More than 15 years ago my colleague David Blankenhorn, in his book Fatherless America, argued that fatherhood was being fragmented. The emerging cultural view he documented was that children didn’t necessarily need their biological father in their home, married to their mother, caring for them. Rather, children could suffice with a “visiting” father, a “nearby guy,” or a “sperm” father.
The “sperm” father, Blankenhorn wrote, “completes his fatherhood prior to the birth of his child. His fatherhood consists entirely of the biological act of ejaculation. He spreads his seed, nothing more. He is a minimalist father, a one-act dad” (p. 171). Sperm donation has been around for a long time, with the oldest recorded case in the U.S. happening in Philadelphia in 1884. But for most of its history is has occurred in secrecy, with even the offspring not being told the truth about his or her origins. Sometimes persons conceived through anonymous sperm donation have discovered the truth by accident, such as when a relative or family friend spills the beans, or in the midst of family conflict, such as divorce, or after the man they thought was their father dies. And single women and lesbian couples seem anecdotally to be more open with their children about how they were conceived (the absence of a man does raise the question), although even they can be reluctant to let the child name the reality that the absent sperm donor is actually their biological father.
For these reasons and more, we have more young people than ever before who know they were conceived via sperm donation and who are telling their stories. The most recent prominent example is found on the op-ed page of Sunday’s New York Times, where Colton Wooten, who was conceived via anonymous sperm donation in North Carolina not long before Blankenhorn’s book was published, tells his story of growing up with the “mystery” of being conceived by a man who his mother never even knew in the Biblical sense. He writes:
I didn’t think much about that until 2006, when I was in eighth grade and my teacher assigned my class a genealogy project. We were supposed to research our family history and create a family tree to share with the class. In the past, whenever questioned about my father’s absence by friends or teachers, I wove intricate alibis: he was a doctor on call; he was away on business in Russia; he had died, prematurely, of a heart attack. In my head, I’d always dismissed him as my “biological father,” with that distant, medical phrase.
But the assignment made me think about him in a new way. I decided to call the U.N.C. fertility center, hoping at least to learn my father’s name, his age or any minutiae of his existence that the clinic would be willing to divulge. But I was told that no files were saved for anonymous donors, so there was no information they could give me.
Like many donor offspring, young Colton Wooten worries about many things: that his sperm donor biological father might be dead; that he himself might accidentally find himself in a romantic relationship with an unknown half-sister conceived by the same donor; that his father might be face in the crowd, “in the neighboring lane of traffic on a Friday during rush hour, behind me in line at the bank or the pharmacy, or even changing the oil in my car.”
His concerns echo those my co-authors and I found in among adults conceived through sperm donation in a study we released last year titled “My Daddy’s Name is Donor.” Like Colton Wooten, we found that most young people conceived this way feel they have the right to know who their fathers are.
Wooten’s concerns are also reflected in stories that are constantly being added to AnonymousUs.org, an online story collective founded by donor-conceived adult Alana S. (who is also a blogger at the site I edit, FamilyScholars.org). His concerns are shared by donor-conceived adult and Canadian journalist Olivia Pratten, who last month won a first-ever decision in North America favoring the rights of persons conceived via anonymous sperm or egg donation to know the truth about their origins. A British Columbian supreme court justice effectively ruled that the anonymous trade in sperm and eggs can no longer happen in that province.
His concerns emerge in the stories of many donor-conceived adults who look in the mirror and see a question mark, a blank, a painful absence of one half of who they are, and face a society that tells them that their loss does not matter. Their stories are emerging in newspapers and blogs and on message boards around the world.
Increasingly, these young people’s stories are everywhere. Now more than ever, those of us who were privileged to know our own fathers are called to help make sure that no person is ever deliberately denied –with the aid of the state — such knowledge again. Here in America, let’s end anonymity in the sperm and egg trade business. Now.
— Elizabeth Marquardt is author of Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce, editor of FamilyScholars.org, and vice president for family studies and director of the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values.
It is funny how we tell that adopted and IVF kids that genealogy does not matter, then turn around and make them do genealogy projects in school.
Genealogy does matter. We do value it. We do use it as the first source for constructing our identities. We like knowing who we are. Saying it does not matter is like saying history does not matter.
Legally, to be related to someone is to be their family. The only exception to this statement should be genuinely need-based.
Every child has the right to a mother and a father - neither relationship should be viewed as disposable, optional, or interchangeable with the other.
Motherless or fatherless children need to be allowed to grieve their loss openly - and should have the comfort of knowing their parent shares their pain (which is hardly possible if the parent is the one who arranged to have them be motherless or fatherless in the first place).
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Every child has the right to a mother and a father." That is just nonsense.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnd if the father dies before the child is born, then what? the state shall issue a father because the child has a "right" to one?
For millenia, children have been born without knowing their fathers. How many children were born without fathers in the early 1940s when millions of men were killed in WWII?
LinUSA: why don't you listen to the eloquent comments from people with actual, relevant experience in this matter? A school genealogy project is irrelevant and beside the point.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHow do you know she does not..
Some of the other comments i am seeing are cracking me up...people have lived for years with out fathers? Then why the push to put babies up for adoption that don't have fathers? Thats the party line isn't it? A baby needs 2 parents.
Thinking people need to listen to the actual donor conceived if there a SOME that don't like the way things are done and the others feel ok with it then things need to change to make ALL feel good about their lives. Its not about making the adults...mothers or sperm donors feel good about themselves.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNice that even supposed conservatives are not averse to discovering 'rights', in this case the 'right' to learn the identity of their biological father. Apropos of Churchill, we're all prostitutes.
Yes, it would be nice if the kids knew. But a right? No.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere is clearly no right to know your parents. I'm sure it is difficult, but I bet the alternative isn't knowing your father but rather not existing.
Also, adding more regulations and barriers to sperm donation will lead to increased costs and less donation. I don't doubt that some people would prefer fewer children born from sperm donation, but I expect the involved parents and donor-conceived disagree.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOne could safely bet that there will be no donation in British Columbia after the judge's decision. And that is the result that some want. (This is just the kind of judicial engineering that conservatives decry from the left.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUnfortunately, the last time I heard Dennis Prager opine on this subject, he approached it from the angle that biological ties aren't important. He was interviewing a young woman who had gone on a search for her donor father and written an article about it. Dennis emphasized that just because she was biologically related didn't mean there was some kind of inherent tie with the man.
Dennis's personal experience as an adoptive father plus his fervent defense of an adopted child whose biological father asserted (and was granted) legal custody blinded him to a very important distinction between donor kids and adopted kids: the donor kids don't have any father at all, adopted or otherwise.
I hope Dennis has rethought his position: it's one thing for a child with an adopted father to be torn away from that father in favor of the unknown biological father, and it's quite another to be raised with no father at all and to feel that absence.
By far, the most important thing that a mother can do for her children is provide them with a good father. Those women who strongly desire to be mothers but cannot provide a good father *in the home* have no business bringing their children into the world anyway, thinking that the kid won't know the difference.
And please don't assume that I'm condemning women who try to provide a father but he dies or flakes out, or who get pregnant by accident (or "accident"), or who rescue children from the third world to provide them with a better home.
I'm talking about women like myself who have little or no hope of getting married to a good man.
Ladies: your *desire* to be a mother does not take precedence over your children's *need* for a father. You wouldn't bring them into the world if you couldn't provide food or a roof over their heads; don't plan to deprive them of an entire parent just to fill your inner pain.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBEAUTIFULLY said. Thank you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm adopted. Every once and awhile someone asks me if I want to learn the identities of my "real" parents. My answer is that I have *always* known who my real parents were. They are the people who raised me, who came to my school plays, who hosted Cub Scout parties and helped build Pinewood Derby cars, and drove me to the movies for my first dates. My real mother taught me to read before I started school. My real dad, a NY sanitation woker, taught me to treat all people with respect, regardless of how much dirt covered their skin, or what color that skin was under the dirt. Together they taught me what a marriage should be, and how a husband and wife should treat one another.
I never learned anything from the woman who bore me or the guy who knocked her up, and never wanted to. I don't even much care why I was given up. I am grateful that the woman didn't opt to abort me. Abortion wasn't yet legal in those days, but it was hardly impossible to obatin one, especially in New York. So I owe her a great deal on that score. But she doesn't owe me anything beyond that one act.
I think there should be a confidential clearing house that can match the medical records of adoptees, IVF babies and sperm-donor children of their biological "parents". That's information that can be very important to any of us. *Geneology* is meaningless except to satisfy idel curiosity. *Heredity* can be important.
I am far more interested in the story of my parents' families and their immigrant experiences than I am in the history of people to whom I have nothing but an accidental biological connection. My grandparents and great-grandparents and their various siblings directly shaped the lives and characters of my own parents and myself. (One of my great aunts passed away last year at the age of 104, and she influenced generations of our family. My own great-niece and -nephew learned lessons from her.)
Yesterday was Fathers Day, and I spent most of it thinking about my dad, who passed away just before Christmas in 2007. I didn't spend a minute thinking about the man who provided half my DNA. Apart from maybe near-sightedness and a predisposition towards alooholism, it is hard to think of anything he ever gave me. It is impossible to stop thinking of all the gifts my *real* father gave to me.
Regards,
Joe
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI am also adopted, and my experience and views on the subject are very similar to Joe's above. But I think there should be a distinction between a birth parent who is replaced by an adoptive parent, and one who simply refuses to exercise parental duties. I don't need to know anything about my birth parents because I have my adoptive parents, and get my heritage and geneology from them. I expect my attitude would be quite different if I didn't know any father at all.
Moreover, a birthparent who has given up parental rights to enable an adoption has fulfilled his/her obligation to the child by securing a substitute. The guy who provides sperm to an unmarried woman has not. I'm not seeing why the law should protect his privacy or extinguish his responsibilities to the children he has spawned.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'm glad Dicentra mentions Dennis Prager because he is entirely right on this issue. Donor kids are wasting their time searching for the donor. It is worse than useless. If you don't have a father, find a role model, a mentor. An uncle or someone you connect with. That person is far better than a donor, especially because you, the kid, can select the mentor (we can't select our father). I know a donor kid and, while he is doing OK (now in college), he grew up in a real sense dysfunctional because of the missing Dad in the household. Yes many kids in this situation can do fine, but Dads are important. Every kid should have one. But don't search for sperm fathers. Find a good man who actually cares about you.
And ladies who say they have "little or no hope" of getting married to a good man: that is a huge cop out. I am convinced you can find a good man. You just have to try harder. That means dating, that means perhaps a good dating site, that means asking friends and relatives for help. It is a question of priorities. If you have never found a good man, it is because you haven't tried all that hard.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"And ladies who say they have 'little or no hope' of getting married to a good man: that is a huge cop out.… If you have never found a good man, it is because you haven't tried all that hard."
I "haven't tried all that hard" because I have been in poor health for the past 10 years and cannnot do more than what I absolutely have to do. Nobody wants to date someone who is tired and depressed all the time. I have plenty of other drawbacks (age, weight, looks, emotional issues, poor social skills) that count against me as well.
You can call it a huge cop-out if you want, but it turns out that men are more likely than women to end up in jail or otherwise be incapacitated by vice. Decent women outnumber decent men.
"Every pot has a lid," is sentimental nonsense spouted by those who were lucky enough to find someone. Those of us who were eliminated in the game of musical chairs would prefer it if you knocked it off already.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"And if the father dies before the child is born, then what? The state shall issue a father because the child has a 'right' to one?"
Who says the state should enforce the "right"?
To say that every child has a right to a father and a mother is not to prescribe policy but to formulate a truism that should guide our reproductive choices.
Children of fathers who die in a war are deprived of their fathers' presence, but the children know who they were, and that counts for an awful lot: so much so that children of deceased fathers do better than children who were abandoned by their fathers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse+1 to what JD522 said. I am also adopted, and give the same response whenever asked if I want to find my "real" parents. My "real" parents are the ones who raised me. I was able to get basic medical/hereditary info about my biological parents, but I'm far more interested in the stories and ancestry of my adoptive family.
As others have said, I feel truly sorry for donor-conceived children who have no father at all. And perhaps the law ought to require the release of basic medical and hereditary info about the donor. But there's no reason to require more than that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs is often the case, a state catchall policy in this instance is not needed and could be detrimental to many families.
I am the mother of a child conceived through egg donation. After going through cancer treatment, I was unable to get pregnant. We tried IVF with my own eggs, but with poor results. After prayerful consideration, we decided to try anonymous egg donation through our clinic. Our donor was another young woman who was also undergoing IVF treatments. We received basic medical and family background, but no identifying information.
The donor cycle worked on the first attempt, and I carried my son through a healthy, full-term pregnancy. There is no question in my mind or my heart that he is MY son. He has two parents who love him, and each other, very much, and we will raise him with our love and guidance for the rest of our lives.
I am thankful for the gift of life the donor gave us, and that is the way I will explain it to my son someday. Will he feel as though "half" of himself is "missing"? I don't know the answer to that, but I can tell you one thing. He will know that the mother who carried him, who nurtured him, who taught him, cried with him, laughed with him, is the mother who loved him with her whole heart. I pray that will be enough.
And that judges and legislatures will allow it to be enough, too.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell said. I hope it is not lost in these debates that egg-donor children do have real mothers who carried them and gave birth to them. There is no convenient fiction here; these are real mothers historically, legally, and even biologically.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Kevin Moriarty: how do you know I do not have experience?
A lot of adopted and IVF kids say they are perfectly content with their family, their status, etc.
But there are a lot of kids who don't feel that way at all.
What is far more troubling is the fact that we can't know how many of these people who are "perfectly content" really are. Our culture actively pressures and shames adopted kids - with tired lines that suppose a child ought to be "grateful" to have adoptive parents, and therefore ought to not have any feelings except the feelings that an adoptive parent might want an adopted child to have.
Many of the same people who are now insisting that "I know as much as I need to know about my real family" will be the same ones who will feel differently when their own children start doing genealogical charts in school - or when their parents die, and for the first time in their life they are free to feel whatever they want, without shame, without guilt, and without having to worry about hurting a parent's feelings.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSorry LinUSA, but your comments here that try to suggest that the "non-content" donor children are the silent majority is just too far fetched. The media loves to report the story of the donor child looking for his/her donor so this is getting disproportional attention (probaly by a factor of several thousand percent). And your own research article is based on Donor Sibling Registry (DSR), which clearly is going to give a completely false picture of the real situation since the children that sign up on this site are actively searching for their donors (or half siblings). Not to mention that most sign-ups on DSR are parents looking for other parents.
The bottom line is that the vast majority of donor children are very content with knowing that a donor helped create them, and that his motivations at the time was to help create families and perhaps make a bit of money to get through his studies. I think it is perfectly fine that some donors opt in to an open donor program but this frenzy requiring all donors (past, present and especially future) to give up anonymity is completely out of line. Clearly the consequences of this would be a dramatic decline in donations and price inflation. Of course the major push for this is coming from parents that already have their children (or a few percent of the donor children that clearly don't need to worry about the future supply of donor sperm).
James Sinclair
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs the majority of donor-conceived persons do not even know of their status, how can you say that they are (or would be) "content"?
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