How My Family Came to Be: Daddy, Papa and Me

Overview

How My Family Came to Be: Daddy, Papa and Me is a 2003 picture book by Andrew R. Aldrich, illustrated by Mike Motz, about a child adopted by two fathers. The local record makes the family structure unusually specific: an African American boy is adopted by two white men, and the story explains adoption through birth family, longing for a child, and the making of a household. Its value in the collection is not only that it shows two fathers. It also belongs to a smaller group of books about gay family formation, interracial adoption, and the difficulty of giving young readers a plain account of how a family came to be. Scholarly discussion places the book in a genealogy of queer interracial family narratives, making it stronger than its small-press circulation might suggest.^[1][3][4]

Family Formation As The Subject

The book is organized around origin rather than daily routine. The child narrator explains how his fathers wanted a baby, how adoption entered the family story, and how love becomes the basis of kinship. That structure matters because many same-sex-parent picture books simply begin with a family already in place. This item instead asks how a two-father family can be narrated to a child reader as a coherent family history, with adoption rather than biology carrying the explanation. The Open Library record adds library identifiers and subjects that place the book among gay-father and child-of-gay-parent materials.^{[1][3][4][14]}

Race, Adoption, And Visibility

The local description identifies the child as African American and the fathers as white. That interracial adoption frame gives the book a more complex place in the collection than a generic two-dad label would suggest. The story has to make two things visible at once: that the parents are a gay male couple and that the family is formed across race through adoption. The scholarship on queer genealogies reads this kind of book as an attempt to make nonbiological family continuity legible. That evidence keeps the record useful for researchers because it marks circulation, intended audience, and collection role rather than treating the title as a simple recommendation.^[1][4][2]

A Small-Press Answer To A Market Gap

New Family Press appears in public records as a small publisher rather than a broad trade imprint. That matters because books about gay fathers, interracial adoption, and early-childhood family origin were not abundant in mainstream publishing in 2003. The book therefore reads as a targeted response to a practical absence: families needed language and images that named how their household came into being. The modest publication trail is part of the historical record, not a defect to hide. The thin author trail is itself meaningful, pointing to a title built to answer a specific family need rather than a broad creator platform.^[3][6][5]

Care Networks Around Two Fathers

The local record notes that the book includes women who help raise the child, including teachers, a godmother, and a grandmother. That detail should be handled carefully. It can be read as an attempt to show a wide care network, but it also touches a recurring anxiety in older debates about whether children with two fathers were thought to need women nearby to make the family complete. The page therefore opens a useful interpretive question about support, gender, and defensive explanation. That ambiguity is useful for interpretation because it shows how representation can affirm a family while still carrying period assumptions about care.^[1][4][8]

Timeline

1. 2003PublicationPublic book records date the New Family Press edition to 2003.^[3][2]
2. 2003Interracial adoption frameThe local record describes an African American child adopted by two white fathers.^[1]
3. 2008Open Library author trailOpen Library's Andrew R. Aldrich record identifies this as the author's single listed work.^[6]
4. 2010sEducation resource afterlifeTeachingBooks and inclusive education lists place the book in school and resource contexts.^[5][8]
5. 2018Scholarly readingA genealogy article discusses the book as a queer interracial family-formation narrative.^[4]
6. Collection contextAdoption clusterThe book sits beside other adoption and two-father origin stories in the collection.^[9][11]
7. 2003Library identifiersOpen Library records the 2003 edition with ISBN 9780974200804.^[14]
8. 2020sResource-list traceLater family-resource lists kept the title visible for LGBTQ-family readers.^[18]

Gay-Father Family Formation

Related records show different ways two-father family life is narrated.

Citation

How My Family Came to Be: Daddy, Papa and Me. Andrew R. Aldrich; illustrated by Mike Motz. New Family Press, 2003. Tarpey-Schwed LGBT Families Children's Book Special Collection, Mechanics' Institute. Collection ID: KB-009.

Sources

Cover image from Open Library.

1. Local collection catalog record for How My Family Came to Be - Daddy, Papa and Me · catalog
2. Goodreads record for How My Family Came to Be · library
3. ThriftBooks bibliographic record for How My Family Came to Be · bookseller
4. GenderOpen PDF for Essi article on queer children's literature · scholarship
5. TeachingBooks record for How My Family Came to Be · education
6. Open Library author record for Andrew R. Aldrich · library
7. Xtra Magazine review context for Daddy, Papa and Me · review
8. ALA LGBTQIA+ Resources for Children bibliography · education
9. Existing v3 record for Arwen and Her Daddies · internal
10. Penguin Random House record for In Our Mothers' House · publisher
11. Leslea Newman page for Felicia's Favorite Story · creator
12. CCBC recommendation for The Popularity Papers · review
13. Family Equality early-elementary book list · education
14. Open Library ISBN record for How My Family Came to Be · library
15. Open Library cover record for How My Family Came to Be · image
16. Readgeek record for How My Family Came to Be · reader_catalog
17. Open Library work record for How My Family Came to Be · library
18. Surratt Law list of children's books for LGBTQ families · resource_list