Thanks hasenpfeffer!
Dec 17, 2006 Adoption, Infertility
Those of us created with donated sperm won’t stay bubbly babies forever. We’re all going to grow into adults and form opinions about the decision to bring us into the world in a way that deprives us of the basic right to know where we came from, what our history is and who both our parents are.
from My Father Was an Anonymous Sperm Donor
I once ran across a discussion at a blog where a lesbian couple was talking about the “sperm donor” of their child (the man in question was a friend of the couple). They were talking about how inappropriate it was that anyone would congratulate this man on the couple’s pregnancy. The comments revealed that among the blog’s readers there was a pervasive belief that these “sperm donors” — known or not — didn’t matter and wouldn’t matter. Obviously I can’t speak to the lesbian experience in making a baby with donor sperm and I recognize that there are likely social issues, which I can’t understand and that contributed to the anger when the bio father was congratulated. But the comments were disturbing because they sounded an awful lot like the idea among adoptive parents that bio parents simply don’t matter. As this young woman’s brave essay states, they do and will matter.
Thankfully the children themselves are speaking out. We parents are fortunate that we will get to learn from these adult-children; previous generations of parents didn’t have this opportunity.
December 17th, 2006 at 11:05 pm
Thanks for the link, Dawn. That article was very eye-opening. I have been thinking of these issues for many many years, ever since I read a magazine article when I was a girl growing up in Brazil about this woman and her son, conceived with anonymous donor sperm, carefully chosen for the father’s physical traits. I’ll never forget the photos of that blonde woman and her son (I think she lived here in the U.S., she couldn’t have done that in Brazil, but maybe she did, I don’t know).
December 17th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
oh, and I love the blog’s new look.
December 18th, 2006 at 12:03 am
Wow. Thanks for the article, Dawn.
December 18th, 2006 at 3:36 am
I read this this morning with much interest. R., even at 6, is asking so many questions and clearly has her own thoughts on the whole adoption phenomenon. I am very worried after reading this piece about what lies ahead.
On a lighter note, I love the new blog design!
December 18th, 2006 at 9:58 am
This was a great article. When we first started our conversations about having a family, we quickly ruled out hiring a surrogate. Neither of us really felt a need for a biological connection and frankly with our families medical history we each had some big bombs to offer genetically.
The biggest reason though was that we knew that we wanted to raise a child with just the two of us as parents. We also knew that there was no way we could know a woman while she carried a baby and after delivery ask her to leave our lives and the life of our child.
We have been given odd looks and comments when we tried to explain our reasons for not taking this route. It isn’t just anonymous male donors that are the lost factor. It would be interesting to know what the children carried by surrogate mothers think.
December 18th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
The quotation that stood out for me: “It’s hypocritical of parents and medical professionals to assume that biological roots won’t matter to the “products” of the cryobanks’ service, when the longing for a biological relationship is what brings customers to the banks in the first place.”
[Although I think the genetic component is not the only reason why people choose donor sperm. For many women, donor sperm is a faster route to motherhood than adoption. And for many lesbians, it may be the only route, given discriminatory laws in this country.]
Bacchus, I’m confused, so forgive the question, but if you’re not using a surrogate, and you’re pursuing adoption (as it appears in your blog profile that you are), won’t your child have four parents? You, your partner, and his or her biological/first/natural/birth parents? Or do you mean that you thought a surrogate was going to want more of an active, custodial-type parenting relationship than the potential adoption scenario that fits your family?
December 18th, 2006 at 3:53 pm
my daughter was conceived via anonymous donor sperm. at the time we chose an anonymous donor for several reasons: we explored a known donor, who decided not to parent with us (largely because we didn’t want him to be a full-fledged parent); a less-trusted known donor would have put me, the not pregnant mom, at a serious legal risk that we were not willing to take. we weren’t aware of willing-to-be-known sperm bank donors — our research was very limited — the feminist women’s clinic that was helping us used a particular bank, and that’s what we went with. it was also the very early days of the internet, and we were complete luddites. but mostly we just didn’t think it mattered too much. pretty quickly after our daughter was born, i started to feel like it did indeed matter, and that her father/donor is a special, significant part of her life and our life, even though we don’t know him. if we did know him, certainly congratulations would be in order! i do sometimes wish we had chosen a known donor, but the paradox, as i’ve explained to trixie, is that *she* couldn’t exist *and* have a known donor. if we had picked a known donor, we would have made a different kid. she kind of enjoys that paradox, and at least at age 9.5, is not that concerned about knowing her father.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:04 pm
My husband was a sperm donor to a lesbian couple. One of the women was a very good friend of his from high school. Sadly, their daughter died very young as a result of a genetic illness neither the mom nor my husband knew they carried and which was not screened for. So we will never confront many of these thorny issues. They live on the opposite coast but we were able to meet their daughter when she was little. If you saw the pictures of my husband holding her, knowing that she was destined to live a short life, you would never question that in some way he was apart of her and she of him. We never got the chance to test our ideals of openness yet space, connection yet seperateness, family and yet not.
Much strength to the families that are figuring out their path.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Much food for thought here, Dawn, thanks for the link to the article.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:39 am
I believe anonymous donor conception is wrong. You only have to read Rel’s blog to be convinced.
How dare we think we can just create a child and not have access to his or her origins.Who the hell do we think we are to be so thoughtless about our children.
Who is my father? I don’t know, just some anonymous sperm donor. Who is my mother? Oh just some egg donor, probably a college girl who needed to buy books……
I never thought about it like this before,my brother donated sperm so I might have neices and nephews somewhere that I will never meet.
To those who have conceived anonymously, my views are just my own and aimed in a general to the whole world rant/vent, not to anyone personally.
December 19th, 2006 at 2:34 am
love the new look. your best ever. good post too. i have friend right now, lesbian, pregnant by a donor. have to think about forwarding this to her. not sure how she will take it. but it was a good read.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:15 am
Glad you liked it. I actually considered this myself, in an off-handed way, when I was young and single - “if I don’t find the right guy to marry I can just have kids via donor sperm” - not considering ANY of the implications for the potential child. I hope that, had it really come to that, I would have. But who knows. I might have rushed into it naively without stopping to think.
It must be very difficult growing up not knowing who your biological father is.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
It’s actually pretty timely for me that you posted this article, as my partner and I are just starting to track her cycle with hopes of TTC in early spring. J and I are both women, and we’re adoptive moms to a 22 month old through transracial adoption.
Our open adoption experience has greatly shaped our donor selection process, and since we have the option, we’re only open to ‘identity release’ donors — those who are open to their identifying information being given to their DI conceived children when they turn 18. We aren’t considering using a known donor for a number of reasons, most important being we’re not close with many biological men who’d be appropriate for and interested in donating.
Frustratingly, even though we have only two requirements (an ID release donor who’s African American or biracial) we’ve ruled out many sperm banks and literally almost all available donors. This makes the process of TTC much more difficult and more expensive — and I can see how other couples or single women in our situation could be as equally frustrated.
There really are additional layers to building a family as a lesbian or gay couple. In many states (mine included) only one parent is the legal parent (in both adoption and in birthing a child) and known donors often have many legal rights purely by biological connection that committed non-birth partners to biomoms aren’t afforded. If J successfully births a baby, I will have zero legal rights to my child. It’s terrifying.
That said, I think it’s incredibly important to ensure that our children, whenever possible, have access to their birth histories, first families, bio parents information, etc. We intend to be as open with any donor conceived children as we are with our son through adoption.
But this sh!t ain’t easy, either.
December 20th, 2006 at 4:53 am
I would not choose an “anonymous” biological tie for my child, but she has one anyway (”father” unknown). And while I honor her right to find her genetic roots, as it were, I also recognize the frustration of that couple. There is an assumption that a family is incomplete without an opposite-sex parent that same-sex parents often suffer from at social, legal and political levels.
I also think there is a difference between a parent and a biological tie through gametes. Again, it is my daughter’s right to find out this tie and I will help her someday if she wants to do so. If I ever had a baby through “donor” sperm, I’d want a known donor, or one willing to be contacted in the future. But a parent is a social, relational term to me and I don’t think gamete donors are mothers or fathers.
First mothers are always mothers by virtue of 9 months of mothering, as far as I’m concerned–whether they ever see their children after birth or not–but I feel quite differently about men who impregnate women, especially when they take no relational role in the child’s life (and perhaps don’t know or care about its existence at all).
December 20th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Shannon you said, “I also think there is a difference between a parent and a biological tie through gametes. … But a parent is a social, relational term to me and I don’t think gamete donors are mothers or fathers.
… I feel quite differently about men who impregnate women, especially when they take no relational role in the child’s life (and perhaps don’t know or care about its existence at all).”
This is my first thought, too (I was just talking to Jessica about this) but the thing is, the *kids* don’t necessarily feel this way. And while we parents may feel comfortable dismissing egg donors/sperm donors as parents, our children might have different ideas. I think we ought to be prepared for that.
Erin said, “There really are additional layers to building a family as a lesbian or gay couple.”
Absolutely. That’s why I said there were likely issues I wasn’t getting in the “don’t congratulate the sperm donor” discussion. But again, who knows how the kids will feel. I think it’s important to plan for every contingency. I do think it’s absolutely unfair and unjust that non-bio parents in same-sex relationships don’t have parental rights but this is separate from the issue of a child wanting contact with the man or woman who donated half the biological resources to their creation.
December 21st, 2006 at 2:41 am
I do think how kids feel doesn’t necessarily correlate with what I feel or even with fact. So as I mentioned, we are completely willing to help her track the man down someday if it’s possible.
But I also think it’s important that kids from donor gametes not romanticize that person as a “parent.” The person probably didn’t bargain for parenthood and the kids I’ve known who’ve found donors tend to be excited at first, disappointed later and more or less not interested in the end.
That’s why if I did go the donor pg route, I’d want a known donor–same reason I want open adoptions. It would allow the kids to keep it real all along.
But I also think having their 2 moms dismissed as not a real family hurts kids considerably. And the two issues are intertwined for many families.
December 21st, 2006 at 4:11 am
“But I also think it’s important that kids from donor gametes not romanticize that person as a “parent.—
Absolutely — and I think that if we parents don’t dismiss their feelings around it that we can be more sympathetic and more effective in helping them understand the likely limitations of having an actual *relationship* with that person.
“But I also think having their 2 moms dismissed as not a real family hurts kids considerably. And the two issues are intertwined for many families.”
I agree. And I think that it’s arguable that in a less heterosexist culture kids would be less likely to romanticize donors. I don’t know though. I do think that some of our bio-bias is rooted in heterosexism but it’s difficult to tease that out from an actual bio imperative to find out where we come from. Still, this is our reality and some kids are going to feel the need to track down their sperm donor father or egg donor mother or — heck, embryo-donor parents. I feel like we (parents) need to get ahead of this so we can be prepared for it. I’d also like if the public discourse about this was less rooted in our “one mom, one dad” assumptions about families and then I think there’d be less need for families (both hetero and same sex) to feel defensive about their choices.
I do think that open adoption and the discussions it raises (and the mostly positive spin it tends to get these days in the media) will help families built with donors to find a new lens to consider the needs of their kids. *Some* of the issues are the same and it’s makign it more acceptable to see that there are many ways for parents to be parents and that ultimately the kids get to decide what is meaningful to them.
December 22nd, 2006 at 2:40 am
If not knowing the biological father is so terible, then why is society not harsher on single mothers, and the fathers who do not hold up on their end of the parenting bargain. We seem to be so judgmental on adoptive parents or those who chose to build a family through sperm donation, but the other ills in society are just let go.
December 22nd, 2006 at 6:22 pm
I’m the bio-mom to a mixed-race kid from an interracial lesbian relationship. We used an anonymous donor primarily because a known donor would have given someone who wasn’t an active co-parent more rights than my partner, who has been a SAHM to our daughter since she was born. Finding a Chinese-Taiwanese donor was hard enough - an ID-release one was an impossibility.
When our daughter was 2, we were contacted by her bio-dad from my listing on the Donor Sibling Registry. I see this as a huge gift for her - she has pictures of him, knows that he helped make her, will probably meet him when she’s older. We refer to him as bio-dad between ourselves and as [his first name] to her, primarily because she’s still young enough that the distinction between roles and titles is too much for her. (She gets *extremely* upset and confused if you say she has two moms - from her perspective, she has a mom and a mama, which isn’t the same.)