Daddy Squared: The Gay Dads Podcast looks at gay rights and fatherhood options in the UK. We talked with Brit actor Charlie Condou to get a taste of what it’s like being a gay dad in the UK, and researched options for gay men who want to become dads.

The number of gay dads in the UK is increasing. Many gay men are exploring parenting options, and to make things easier, Alex and Yan have called for the help of actor Charlie Condou who has been outspoken about his life as a gay man and as a parent.

"Things are certainly better than they were when I was a young man," actor Charlie Condou tells us in this episode, "and you see it with the younger generation of the LGBTQ community. They walk around holding hands, which is something that we certainly never would have done. Everything seems to be much more acceptable. Gay relationships as a whole, the fact that we can get married now, and the fact that we can have children."

"It's relatively new, I suppose. I mean, I think that gay women have been getting on with having kids for a long time, because, you know, it's easier for them to have children. Gay men have never really been a part of the conversation for a long time and I think, if you were a gay man and you wanted to be a parent, you either got married to a woman and went down that lie, or you parked it and you thought ok this is something that I have to put out of my mind and put out of my life because it's not an option for me."

"We couldn't adopt, surrogacy wasn't a thing, and we're a very different place now, and younger gay men today, when they get into a relationship and even if they don't want to have kids, it's still part of the conversation, they'll still have that discussion."

During our interview, Condou described his inner thoughts, from the idea of wanting to become a dad, to figuring out how to do it as a gay men in the UK at the time.

"As I got older and realized that I want to do it sooner rather than later," he said, "surrogacy wasn't a thing then, gay men couldn't adopt then, certainly single gay men couldn't adopt. So co-parenting was something that, it wasn't even a word, but it seemed like the best option to me. I'm going to have to find a female friend who wants to have children with me. Of course in my naive early 20s mind I thought 'yeah that'll be fine, somebody will want to have a kid with me, you know, who wouldn't?!' I did not realize that a lot of straight females-- it's not their first choice."

"I started to have this conversation with girl friends of mine, just in a very vague kind of 'what if'? And I had one friend in particular, Cathrine, who said, 'yeah, I wanna be a parent, and if I'm still single at 40 then, yeah. Let's get on with it.' It was a bit of a joke, because why would she still be single at 40, but she was."

Gay Dads in the UK: Co-Parenting

"We sat down and said, ok, let's talk about it then. How would it work? We didn't know anybody who did anything like this at all. It was a completely new territory. So we talked about every eventuality, all the possible scenarios. What happens if someone moves to Australia? I don't know why even, but we talked about it. And I knew very quickly that if I was going to co-parent, it had to be 50-50. I didn't want to be a dad that is just around every other weekend."

At some point during the conversation with Catherine, Charlie met his now-husband, Cameron. Early in their relationship Charlie had told him about his plans with Catherine and Cameron was on board. "And then it became the three of us, and the conversation had to change a little, because how does that work, with three parents? What will the three of us bring? How do we navigate that?"

The Three of Us - Charlie's Column in The Guardian

"It works really well," Charlie says, "We have the kids completely half and half, and that's the way that it's worked for a long time. Catherine has them on a Monday and a Tuesday,