Tom Daley and husband Dustin Lance Black have revealed they have welcomed their second child together. The couple, who got married in 2017 and had their first child via surrogacy in 2018, have welcomed another little boy to their family.
The Olympic diver, 28, and screenwriter and director Dustin, 48, shared the surprise news in an announcement in The Times, which revealed they have named their second son Phoenix Rose. The couple are already the proud parents of five-year-old Robert Ray, who they welcomed via surrogate the year after they got married.
Their little boy was born on March 28. The announcement read: 'Black-Daley on 28th March to Thomas Robert Daley and Dustin Lance Black, a son, Phoenix Rose.'
Tom has previously been open about why the couple decided to look at surrogacy in America instead of the UK before they welcomed their first son, the Mirror reports. At the time, Tom said surrogates and parents are not afforded the same legal rights in the UK, which led them towards the "more streamlined" system in the US.
He explained: "We looked into it in the UK and in the US. In the UK it's a lot more complicated because surrogates aren't as well protected legally, intended parents aren't protected legally, it's just not safe, there's a lot of hurdles to have to jump over.
"In the US, everything is regulated in a way that keeps everyone safe and in the US the surrogacy process is a lot more streamlined."
Tom and Dustin's sweet new baby news comes after the gold medal-winning diver recently opened up about his journey to fatherhood, his experience with surrogates, and the difficulties same sex couples face when it comes to starting a family of their own. The much-loved star revealed that losing his own father, Robert, who passed away in 2011 aged 40 following a cancer battle, cemented his desire to become a father himself.
He also said that husband Dustin’s own losses – his brother died of cancer in 2012 – also left them wanting to have a child. Speaking to Giovanna Fletcher on her Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast last year, Tom said: “For as long as I could remember, I have wanted to be a parent.
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"I think because of the relationship with my mum and dad, we were so close and then, when I lost my dad, it was like, I want to be everything that he was to me to someone else because every child deserves to have what I had with my dad because it was such a special relationship, we were so close.”
The diver explained: “Once I started to realise that I was gay, it was like, how am I going to have children in the future? What does this look like for me? What are the options?
“And having to figure out exactly how that was going to work, looking down the routes of adoption, surrogacy and all of those different things.”
He continued: “It is a lot more complicated for same sex parents to have children and you have to really think about it and like really, really want to have kids in order to be able to make it work and it’s extremely complex for same sex couples in a number of different ways.
“Lance and I had lost so many people in our families and there was something about surrogacy that we were drawn to that just meant that we could pass on the people that we’d lost, their genes and their thoughts, their feelings, their personalities and being able to bring someone into the world, that felt so extremely special.”
