The essay's author talks a little bit about how he and some of his half-siblings feel a sense of loss, or that something feels missing, or that they wished they had a father.
But the essay never really touches on whether they _resent_ the fact that their parent or parents made the choice to have them conceived through artificial insemination from an anonymous donor. Obviously, if that hadn't happened, they wouldn't be around to resent it -- but it's still possible to feel conflicted about it.
I'm sure there are some people who do carry that resentment and some people who don't, and we often hear stories about the latter, but I've heard fewer stories about the former and would be interested to hear their voices and perspectives.
Well. You can hear my voice. I'm the child of a sperm donor. I didn't learn about it till I was 18... which was more than a bit strange.
The emotions that come from the combination of society's familial expectations, your own complicated family, and just the general fact that it's nice to be alive is a really strange cocktail. But... I'm not sure resent is a word that I would ever use, even in my bizarre situation of having learned later in life. Instead of resentment I would probably describe a bubbling dystopian feeling. For me, I often focus on the fact that my life, or at least the genetic specifics of my being, is directly a result of technological progress. The very core of who I am everyday in my life relies on the fact that society enabled my mom to have children without her (ex)-husband. That's pretty strange.
These feelings come up most strongly when I look in a mirror. The physical features are the inescapable consequence, right? I think this is what made this photo essay so impactful for me. That photos so strongly highlight what is most stark about being the child of a sperm donor.
In the thesaurus, vex is listed alongside resent. That word seems to get at the core of what I feel. When I think too long or hard it just feels vexing... it's very "what the fuck"-ish.
Do you think things would have been different for you, if you knew about it since you were a child?
I'm a 35 years old male that can't have kids. Not possible, say the doctors. I love children and me and my wife are considering using a sperm donor.
Should all work as we hope, we are not sure how to approach exactly this situation of telling our child about it. At first I thought we should just keep it a secret, but the more I read on the subject, the more I think this is a mistake. The thing I fear the most is that my kid would grow to resent me no matter what I do, because ...you know, I'd not be the 'real' father.
I was born out of wedlock to a mom that was single by the time I was born, and have never met the biological father. She wrote a little picture book explaining what a biological father is, how it's different than my "Dad" (she had since married someone unrelated), and there was even a little photograph of him in there. And lots of stuff about how her and my dad love me a ton and how it's not a big deal.
So I grew up with the knowledge since basically the day I was sentient, and therefore it as much a part of my life as my fingers and toes. I almost never think about it. Last time I did was in the doc's office when she was asking about family history, and I had to remind myself that my dad's family history doesn't count.
So you have one vote over here from telling the kid from day 1, possibly in a format that they can come back to and explore / show to other kids when they ask (i.e. the picture book I got)
Have you considered using DNA testing to track down your father or related family of theirs? I’m not suggesting it, but just trying to understand the feelings that go along with possibly having the ability to have unanswered questions answered.
I don't really care to track him down, but this article did convince me to finally pull the trigger on 23andme, so I can at least see some of my genetic health risks.
My biological father is nobody to me - he has no bearing on my identity and I don't see the need to meet him (to answer your question).
I found out last year that I was a sperm-donor child. My sisters have resented me my entire life because they were adopted, and our parents bent over backwards in trying to appease them.
(I found this out through 23AndMe, when I was contacted by a half-sister I didn't know I had, who was looking for information about her genetic father. Turns out her family lied to her about her origins too.)
To find out that I was half-adopted myself didn't bother me at all in one sense- I loved my Dad, and that didn't change. But I now have real anger towards the fact that neither of my parents told any of us the truth while they were alive, and maybe my relationship with my sisters would have been different if we were all at least a little in the same boat. My parents were loving people, but were just from a generation where things like this just weren't talked about. Like an earlier poster said, it's all just... Vexing.
The one thing I am certain of is that finding out your Dad wasn't your biological father while dealing with spiteful siblings who are trying to destroy you for the vulgar, prosaic money reasons that often erupt in families as the estate was divided was a supremely shitty way to find out. Tell the truth early and often, and hide nothing.
I can see why you might worry about not being the father.
As the child of a sperm donor, I can tell you, my dad is and always will be my dad, regardless of the fact that he's not my "biological father."
My experience has shown me that parents aren't "zero-sum", if that makes sense. Learning there was another father-figure into my life changed, but didn't diminish, my relationship with father. Both my dad and my biological father represent critically important pieces of me and the fact that they aren't the same person doesn't diminish how I feel about either of them, it just means I'm the product of the combination of them (and my mother, environmental, etc.).
I can't know for sure, but I feel like what would alter how I feel about my father would be if he tried to hide from me who I really was (i.e. didn't want me to know that I was the child of a sperm donor). While I can understand wanting to keep that a secret to protect a child, I think it would have felt like the opposite if I hadn't been told. The fact that I'm a donor child feels like my secret to keep if I want to, not anyone else's - I'm grateful my parents told me (when I was about 10 - I'm now 38), and I'm grateful they've let me decide what I do with that information.
It's also worth considering that there's a good chance your child will eventually find out, even if you don't tell them. Whether through the prevalence of DNA testing, needing to know their medical history, or someone sharing information accidentally, it's something probably best told to someone in an intentional way - not happenstance.
The last thing that I'll mention is that when you choose a sperm donor, you'll likely have the option to choose an anonymous or non-anonymous (someone that is willing to be in contact with the child when he/she becomes 18) sperm donor. I hold no resentment towards my parents for using a sperm donor to conceive me (I wouldn't be here if they hadn't :), but I do wish they could have used a non-anonymous donor.
Like I say, my biological father is a part of me, but I don't know who he is. There are big questions for me (and my wife, and my son) about who I am, and until I find my biological father (still looking), I won't be able to answer them.
If you can, so your child isn't left with looming questions about who they are, I would highly recommend using a non-anonymous donor.
All the best to you, and your family, in your journey.
Well here's a story from a different point of view, not long after we'd had our kids my wife 'volunteered' me to lesbian friends (both doctors and lawyers were involved) - I've always been the known male donor, not a mystery, but emphatically not a parent, more like an uncle.
It's worked out really well for us, our kids got half siblings (again more like cousins), some extra sets of doting grandparents etc etc
As modern families shrink, with 1 or 2 kids we don't have as many relatives (it's a power series sort of thing) extended families shrink, we got to enlarge ours. Usually you only get one chance in life to choose who your relatives are, we found a second.
I think for medical reasons alone children deserve to know where there genes come from.
Bonding with a child is separate from that. Plenty of people hate their biological parents because their parents were lousy, abusive people who never treated them well.
I'm not the person you were asking, but I agree that keeping this a secret seems like a mistake. Between the increasing popularity of genetics & ancestry services and the increase in health & fitness tracking, it seems extremely likely that your child would eventually find out that they aren't related to your side of the family and/or have half siblings out there.
The lie seems potentially much more damaging to your relationship than the fact that you are a loving father to a deeply wanted child who does not share your blood.
>The lie seems potentially much more damaging to your relationship than the fact that you are a loving father to a deeply wanted child who does not share your blood.
As someone who found out the hard way - 100% fully agreed. I loved my father (mother too) very much, and they, me.
And now that I know the truth and they have both passed, we can never talk about it, and there is a thorn of resentment that, frankly, I do not know if I will ever be able to fully remove.
speaking from a parent-donor perspective - i’m planning to donate some embryos created during ivf. (i have infertility issues.) i also am in a same sex marriage.
open identity donors, recipient families and children, and the studies behind identity release (or the lack thereof) all overwhelmingly point towards open donations as being a positive. anonymous only when you have no choice. a lot of groups out there exist - and books and more - that can help you navigate when to have the talk and how to have it.
as we are both biological parents to our children, i can’t tell you exactly how it goes, but we are surrounded by so many solo parents and queer parents that used donors and surrogates. everyone has a beautiful, loving family in their own right and these kids grow up normalizing this as part of themselves even from toddlerhood. there are struggles, but if you think parenthood is for you, then you should do it. good luck!
edit: just wanted to add, that some sperm banks are not made equal......... big ones like california cryobank and xytex tend to have much higher family limits and more restrictions than smaller progressive ones like sperm bank of california. if the idea of having 30 half-siblings is unbelievable - banks like sperm bank of ca have 10 family limits and track closely. you can help narrow things down for your future kids just with the bank (or program) you pick.
I mean, as a severely autistic man, I would love to have a child from a non-anonymous woman but that doesn't seem possible so the only the option for me seems to be adoption. I can absolutely relate with woman who want to have children but cannot find a father. I sincerely hope their children will be loved and happy.
I was thinking of lesbian couples using anonymous donors (as was the case in the article). If one has a brother, or either has a close male friend, they could use his sperm. Or, gay couples using a surrogate (vs adoption).
Definitely brings up other questions/issues arise there, but avoids the "will my kid have 42 step-siblings?" and similar questions.
I guess it's just the photographer's style, but every one of those portraits looks like the subject been posed in a way that's unnatural for them, and they're not enjoying it.
Perhaps that's partially the point? They've all been brought together in a manner that, for almost everyone, is uncomfortable and strange... to say nothing about the nature of the connection they share which is awkward, even to them.
FWIW, as someone who found out by surprise that I was a sperm-donor child (and that I have at least one half-sister who was equally surprised by the knowledge of an unexpected half-brother) I find the expressions of the people in the photographs extremely relatable. It's pretty much the exact expression I had on my face when I first found out, which is essentially a combination of "wow this explains a lot of things" + "what the fuck" + a constant background oscillation of "but this changes nothing/everything/nothing/everything/nothing/everything". I'm in my mid-40's, so it's not a generational thing.
Aside from the bizarre, uncomfortable poses in the photographs, the subjects all look somewhat dejected, as if their existence in this world is very clinical. Not sure if that’s what the photographer was going for but kudos to him for keeping such a consistent style across multiple loosely related people. I imagine it could be like herding cats.
I found them funny, in fact i'm pretty sure the photographer was being deliberately porno-ironic with some of the guys. Refreshingly fun pics and a step away from work-safe sterile photography.
Ok, that is an interesting diversion on a Friday. I too was struck by the odd poses, some of them seem to me as if they are trying to evoke a sexual response although given their consistency I attribute it primarily to the style the photographer imputes on his work. Given all the internal dialog he includes I'm pretty sure the similarity of emotions is intentional.
That said, the most interesting thing for me in the article was the chain of events, same sex couples wishing to conceive, selecting a sperm donor with a 'good' track record, results in the same donor being preferentially selected. Given that the children share common activities (the article mentions camp for same sex families) and the kids socialization there, it would seem there is a higher than otherwise risk of developing a relationship with a half sibling. That has got to be emotionally challenging if you discover it later. Understanding ones own genetic history is a thing in isolated populations like Iceland but I can easily see it being overlooked in a larger more diverse population. I have never considered that burden that would be imposed on future children conceived in this way, but in hindsight it makes sense. Somewhere there is the most "popular" donor of the most used donation service who could have hundreds? thousands? of children out there.
Odd poses but without any sort of smouldering look on their face, it's more plain/openness on their face. Really doesn't feel sexual at all. Not even the open legged poses.
My father was a sperm donor, back in the mid-fifties. I didn't know until I was in my thirties (in the eighties). In the past few years, via 23andMe, I've discovered three living half-siblings. I think it's been totally mind-blowing fun for all involved to discover each other. We all read the nyt article today. My bio-sister commented, "Yuh think we’d all look better if we were in the NYT?"
Sort of, but from what I have heard, being a donor is also absurdly competitive due to the low marginal cost to the donor. Every prospective parent wants their child's donor-father to be a 4.0 GPA valedictorian ivy league graduate, captain of the football team, leader of men, captain of industry. Or maybe visionary researcher, famous scientist. Or perhaps top-billing hollywood actor, or decorated military hero. And, behold, because the parent can be choosy about the donor, they actually can have that.
So in the end being a donor isn't really the key strategy here, it's just a force multiplier for highly successful men who have always had fantastic odds for passing on their genes to multiple mothers (even in nominally monogamous societies)
The target for those ads is most likely college students. As someone not famous, slightly above average height, with a good but not-outstanding-for-Seattle career, I can attest that at least some prospective parents seem to be satisfied with my description. At least based on how often I have to get my blood re-tested in order to release more vials.
Even when there are no legal limitations, sperm banks will often limit the number of donations made by any single donor. Most donors will not travel to donate to multiple sperm banks.
2) Limitations on donor anonymity. (probably useless these days - acquaintance of mine tracked down her anonymous donor father via 23AndMe, and was devastated to discover he didn't want to have any contact with her. seems obvious, but...)
3) Limitations on donor compensation. (same reason there are limitations on blood and organ sales, I imagine). However, you have to pay highly achieving men significantly more than others for them to take time out of their day to donate into a vial. And also to abstain so that their donations are high quality.
It's true but do evolutionary strategies matter anymore? We are at most 2 generations away from complete DNA design, and i m even sure that many people will be digging graves for more "exotic" sources.
Donor Unknown [1][2] is a documentary film about this topic; young woman, daughter of two women tries to find her biological father and on the way, she reaches and makes contact with her other 12 siblings.
I don't think it's just you, but I don't think it's intentional either. Other comments (backed up by the article) have said that the goal might have been to make the subjects look uncomfortable, which at a second look seems perfectly plausible.
yes. you just sign up with a sperm bank and cough up money.
for maximum protections (both directions) you will want to involve licensed medical professionals on the usage end. so you should have a doctor looped in for ICI/IUI/IVF etc.
The donor is nowhere close to the impact that Genghis Kahn had on the Y chromosome. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1180246/ - and that was in the 11th century with a total word population of about 400M.
A few dozen children from one father today, in a world with a population of 7.5B should not be any concern.
Sorry is this is off-topic, but given the context, why are so many of them posed in seemingly erotic ways? It isn't just the women either look at Nik Morgan, 21 near the bottom (no pun intended).
I think a lot of them aren’t really erotic, so much as there’s an overlap between “erotic poses” and “vulnerable poses.” A lot seemed to be posed in a manner that I would call, artificially, awkwardly, vulnerable.
It's definitely the point. Being the child of a sperm donor can be so uncomfortable. It seems like an extremely appropriate way to pose someone who is being confronted by such a deep part of themselves.
as a person that gave birth to a child, married to a woman, no. stop.
i also see a lot of disgusting sexism in the assumption that men cannot be solo parents or be partnered to other men that both want to be parents.
you seem to know nothing about assisted reproduction and you should inform yourself and address your cisheterosexism before you speak again on this topic.
edit: i’m so infuriated i missed the part about adoption. if you haven’t experienced adoption from the perspective of solo parenting by choice, i assure you that the path to getting pregnant and carrying a child is usually drastically easier and cheaper. i cannot even _donate_ eggs/embryos without running into religious organizations that refuse to talk to me.
I don't think anyone is arguing that "men cannot be solo parents", just that it's a better situation with two parents. There are also some who believe that having both male and female role models is better.
But the essay never really touches on whether they _resent_ the fact that their parent or parents made the choice to have them conceived through artificial insemination from an anonymous donor. Obviously, if that hadn't happened, they wouldn't be around to resent it -- but it's still possible to feel conflicted about it.
I'm sure there are some people who do carry that resentment and some people who don't, and we often hear stories about the latter, but I've heard fewer stories about the former and would be interested to hear their voices and perspectives.