Daddy Cool

In recent years, surrogacy has become increasingly popular among single women and gay couples. For heterosexual single men, it’s still a rather unusual path to follow but that is changing.

- Paula Slier

SOUTH AFRICAN MEN ARE MAKING HISTORY, choosing to become single fathers by choice. In March, Wesley Hayes, a 35-year-old divorce attorney won a year-long battle to legally register his daughter, Justine Filly – her second name reflects Hayes’ love of horses.

Andrew Martin, a fertility lawyer who heads his own firm in Cape Town, has successfully registered a number of babies for single fathers through surrogacy over the past decade.

One of Martin’s clients is a 46-year-old Johannesburg business consultant, Gavin Phillips*. Since November 2019, Phillips has undergone three unsuccessful IVF journeys and is now about to begin his fourth.

“I’ve always wanted children and after I lost my father to Alzheimer’s in 2017, the need to extend my family, and have a legacy, became more intense,” he says.

Phillips was married and unfortunately, despite efforts to have a child, those efforts did not bear fruits.

“After we got divorced, I considered adopting a child, and then I started to research surrogacy.”

Traditionally, it’s heterosexual couples who go this route. Globally, one in six such couples struggles to conceive, regardless of whether they come from low-, middle- or high-income countries. But in recent years, surrogacy has become increasingly popular among single women and gay couples. For heterosexual single men, it is still a rather unusual path to follow.