14 DAY TRIAL // For many couples, one or two children are more than enough. For Steven (42) and Roger Ham (47), two gay men from Arizona, it takes twelve of them to make a close-knit family, all of them adopted from foster care, as the video below will show.
The two men have come to media attention with their unique and admirable story of courage, patience, determination and, last but not least, love.
They say it all started with wanting to adopt one child, a Hispanic boy named Michael who won their hearts the moment they set eyes on him. But he also had five siblings, so they took them too.
Now, 8 years later, Steven and Roger are parents to 12 children, aged from a few months to 15 and a half. They say the kids are a handful but they couldn’t complain about it for the world.
People still give them “the look” whenever they make an appearance at the supermarket or out about town, asking them what happened to the kids’ “poor mom,” the dads say.
What they can’t understand is that the children have all the parents they need: one is Daddy and the other one is Papa; or, depending on the case, one is “this is my Dad” and the other is “this is my other Dad.”
As the video below will confirm, Steven and Roger say the secret to keeping everyone happy is having strict rules: everybody pitches in, no one takes anything for granted.
While they, as parents, take care of the younger children, the older ones see things done for themselves. At the same time, there’s a routine around the house that sees every member of the family doing some kind of activity to help.
Since the Hams have also been foster parents to 42 children so far, it’s safe to say they got this whole parenting thing down to an art.
Asked by the Arizona Republic about how the adoption process for the 12 children went, Roger says, “We had to fight to get them.”
“We had to fight to get them all,” Steven adds.
See here for more on this beautiful family.