I know someone with the reverse of this situation. The father is gay, an only child, very close to his parents. When he came out to his parents, the issue of the family dying out with him was a big source of sadness for them. After giving it due consideration, he arranged for a surrogate mother, and had a child with her by artificial insemination. He is raising the child himself as a single father. Once a month, the son goes to spend part of a day with the mother in town a few hours away. The child is quite secure and well-balanced. He’s raised by a single father, when people ask about his mother, he tells them where she lives and that he sees her once a month. He spends summer vacation with his grandparents, and both he and his father spend holidays with them.
If you don’t want people being judgmental, don’t talk about it. It’s really not anyone’s business. You don’t have to live your life as if you’re on Oprah. People don’t have a right to know if you’ve fathered a child, or if you pay child support or how much. The only person who has a right to know is the child, because it affects him/her. If is much easier for a child to be able to say, “I know who my father is. He and my mom have never lived together, I see him once a month. I look like him.” If there is no emotional attachment between the parents, and things are amicable, then things are good for the child; the arrangement will be normal. It only gets bad for kids when there’s emotional baggage between parents that the kids end up carrying.