas Insel, James D. Watson, and Bruce Stillman assisted me incalculably with the science of autism. Jeffrey Lieberman was my tireless guide to the science of schizophrenia, and David Nathan generously spent time discussing the condition and helping me to meet patients. For their tremendous assistance with my schizophrenia research, I thank Colleen Marie Barrett, Bruce M. Cohen, Cathie Cook, and Scott Rauch at McLean Hospital. Kathleen Seidel educated me on many issues around disability and gave me my training in disability rights. I am particularly grateful to Justin Davidson, Siu Li GoGwilt, Charles Hamlen, Sarah Durie Solomon, and Shirley Young for their unflagging support as I worked on the prodigies chapter, and to Susan Ebersole and Robert Sirota for introducing me to students at the Manhattan School of Music. I am grateful to Jesse Dudley for translating for me Dad's Aspirations Are That High Dad's Aspirations Are That High, by Yuanju Li (2001) (: Ba ba de xin jiu zhe mo gao: gang qin tian cai Lang Lang he ta de fu qin Ba ba de xin jiu zhe mo gao: gang qin tian cai Lang Lang he ta de fu qin). I thank Dina Temple-Raston for inviting me to Rwanda and helping me secure interviews with rape survivors there, and Janet Benshoof for sharing her insights from a lifetime devoted to reproductive rights. In connection with the crime chapter, I thank the inspirational Stephen DiMenna, who encouraged me to accompany him to the Hennepin County Home School, where Tom Bezek, Thelma Fricke, Shelley Whelan, and Terry Wise kindly facilitated my interviews with residents and their families. Alex Busansky and Jennifer Trone, of the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons, provided terrific background information for that chapter. My work on the trans community relied on the help and support of Matt Foreman, Lisa Mottet, Kim Pearson and her TYFA team, and Rachel Pepper.

I was fortunate to have a sterling research team who obtained and organized vast bodies of information. Over a decade, smart and stalwart Ian Beilin, witty and compelling Stephen Bitterolf, rigorous and loyal Susan Ciampa, conscientious Jonah Engle, free-thinking Edric Mesmer, scrupulous and astute Kari Milchman, gracious and splendid Deborah Pursch, courageous Jacob Shamberg, and brilliantly imaginative Rachel Trocchio variously brought knowledge, coherence, and discernment to my research. Pat Towers edited a sample chapter. I am very grateful to Susan Kittenplan for her excellent edit of the manuscript when it was at its most cumbersome. I thank Eugene Corey for transcribing the earlier interviews, and Sandra Arroyo, Sonia Houmis, Kathleen Vach, and the rest of the team at TruTranscripts for working on the later ones.

I became something of a residency junky while working on this book. I had one stay at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, one at the Ucross Foundation, two at the MacDowell Colony, and four at Yaddo. The serenity these institutions afforded me was critical to the book. I would like particularly to thank Pilar Palacia and Darren Walker at the Rockefeller Foundation; Sharon Dynak and Ruthie Salvatore at Ucross; Michelle Aldredge, Nancy Devine, David Macy, Brendan Tapley, and Cheryl Young at MacDowell; and Cathy Clarke, Elaina Richardson, and Candace Wait at Yaddo.

I remain deeply indebted as always to my wise and loyal agent and friend, Andrew Wylie, who has championed my work now for almost a quarter century and has helped me to become the writer I am. I am grateful also to his able deputies, especially Sarah Chalfant, Alexandra Levenberg, and Jeffrey Posternak. I pay tribute to my beloved editor at Scribner, Nan Graham, who reads with a valiant heart and a kind pencil; her signal mix of empathy, enthusiasm, patience, and insight shaped this book from the time when I was only imagining it to the time when I finally completed it. I thank, also, at Scribner Brian Belfiglio, Steve Boldt, Rex Bonomelli, Daniel Burgess, Roz Lippel, Kate Lloyd, Susan Moldow, Greg Mortimer, Carolyn Reidy, Kathleen Rizzo, Kara Watson, and Paul Whitlatch. At Chatto & Windus, I thank Alison Samuel, who bought the book, and Clara Farmer, who saw it through production. I am grateful to Andrew Essex, Ben Freda, Jonathan Hills, Trinity Ray, Eric Rayman, Andres Saavedra, and Eric Schwinn for their help with other aspects of publication.

I thank Cheryl Henson and Ed Finn for giving me the jacket image, and Adam Fuss for creating it; I thank Annie Leibovitz for creating and giving me my author photo.

Every book I've written has been corrected by Katherine Keenum, my freshman writing tutor. Her devotion is profoundly heartening, and her close reading, invaluable.

Kathleen Seidel came on board to organize my bibliography, compile citations, and check facts; she took it upon herself to question prejudices related to identity, disability, medicine, and the law. She was a brilliant diaskeuast diaskeuast, and this would have been an entirely different book without her meticulous intelligence, bracing precision, passion for accuracy, and sense of justice. been an entirely different book without her meticulous intelligence, bracing precision, passion for accuracy, and sense of justice.

Alice Truax wrestled multiple drafts of this book to the ground. Her understanding of my purpose was so profound that I felt as though she had climbed inside my mind to make repairs. My method is associative; hers, logical. With infinite patience and skill, she chipped away at great blocks of chaos to reveal the coherence trapped inside them.

Many people helped keep my life running while I was writing this book, and I'd like to thank Sergio Avila, Lorilynn Bauer, Juan and Amalia Fernandez, Ildiko Fulop, Judy Gutow, Christina Harper, Brenda Hernandez-Reynoso, Marsha Johnson, Celso, Miguela, and Olga Mancol, Tatiana Martushev, Heather Nedwell, Jacek Niewinski, Mindy Pollack, Kylee Sallak, Eduardo and Elfi de los Santos, Marie Talentowski, Ester Tolete, Danusia Trevino, and Bechir Zouay.

It is impossible to acknowledge everyone who participated in this work; almost daily, someone said something that helped me understand more clearly my underlying topics of identity and love. Among the glorious people who made helpful introductions or discussed ideas that are central to the book or read and commented on sections of it are Cordelia Anderson, Laura Anderson, Anne Applebaum, Lucy Armstrong, Dorothy Arnsten, Jack Barchas, Nesli Basgoz, Frank Bayley, Cris Beam, Bill and Bunny Beekman, Meica and Miguel de Beistegui, Erika Belsey and Alexi Worth, Mary Bisbee-Beek, Richard Bradley, Susan Brody, Hugo Burnand, Elizabeth Burns, Elizabeth and Blake Cabot, Mario and Ariadne Calvo-Platero, S. Talcott Camp, Thomas Caplan, Christian Caryl, Amy Fine Collins, Cathryn Collins, Robert Couturier, Dana B. Cowin and Barclay Palmer, Rebecca Culley and Peter K. Lee, Mary D'Alton, Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, Cecile David-Weill, Justin Davidson and Ariella Budick, Nick Davis and Jane Mendelsohn, Roland Davis and Margot Norris, Miraj Desai, Freddy Eberstadt, Nenna Eberstadt and Alistair Bruton, Nicholas Rollo David Evans, Melissa Feldman, Lorraine Ferguson, Susannah Fiennes, Adam and Olivia Flatto, Bill Foreman and Reg Barton, Cornelia Foss, Richard A. Friedman and Bob Hughes, Richard C. Friedman, Fran Gallacher, Arlyn Gardner, Rhonda Garelick, Kathleen Gerard, Bernard Gersten and Cora Cahan, Icy Gordon, Ann Gottleib, Philip Gourevich and Larissa MacFarquhar, Geordie and Kathryn Greig, Guo Fang, Melanie and Martin Hall, Han Feng, Amy Harmon, John Hart, Ashton Hawkins and Johnnie Moore, David Hecht, Cheryl Henson and Ed Finn, David Herskovits and Jennifer Egan, Gillie Holme and Camille Massey, Richard Hubbard, Ana Joanes, Lisa Jonas, Maira Kalman, William Kentridge and Anne Stanwix, Terry Kirk, Larry Kramer, Sren Krogh, Mary Krueger and Andreas Saavedra, Roger and Neroli Lacey, Jhumpa Lahiri and Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, Katherine Lanpher, Paul LeClerc, Michael Lee and Ashutosh Khandekar, Justin Leites, Jeffrey and Rosemarie Lieberman, Jennie Livingston, Betsy de Lotbiniere, Kane Loukas and Christina Rieck, Ivana Lowell and Howard Blum, Sue Macartney-Snape, John MacPhee, Jamie Marks, Mary E. Marks, Cleopatra Mathis, Tey Meadow, James Meyer, Juliet Mitchell, Isaac Mizrahi, R. Clayton Mulford, Freda and Christian Murck, John and Nancy Novogrod, Rusty O'Kelley III and John Haskins, Ann Olson, Beatrix Ost and Ludwig Kuttner, Mary Alice Palmer, Harriet Paterson and Rick Cockett, Julie Peters, Alice Playten, Francine du Plessix Gray, Charles and Barbara Prideaux, Diery Prudent and Mariza Scotch, Deborah and David Pursch, Emily K. Rafferty, Kim Reed and Claire Jones, Maggie Robbins, Paul and Susannah Robinson, Marion Lignana Rosenberg, Robert Rosenkranz and Alexandra K. Munroe, Steven Rosoff and Tanis Allen, Ira Sachs, Eric Saltzman, Phillip and Donna Satow, Christina Schmidt, Lisa Schmitz, John Schneeman, Jill Schuker, Alex Shand, Julie Sheehan, Nicola Shulman, Polly Shulman, Michael Silverman, Dee Smith, Doug Smith, Gordon Smith, Calvin, Emmett, and Abigail Solomon, David and Sarah Long Solomon, Cindy Spiegel, Moonhawk River Stone, Kerry J. Sulkowicz and Sandra Leong, Ezra Susser, Claudia Swan, Dean Swanson, Andras Szanto and Alanna Stang, Dina Temple-Raston, Phyllis Toohey, Tara Tooke, Carll Tucker and Jane Bryant Quinn, Susan Wadsworth, Kathryn Walker, Jim and Liz Watson, Caroline Weber, Helen Whitney, Susan Willard, Hope and Grant Winthrop, Jaime Wolf, Micky Wolfson, Doug Wright and Dave Clement, and Larisa Zvezdochetova. Emmett, and Abigail Solomon, David and Sarah Long Solomon, Cindy Spiegel, Moonhawk River Stone, Kerry J. Sulkowicz and Sandra Leong, Ezra Susser, Claudia Swan, Dean Swanson, Andras Szanto and Alanna Stang, Dina Temple-Raston, Phyllis Toohey, Tara Tooke, Carll Tucker and Jane Bryant Quinn, Susan Wadsworth, Kathryn Walker, Jim and Liz Watson, Caroline Weber, Helen Whitney, Susan Willard, Hope and Grant Winthrop, Jaime Wolf, Micky Wolfson, Doug Wright and Dave Clement, and Larisa Zvezdochetova.

I thank Laura Scher and Tammy Ward for cheering me on as I wrote and for bringing so much joy into my life.

I am forever indebted to Blaine Smith for her exquisite sympathy, generosity, and wisdom; I am grateful to her also for her insights on this book's design.

My stepmother, Sarah Durie Solomon, talked through Far from the Tree Far from the Tree with me year in and year out, providing copious insights and encouragement. Additionally, she urged me to stay with my father and her for long periods when I needed to write. The time we all had together was magical, and this book would not exist without it. with me year in and year out, providing copious insights and encouragement. Additionally, she urged me to stay with my father and her for long periods when I needed to write. The time we all had together was magical, and this book would not exist without it.

My father, Howard Solomon, my most loyal reader, pored over a stupefying number of early fragments and later versions of this book. We talked about every interview and idea, and he never wavered in his conviction that the undertaking would succeed. His lifelong devotion was my first experience of the kind of unstinting parenthood I've chronicled here.

I am grateful to Oliver Scher, Lucy Scher, Blaine Solomon, and George Solomon for their patience when my work kept me from fun and games. This book is a tribute to them, but it required their forbearance.

Finally, I thank my husband, John Habich Solomon, who lived with me when I was working and lived without me when I was working. His editing of the manuscript into precision was a great boon; his editing of my life into happiness is the greatest boon I've ever known.