Gay male couples tend to have even tougher, more wallet-wrenching hurdles to clear if they want to be double daddies. The cost of hiring a surrogate mother to carry one's DNA for nine months is astronomical -- $61,975 for traditional, bargain-basement artificial insemination is the price tag listed by the Center for Surrogate Parenting Inc. If the guys want a borrowed ovum plopped in from a friend or relative, the subsequent Egg Donation/Gestational With In-Vitro package jumps to $75,425. If hetero dudes had to fork out that much dough the population explosion would instantly reverse.

I borrow a bib from Ren as we proceed to spoon-feed our rebellious tots. The other lesbians are in the den patiently translating their do's and don'ts into Spanish for Consuelo. I didn't have a list for her, and my wife, Carol, was entirely absent because she couldn't miss her company's important board meeting.

I brood defensively. Carol and I wanted Tallulah. And we love her immensely. Our main parenting problem, though, is that we work too hard at our careers. I feel emasculated if I don't log in 40 hours weekly, and my wife's a power feminist, so she feels obligated to grind in at least 55. Lesbians don't do this. I don't know how they survive -- "Beans and rice," smiles Darcy -- but none of our share-care dykes are working full time and they're all prepared to call in sick if their tot has a sniffle.

When I tell my buddy Rachel about this state of affairs she nods affirmatively. "You heteros have to resist all those traditional Barbie and Ken gender roles," she gloated. "We lesbians don't have that; we can just figure out freely how to make things work."

Judith Stacey, esteemed author, sociologist at the University of Southern California and a founder of the Council on Contemporary Families, confirms this observation in her research on lesbian parents. Coauthor with Timothy Biblarz, of "(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter," Stacey (a hetero mom) reports that "there's a very active ideology among lesbians that they should be sharing responsibilities equally. They're the best at sharing household work and when they have kids they're more willing to both reduce their work hours to be equally involved in child care." Stacey also discovered, like Dunne, that "gay male couples are more egalitarian typically than straights."

"Another advantage we have," adds Rachel, "is our extended family. There's this feeling that queer people's kids belong to the whole community. Our babies are loved by everybody with a rainbow flag. We get enormous support, free baby-sitting and our children feel very cared for by numerous adults."

Right again. Community -- a human necessity that gasps near extinction in America -- is another documented advantage enjoyed by homosexual parents and their kids. Lesbian moms and gay dads aren't isolated like their het counterparts, lonely housewives and ridiculed male mommies. They garner an abundance of comfort and companionship from other strong women and sensitive guys.

The Family Pride Coalition, in San Diego, lists 133 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual parenting groups in 33 states across the nation, with an additional 23 internationally from Saskatchewan to South Africa. The sum total of gay parents and gays who want to be parents in various support groups is 2,500 in New York City; 1,500 in Minnesota; 1,100 in Boston; and 400 in Chicago, says Jenifer Firestone in her essay "The State of the State of Queer Parenting at the Millennium," published in "Home Fronts" by Alyson Books.

Stricken after much research with a severe case of lesbian envy, I am suddenly fearful that my daughter will grow up with a ghastly disadvantage because she has been plagued with "one mom, one dad." There has to be something bad about having homosexual parents, right? Only a het would have to ask.

Homophobia is the answer.

Order "Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood" from the editors of Mothers Who Think.