I’m Ryan Messer, Community Leader, LGBTQ Advocate and Father of Four – and This Is How I Am a Parent

Ryan Messer is a successful, interesting, down-to-earth person with whom I could talk for endless hours if I didn’t know that I’m cutting down on 9 million other things that he has to do on a given day. He is a director of Johnson & Johnson, where he helped reform the company’s parental leave and fertility insurance policies. He is the first openly gay member of the Cincinnati School Board. And he is raising his four children (Anderson, 12; Olivier, 5; Lillian, 4; and Rocco, 18 months) – plus some interesting pets – along with his husband Jimmy in the 1897 mansion they’ve restored.

However, he is a parent in much the same way as his parents when he grew up on a farm in rural southern Indiana, where bare feet, hot breakfasts and adventure were the hallmarks of his childhood.

Tell me a little about your childhood and how it influenced who you are today.

I think I belonged to the original breed of free-range kids with adventure, and there was a wonderful security bubble around our Rising Sun town that is as beautiful and quirky as the name suggests.

I had a fairly traditional mother who also played an important role. Well, she was a little nervous – God forbid, she went to church in her pants – but she was traditional in the sense that you had breakfast hot before going to school, your favorite cookie was there when you left school. the bus, and you all sat down to dinner together.

And there was a lot of giving back in my childhood. I remember that I learned to sew doll clothes from all things; one family lost everything in the fire, so we sewed clothes for Christmas gifts. This is one of my earliest memories of such things. My father worked outside the home and on the farm, and it was hard work together. It was a wonderful childhood, perfect for pictures.

How did you meet your husband?

Well, we kind of met on a blind date, and that was one of those things that you know about when you know. He had just moved to the Cincinnati area for work, we met and had a drink, and the date ended up with me showing him this abandoned building that I wanted to buy. It was in a promising area, and the next thing you know, we were climbing through this building in the middle of the night, which had no electricity, and the floors would probably have collapsed if we were another pound heavier. He is a designer, and the next day he sent me blueprints and blueprints of what the restored house would look like, where the furniture would be placed and all that stuff. As a result, we bought this house and after 60 days began to live together.

It was interesting because it went so fast, and as we moved in that direction, Jimmy kept disappearing, like a whole weekend, at a time; he would say that he urgently needed to go and take care of his mother, presumably who lived in Columbus, and I was very skeptical. I called him and said, “Okay, that’s enough. We are starting to make plans to move together. Come on, tell me the facts – there is someone else. And he replies, “Yeah. He is two years old and his name is Anderson. It’s a long story, but I have a child, and I was afraid that if I had a child, you would not want to have anything to do with me. ” And I thought, “What? Do you have a child? Bring him here now.

It was an added bonus for me, while Jimmy considered it a hindrance to being gay. And, perhaps, for someone it would be a burden, but my dream has always been to have children. Jimmy breathed a sigh of relief, and I sighed with joy. Thus began our little journey together, but I think each of us knew that we would like to have additional children together.

How have you moved forward in growing your family?

After two years of living together, we decided that it was time to get things off the ground. We were having dinner with friends one evening and one of them asked, “So when are you guys going to have kids? You are so good with ours. ” And I thought, “Believe it or not, we’re kind of working on it.” And then his wife says: “You know that Joey’s wife wants to be a surrogate again. They have four children and she enjoyed being pregnant; There was a woman in Louisville who could not have a child, so she gave birth to a child with them. And she said that just recently she said she would like to do it again. ” It was Saturday night; On Monday morning at eight o’clock my phone rings and it was her and she said, “I am honored to have your child.”

So we had Olivier. Our surrogate mother knew that we would like to have another, and when Olivier was only here for about six months, she called and said, “Hey, I’m not getting any younger; I know you want another one, so if you just want to continue, I’m ready. ” So we did, and it was Lillian. Both Lillian and Olivier are biologically mine, and I also wanted someone who was biologically Jimmy. We had eggs from the same donor as Lillian and Olivier, and if we had an egg biologically owned by Jimmy, this child would turn on the circle. He would be blood brother to Anderson and have the same biological mother as the other two, so everyone was kind of interconnected. So that was Rocco.

Could you tell me about any advocacy you did when raising your family?

I work for Johnson & Johnson and I am very involved in diversity and inclusion. When we applied for IVF payment, Aetna turned us down because you had to have a woman diagnosed with infertility to pay for IVF. Well, I was able to convince Johnson & Johnson to expand our reach before we had our daughter, who is our third child, and J&J was the first company in the United States – and possibly the world – to pay for gay men in – vitro and they paid for surrogacy.

And in fact, with my first son [surrogacy], I was able to convince J&J that men deserve parental leave, and I got eight paid weeks for all men. It was another big win, which is why I say that both Olivier and Lillian made a big impact on the world by getting a large company to provide eight paid weeks of leave for a father in the USA, which is a big deal, and then pay for it in-vitro and surrogate motherhood.

What was parenting like for you?

This is the most fun job I’ve ever done. You know, when you have to work as hard as we do to figure it out, you know you really want to be a parent. This is not to criticize other people, but the point is that our fatherhood was a very conscious choice. And me too, I was 40 when Olivier was born. And I am sure that I am 10 times a parent, I would be 20 years old. This is a priority for me. This is not just a superfluous thing; this is a job for me.

From what I understand, you are the first openly gay member of the Cincinnati Public Schools Board of Education. How was this experience for you?

Well, that was interesting, aside from a couple of comments that I was aware of, it was not a problem. I ran against the characters and, as a candidate for the first time, easily got the most votes against people who were much more famous in the family. You know, when I first moved here, there was Article 12 in Cincinnati that made Cincinnati the only city that had a law that actually gave you permission to fire someone simply based on their sexual orientation. It was a terrible law. So then to be able to run and not only get elected, but also get the most votes on the first try? For me, it was a great sign that the city is really progressing. It was red, but now it is a dark blue city.

At that time, I often heard: “I am so glad that my parent is running.” They didn’t say gay parent, they didn’t say direct parent, just parent. At one point, I was effectively the only parent on the board of directors. So I get messages all the time thanking me for being the voice of my parents – without any reference to anything else.

While changing gears, I have to ask you about the vehicle that I see in the photo of you and your family [at the top of the message].

This is a 1975 31-foot Sovereign Airstream. This one was originally bought by a family with four children and they raised their children on it. And then the couple bought it from them and ate it while they raised their four children. And then we bought it from them with our four children. It was like a childhood dream; I always thought I wanted one. And finally, I thought, you know what, the kids are old enough. So I did a little searching and I saw this and it was exactly what I wanted. Jimmy said, “Are you really doing this?” And I said, “You better believe it. We have memories. ” So my friend, aka Lillian, jumped into the truck, and we drove for seven hours to pick up this idiot.

For our first big trip, I wanted something really memorable, so we did the long ride up Mount Rushmore – and the many places in between, back and forth. The kids love it a lot, and I think to be honest, that’s why Jimmy loves it too now.

I left my most important question for last. Do you … do you have any pet peacocks?

We do!

Please tell us about your pet peacocks.

So we bought this old house in Cincinnati that was built in 1897 [pictured above]. This is the second largest home in Cincinnati, but it was abandoned, no electricity, nothing. The couple introduced us to the house and said, “You guys, those two people who are stupid enough – or have sufficient imagination – to undertake it. So we’re sitting on two acres in this historic area called North Avondale; and I have to say it was a transformation for the record books .

I took over the outside and Jimmy took over the inside, he was the designer and I was the farm guy. I planted 82 trees on our site; many of them were peach, cherry, apple and plum trees. We taught children how to make plum jam, so this is clearly a hint of my childhood, something that my mother would do and still does. And then, you know, I think there should always be animals. So, on Easter a couple of years ago, I decided the kids were old enough to have animals and learn to care for them, so I bought them a group of chickens and two turkeys. So this is the beginning of us, and at some point Jimmy said, “You know, I would like to have a couple of peacocks.” And I thought if he tiptoe into my world of all this farming and wildlife, what a perfect birthday present it would be.

So, I found a guy who had a pair of one year old peacocks. And in April of this year, on Jimmy’s birthday, I returned to the house with this pair of peacocks. The children ran out and I asked five-year-old Olivier: “What do you think should be called?” And he said, “I think his name is Steve and her name is Victoria.”

We also have a turkey named Tammy Fay. And we have five chickens: Hilda, Wilma, Eleanor, Gertrude and Bess. So we have all these birds, and it’s like my childhood with a hot breakfast every morning – my kids want their bacon and eggs and all – but then you run out of eggs and they’re like, “Oh, go get them. from the chicken coop! “So, we go to pick up the eggs from the chicken coop, go in and make breakfast. This is definitely the thread of my childhood that was carried over into theirs.

Editor’s note: The complete dialog with Messer has been condensed and edited for flow and space.

If you have a suggestion for someone we should interview for a future How I am a parent article, send an email to mwalbert@lifehacker.com with the subject “How I am a parent.”