Daddy & Papa takes an unflinching look at some of the complex issues surrounding gay fatherhood, including the effect of sexual orientation on children, the challenge of white gay men raising African American kids, the changing relationship of gay fathers to the gay community and the real impact on children of being raised without a mother. Along the way, we meet other gay dads: a single father confronting the isolation of raising at-risk kids in a gay and largely childless neighborhood a healthcare worker battling Florida state law to adopt the child who for five years has called him 'Dad ' and a couple and their nine-year-old daughter, whose biggest problem is not that her parents are gay, but that they are divorced.

The film utilizes an accessible, first-person narrative to create an intimate portrayal of gay dads, following the filmmaker and his partner on their rocky, and sometimes amusing, journey to parenthood.