Stories from Partners/Friends/Others
Missing Links
Hi,
My story is a little different but I relate to 80% of this. I am the result of a one night stand. I have never known my father.
I have never had a stepdad, an uncle or granddad. Or any male role models. Just me and my mum.
I experience all of this! Wondering about your genetic history, the confusion! The feeling different. The anger!
I find that I continually grieve for the father I didn't have. For the missing links. My half brothers and sisters which may or may not exist! For my grandma and granddad.
I have all these questions:
- Did they know about me?
- Would they want to know about me?
- Were there other one night stand children?
- Will I accidentally bump into them?
- Will I accidentally sleep with them?
I have very strong feelings regarding sperm and egg donation. I do not feel that this is something you can donate. I do not understand why anyone would choose to separate out genetics when you consider all the hideous consequences that can occur!
I have had a really rough time as I am bisexual. A lot of my friends are young lesbians and to them sperm donation is a wonderous way to go. Hard to fit as I feel this practice is very wrong. Whenever I have discussed it either with gay or straight people - I have been shouted down and told it doesn't exist. That my thing is not a thing and if it is then it wouldn't be the same for a donor conceived person. A donor conceived person would not experience any feelings of loss or confusion about their identity.
Well, surprise surprise! Here we go a website full of people who feel exactly the same bloody way!!!!
Date submitted: March 19, 2015
Did Not Having a Dad Ruin My Life?
Not sure where to begin. I am a middle aged man who has never had or even known the name of my birth father. My mother, for whatever reason, refuses to tell me who he was, even after 40 years. As I get older I begin to wonder how that mystery man's genes will affect me. Did he suffer from diseases or conditions that are passed on in family lines? Did he die of a heart attack or stroke at an early age? is there some preventative measure I could take, but don't know about?
Did he even know I existed???
I have pressed my mother for decades but all she would tell me is he was a big guy like me and that it might have been a result of a one night stand......
Early in my childhood my mother became a lesbian (I know it is not supposed to be a choice to be gay, but apparently it was for her, as she is no longer gay) This confused the crap right out of me and actually caused me a lot of personal problems and grief. Not with my mom, but 30 years ago if anyone had found out I was the child of a gay parent I would have been physically and mentally abused on a regular basis. I learned very quickly how to lie and cover up the reality of my life. Though uncomfortable then, it has not been a major issue in my life, other than teaching me dishonesty and shame at a very early age as I was never really helped with the situation or the emotions I was experiencing. As the only male member of my family (to this day) I had to figure everything out myself.
But the daddy issue still bothers me. Much more now that I am a dad myself. I can see how my interaction with my daughter is helping to mould her personality and make her into a little version of myself and her mother, my wife. Even though she is a beautiful little girl I can see the difference having a male influence is having on her and the positive things it brings. But then I feel sad because I never had that input myself. Even though my mother loved me, I was still a separate entity in my own family as "men were evil" the highly feminist and strong willed lesbians of the 70's and 80's. I was taught that my sex was "bad" and not to be trusted.
Now I lose sleep at night wondering how different my life would have been had I had a father figure, even a separated or divorced one, to give me a second opinion that didn't make me feel my own penis was a liability and something to be ashamed of. I grew up poor and with little to no support. At the age of 12 I began working everyday after school to "pay my way" meaning, if I wanted new clothes or books for school, as a man I HAD to go out and earn that money myself. At 15 I was expected to pay rent to live in my mothers house, so I moved out on my own and became a man too quickly. I never had the opportunity to get a secondary education and due to the hard facts of life (buying food and paying rent) I never even got to finish high school. After years and decades of alcohol and drug abuse, I never really found myself and as a result stayed obese, high and lonely 80% of my adult life.
Now my life is changed. I have a loving wife and amazing little daughter who are the light and joy of my life. I know every aspect of their lives and treasure it. However, I still have that dark hole inside myself which has never been filled and it does drag me down sometimes. I can't stop thinking about how much better and happy my life could have been had I had another parent with whom to share and grow. Ostracized by the females in my own family I felt useless and worthless, so much so that I believe I have suffered self-fullfilling prophecy and became what my family told me I was.
Now I am 10,000km away from home. My mother and sister, out of greed and selfishness were invited to my new home overseas to meet my family here. They took the opportunity to come and try to scare my wife into leaving me, in the hopes I would become a broken man, and end up back with them to take care of all the "man" jobs they no longer have me around to do. They told my wife blatant lies about prison time I NEVER ever served (never even been arrested!) told her I was a wife beater, alcoholic and hard drug addict in the hopes she would run away.
Thankfully, the angel who is my wife knew the truth. Though we have only been together for 5 years, she knows the kind of man and father I am, and she was outraged. Her support has meant so much to me. But to have those evil women try so hard to take away the one light in my life has crushed me. Now I consider myself an orphan, never a father and the poor excuse for a family I did have in my home country I never want to see again.
I pray and wish every day I could at least even find out the name of the man who was my father, so I might at least say hi and learn about him and thus, myself. I will continue to be the best father and husband I can and I enjoy my family life, but something deep inside is aching so badly to know my dad.
I know theres nothing I can do, but it does help a little bit to get it all out. I may not have had a dad, or even a supportive family, but I know in my heart I am a good man and my suffering of years gone by only makes me stronger.
Don't suppose there are any nice older men out there looking to adopt a 40 year old kid who has never had a dad?
Date submitted: March 12, 2015
Casting Call for HBO documentary
Is there a story out there involving third party reproduction that would make a great documentary? Academy Award winning director Karen Goodman is looking for stories for an upcoming HBO documentary.
The film is aiming to focus more on the early parts of the process: considering having a baby, pregnancy (or pregnancies), newborns, toddlers, or young children. However, we are open to a wider scope. As long as it's a great story that could be told on film in 2015, these filmmakers want to learn about it.
If someone or something pops to mind, or if you might be right for it, please reach out directly to:
David Sauvage
HBObabiesdoc@gmail.com
Date submitted: March 02, 2015
The Similarity I See to Fredrick Douglass
I recently read Fredrick Douglass' autobiographies. Douglass, Autobiographies: Narrative of the Life; My Bondage and My Freedom; Life and Times (Literary Classics of the United States, Inc. 1994)(hereinafter "Douglass"). What I read made me very sad, as I appreciated for the first time how being born through a commercial reproductive system converts people into products, or more accurately, "cash crops." Reading Fredrick Douglass' autobiographies, I began to see a connection between white masters fathering slave children during the domestic slave trade and third party reproduction. White masters in the domestic slave trade and third party reproduction both produced infant citizens commercially, amputated their ancestries in whole or in part, and alienated their natural infantile affections for one or both biological parents, all with the approval of the government.
The government acts completely different with respect to adopted citizens. Recognizing the adopted child's pain, and the negative impact this has on society as a whole, we as a people spend millions of dollars each year on educational and birth control programs designed to keep our citizens out of the adoption system in the first instance. If, against our best efforts to keep them out, children need to be placed for adoption, we step in defensively and vigorously screen all potential adoptive parents and their homes to protect the best interests of the children themselves. We do this because we recognize that their parents, and their parents alone, upended the playing field on which these citizens must live their lives. None of this "governmental love" happens for the child produced through third party reproduction. His government, like the government of Mr. Douglass' day, worked offensively for, as opposed to defensively against, the family reality into which he was born.
The resemblance of the two commercial reproductive systems to each other, in terms of the impact on the infant citizens themselves, is unmistakable. Indeed, the complaints Mr. Douglass voiced against the domestic slave system that produced him, would be perfectly at home on the pages of AnonymousUs.org, and vice versa.
Regarding his complete lack of knowledge regarding his biological father, rumored to be his white master, Mr. Douglass wrote: "I say nothing of father, for he is shrouded in a mystery I have never been able to penetrate. Slavery does away with fathers . . . The order of civilization is reversed here. The name of the child is not expected to be that of its father. . . .He can be father without being a husband, and may sell his child without incurring reproach. . . ." (Douglass 151).
On AnonymousUs.org, "Passed Down" posted this on October 11, 2014, regarding his or her own father: "[T]hank you so much for giving me this life anonymous father. My cowardly father. And the system that allows this to happen anonymously, Thank you so much! I have never felt more screwed over and depleted of my rights. God bless America.
Regarding the alienation of his infantile affections, and the domestic slave system generally, Mr. Douglass wrote: "I never think of this terrible interference of slavery with my infantile affections, and its diverting them from their natural course, without feelings to which I can give no adequate expression." (Douglass 152). "There is not, beneath the sky, an enemy to filial affection so destructive as slavery. It had made my brothers and sisters strangers to me; it converted the mother that bore me, into a myth; it shrouded my father in mystery, and left me without an intelligible beginning in the world." (Douglass p.157).
Regarding not knowing one's biological brothers and sisters, on July 3, 2014, "Searching for Ghosts" posted in part: "People who know about my search don't understand. They seem to think I'm crazy to care so much about siblings who might not even want anything to do with me. But I need to know. I need to know if there is anyone out there that shares this part of me. Because if I do have half-siblings, I won't be alone in this. Even if they hated me, I'd know there were still people I belong to, have always belonged to in a way I've never really been able to comprehend. And maybe I am crazy to think this way, but I just don't want to feel this alone anymore. And this is one of the cruelest things about being donor-conceived, really- the not knowing. Maybe never knowing. And having to live in the absolute torture of wondering if the people you've held out so much hope of finding even exist in the first place."
Regarding the third party reproductive system generally, "I feel scared and alone and confused" posted on October 28, 2014: "[I]'ve seen so much hate... like people calling donor-people 'spoiled brat' or a 'ungrateful child' or saying 'the donor-people's parents have a right to a child that they want'. . . . I don't get this hypocrisy, the people who are saying that not knowing my dad is no big deal are people who are not donor-conceived, they KNOW both their parents, even if their dad was not the best dad in the world. They still KNEW their dad, and he didn't trade them in for money. . . ."
Regarding the right of white men to make a profit from the creation of their slave children, Mr. Douglass wrote: "[It is] shocking and scandalous . . . for a man to sell his own blood to the traffickers in human flesh. . . " (Douglass p.157).
With tremendous anger, "One of your clients' not-so-happy 'products' " posted similar sentiments on AnonymousUs.org on December 16, 2014: "Thanks California CryoBank! It's really lovely how you split families, crush dreams, and restrict children from ever meeting their parents, just so you can make money! No one's lives are being f_ _ _ _ed over because of your donations. No, none at all!"
Finally, regarding the complete absence of any consideration being given to whether being born through a commercial human reproductive system would be in the child's best interest, Mr. Douglass succinctly stated: I was "born for another's benefit." (Douglass p.147). "No Progress" posted a much fuller analysis on September 15, 2014, stating in part: "[M]y view is that our rights are taken away before we are even born. . . . When are our rights ever considered? No one bothered to consider the consequences . . . This is WRONG. . . ."
Clearly, the similarity in the above statements should have set off major alarm bells in every reader's mind and begs the question: "How did this happen?" The answer to that question is simple: for the second time in her short history, America has chosen to ignore the plain language of the Declaration of Independence in order to satisfy the needs of a select few.
Abraham Lincoln opened his famous Gettysburg Address by paraphrasing the preamble to the Declaration of Independence in these words: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." President Lincoln did not need to define "who" made men equal, or "how" they were made so, because Thomas Jefferson made the answers to these two questions very clear when he drafted the Declaration of Independence. Nature's God, working through the Laws of Nature, made men equal.
When we manufacture citizens outside of "the Laws of Nature" we substitute "man-made" equality for "God-given" equality. When man injects himself into God's creative plan, losses occur, including but not limited to: loss of one's biological father and/or mother, or both; loss of biological siblings; loss of half or all of one's medical history; loss of all or half of one's ancestry; loss of the ability to join in the nationally recognized holidays of Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Grandparents' Day, etc.
The third party reproductive system is not "equal" to nature's reproductive system at all. It is a separate and unequal human reproductive system that denies to the citizens produced through it, the blessings that occur as a matter of course through the free and natural reproductive system designed by "Nature's God." This lack of equality hurts citizens produced artificially and generates a "[f]eeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." Brown v. Board of Education, www.ourdocuments.gov. Being produced through a secondary, commercial, and artificial reproductive system, when three hundred and nineteen million Americas enjoyed birth through the free and natural reproductive system, denies these citizens equal protection of the law in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
Third party reproduction is tyranny, a tyranny masked by the good intentions of many, but tyranny nonetheless. We the people must re-confirm our belief in our founding principles, abolish third party reproduction so as not to destroy the equality, rights, and roots of any other future citizens, and make reparation, to the best we can, to those citizens that have been brutalized, even if unintentionally, thus far.
Date submitted: February 05, 2015
RE: Response to What Would You Do?
If life is so precious then why are those lives who lack children discriminated against by treated as less valuable than those with children in society? Why are those unable to have children always told by people to just adopt when you yourself have decided to ignore those kids when you started your family? Why do opponents of donor conception attack those unable to have children? Why can't we all have empathy for one another and be allies rather than enemies?
Date submitted: January 12, 2015
Response to What Would You Do?
Not all of us are blessed with everything we want in life. Life is precious and most of us can agree that it is not an easy journey. Even with the best available resources, love, and intent, we can not guarantee we will leave behind offspring who are healthy, happy and good citizens of the world.
The reasons to have kids to be accepted by friends who don't want to include YOU in social gatherings because you don't have kids; because YOU want merrier holidays; because YOU want someone to care for YOU in old age (this is a bet, no guarantee the kids will), all sounds like ALL ABOUT YOU. Shouldn't we be thinking about the human beings we are going to forcibly bring into this world? Shouldn't it be a more meaningful life to help/love an wanted child by adopting?
Donor sperm/eggs business just feeds our raw ego in thinking somehow our own genes are good. It is a very selfish way to live in this world of limited resources and abundant sufferings. If a donor child grows up to be an intelligent, and compassionate person with a bigger understanding of life, he or she will suffer emotionally knowing how and why he/she came into this world.
Date submitted: January 10, 2015
What would you do?
What would you do if your whole life you knew and felt no matter what you would become an adult who would get married and have kids? What would you do if after you met the spouse of your dreams with whom you share a bond with you found out your body was the reason that you and your spouse would not be able to have kids? What would you do if all of your friends and family slowly had children of their own slowly distancing themselves from you and excluding you from social circles because you no longer had anything in common? What would you do as you and your spouse slowly aged alone spending holiday and milestones all by yourselves? What would you do in old age with no family or friends to care for you when you no longer were able to take care of yourselves?
Would you still "believe" there is nothing wrong with living "child-free" when you were faced with livinh child-free you choose the opposite way to live? Would you still judge couples who became parents through the use of donor sperm or would you recognize our society's discrimination against those adults who lack children?
Date submitted: January 10, 2015
Massive Recall of Parental and Donor Consent
There will be a massive recall on donated gametes and parental consent:
The great irony of people raising donor offspring saying that the process is not equivalent to child buying is that they are technically correct. People, their parts, their rights, freedoms and responsibilities to their offspring are not something that can be sold, given or purchased. You can have the effect of a sale or gift of reproductive rights or parental rights when parties to the agreement keep their respective promises. If they don't keep their promises then, just as they like to say, compensation to the donor is only for the time and trouble to harvest their gametes and nothing else.
Donor agreements say that the donor was not paid in exchange for their gametes or in exchange for parental control, custody or title of their offspring. The donor's promises to let others control their gametes or raise their children are not promises they were paid to make nor keep - those are voluntary promises that the gamete recipient has no right to rely upon. It is a mighty big gamble by recipients paying so much money knowing that they may pull consent to reproduce or pull consent to allow others to raise their kids.
The only promises they had to keep in order to get paid were promises to comply with rules and regulations during the harvesting of their gametes. After that their promises are not ones they are bound by law to keep. Some may feel the gamete provider would have an ethical obligation to keep their promise to the individuals who paid to have their gametes harvested while others may feel they have an ethical obligation not to abandon their parental responsibilities to their offspring when born.
The agreements donors sign all clearly state that parties agree to be bound to the terms of the agreement as if they were legally enforceable even thought they are not legally bound to do so, and may be found to be against public policy. Most donor agreements have a provision where if the agreement is found to have been illegal the donor agrees to have their parental rights and authority terminated in court and agrees to give their child up for step parent adoption or full adoption if both bio parents were gamete donors. This provision highlights the fact that adoption in court is the only way for a person to have legal parental authority over someone else's offspring and that the donor agreement is an attempt to circumvent that legal step and make it appear as if the step parent was a biological parent by naming them on the birth record. In reality this type of donor arrangement is a black market adoption which the parties agree to legalize in court if they are ever busted. All the gamete donor has to do is bust themselves and recipients out to shatter the illusion of them being the parents of the gamete donors child. It's true, it's been done, and it will be done again by people who can't live with themselves for what they did to their own kids. They won't do it to take anything away from the recipients of their gametes but they'll do it to give something back to their children they had no business taking in the first place - their right to care and support of both bio parents and their right to be legal kin in their own bio families.
The other massive recall will simply be to the custody and control of their gametes and embryos created with their gametes. This is a simpler undertaking than retracting their parental consent as it does not require them going to court. All they have to do is notify the intermediary they contracted their services to and inform them to notify anyone who is in possession of their gametes or embryos created with their gametes that they withdraw consent to allow the embryos to be implanted and withdraw consent to the use of their gametes to create embryos or cause pregnancies. They have a legal right to a strict accounting of the whereabouts of all their gametes and embryos created with their gametes. They do not need to give any money back that they were paid because they were compensated only for the harvesting of their gametes and not for their reproductive rights not for control of their gametes and not for their agreement to reproduce with anyone. The withdraw of consent and recall of their gametes and embryos highlights the fact that they did not sell their gametes or their children they really are just donors who were compensated for their time and trouble during gamete harvesting. The agreement seems much less unethical when the donor withdraws consent.
As important as it is to educate men and women to prevent them from becoming gamete donors the way movies like Anonymous Father's Day and Eggsploitation did, it is equally important to educate former gamete and embryo donors that they can recall their genetic material from circulation and withdraw consent to the use of their gametes in the creation of embryos and they can withdraw consent to the implantation of embryos already created with their gametes and they can withdraw consent to abandon their parental obligations outside of a court of law in a formal adoption. It's important to educate former donors that they have the ability to give back what their agreements took away from any existing offspring born to gamete donor recipients - they can give their offspring back their proper identities by getting named on their birth certificates if they wish to pursue that consent withdraw as well. Donor Offspring have not suffered an irreversible loss resulting from their forms of conception - they have suffered a preventable or reversible loss of rights and identity because of what their bio parents did after they were born. People that can't have kids have not had kids this way, it's all an illusion and really they are not who society needs to look to in order to put a stop to the harms done to donor offspring. The whole process is outside the control of people who can't have kids; the whole house of cards rests on the actions and consent of the bio parents who made the promises not to raise their kids.
We need to educate former gamete donors and those raising their offspring to know the difference between a real gamete donation agreement that reads like this:
http://hesc.stanford.edu/donations/2-%20Stanford%20IVF%20Sperm%20Research%20Consent%20-Sept%202014.pdf
and black market adoption agreements that read like this:
http://www.yulane.org/counsel/Documents/522_%E5%8D%B5%E5%AD%90%E6%8D%90%E8%B5%A0%E6%9C%8D%E5%8A%A1%E5%8D%8F%E8%AE%AE_%E4%BB%85%E4%BE%9B%E5%9F%B9%E8%AE%AD%E4%B9%8B%E7%94%A8.pdf
or this:
http://www.ivf-indiana.com/egg-donor-packet/anonymous-egg-donor-contract.pdf
And we need to remind them that the gamete donor's participation and promises are all voluntary and retractable. They were and always will be the parents of their own offspring with the ability to withdraw their consent at any time. As the parents of their own offspring they have the sole ability to disrupt the illusion of control they permitted others to have.
Cryobanks are afraid of donors breaking these promises but they all have consent withdrawal forms. Too bad for the cryo bank if they have to refund money to their customers they never should have tried to sell donated cells to people knowing that the donor could retract consent. It's not Goodwill or the Salvation Army and their genes are not like an old pair of Levi's.
Date submitted: December 28, 2014
What I've found out at 14
I'm 14 and live with my father. He always told me that my mom died when I was very young. Recently I was going through some files and found out that I was actually born by a person who donated their egg and I was born through a surgate mother in Virginia. This led me to believe that my father was never married. I'm also very sure my dad was nevered married because I discovered that he is gay. Why would my dad keep this all from me?
Date submitted: December 09, 2014
Telling Early and Often is Best
DCN is in favor of it. Telling early and often makes the truth no big deal and just part of their special unique story. So let's do that. Let's tell infertile or single people early and often that they can't and won't have that much longed for biological child so that it becomes, "no big deal" just "part of their special unique story"
Lord knows it will be easier for them to get over the loss of a bio child that never existed than it will be for a child to get over the loss of bio parents and bio family who do exist!
Date submitted: November 19, 2014
To
Congratulations on the decision to become a single mom by choice. I am a 33 year-old male who is considering the future possibility of being a single father at some point using an egg donor and surrogate mother (and keeping in touch with them for the sake of the child), but I have not ruled out the possibility having children with a girlfriend (I don't want to get married for financial reasons).
However, I find that your attitude against men to be quite misandrist. Women watch pornography, perhaps not as often as men do, but the number of women who do is actually growing. Women can rape men, too, and women have been known to molest children as well. As a matter of fact, when children are spanked, most of the time, it's by women. (I am glad that you are against corporal punishment)
Women are not the only gender to be objectified. There is plenty of gay porn where men are equally objectified. Also, please consider all the superhero movies that come out where the men's lean, muscular bodies are shown off and glorified. The number of young men who deal with body issues and suffer from eating disorders has also been rising.
If you have such a negative opinion of men, I'm concerned about how your son is going to feel about being a man. Will he feel ashamed? Or if you have a daughter, how is she going to feel about men growing up?
If you want to be an amazing mother, you need to teach your child that men are also awesome. Just make sure they understand that both genders have their human nature.
I'm sorry you haven't met better men at this point in your life. But I can also understand this decision that you, at age 45, are making. If I were a woman and I hadn't found a decent man by the time I was 45, I suppose I'd consider making the same decision.
Date submitted: November 11, 2014
Single mom by choice
I am 45 years old and have never found a husband so I am going to use a sperm donor. True there have been men in my life that would want to co-parent with me but I don't want them raising my child. I am sorry to say but I think children being raised by single women is better due to the rape culture we live in. Let's face it, most men objectify women and watch pornography and women and children are raped at pendemic rates in ths country. This tells me we are raising rapists. We are letting boys isolate with porn and video games that portray women as strippers and hookers. We also have the media ( which is run by men) going against us and rap music that denigrades women. We teach boys to be victimizers and girls to be victims. This is why I know I will be an amazing mother. I will teach my children how to respect themselves and others. Also, corporal punishment, even minor slapping, contributes to the violence that plaques our world. If it is illegal to hit an adult than it should be illegal to hit children. Are they not people too? We must remember a child's brain is not even fully developed until they are 25. So you see I cannot trust a partner to share these parenting goals with me. Not to mention covert incest which is unreportable and happens more often than you think....I surveyed 50 people and 47 had been abused. And it affects the child the same as overt sexual abuse. Most people have behavioral disorders because we are raising them wrong. I have yet to meet a healthy, un-agressive, spiritual, sober man who doesn't lose his temper. So in this harsh, patriarchal society where women are still not treated equal, I am proud to become a single mother by choice. And yes, I stand by the belief that children are better off raised only by women. The reason men can have chuldren up until their 70's and women cannot is because the men are not needed....it's Ok if they die shortly after the child is born....but not the mother, that is why there is a biological time clock on women and not men.
Okay I am done with my rant....hahaha.
Date submitted: November 10, 2014
Fatherless is a non-issue?
Hello there,
I am a student currently researching the effects of how the lack of father figures / mother figures (particularly in arrangements such as adoption/donor conception) affects the children later down the line.
It's hilarious to me when I see things like lesbian families and singled-mother-by-choice families normalized on scripted and acted performances on television. I've seen cartoons and sitcoms insist the same mantra, from American Dad to Modern Family to the Fosters, "Kids are perfectly normal without a dad, all they need is love and they're ok!"
It's a splendid bit of propaganda, especially for a society that doesn't think, believes whatever they see on TV, falls quickly to emotional manipulation, and doesn't bother to even read from every side of the story.
Here's an excerpt on an observation of how children reared in 'mother-only families' fair without their fathers (who were all sperm-donors). Here, you be the judge of how 'boys don't need a dad':
________________________________
EXPT #1:
...Even though the boys I studied ended up with a wider selection of male role models than the boys from the more traditional families, many of the boys reared exclusively by mothers still longed for a live-in father. Taylor, the son of entrepreneur Tyra Miller, started asking about his biological father when he was just 2. Feeling that she and her partner, Bari, had to explain, even though he was so young and they couldn't believe they were already having to explain this, his mothers told him that
"There was a nice man who knew we wanted to have a baby and he gave us his seed."
Years later, the house next door sold to a gay couple.
"Two nice men are moving next door," Tyra told her son, then 6.
"The one from the seed?" he asked...
EXPT #2:
...Leslie, who own, married mother was an early feminist, told me about dealing with similar reactions from Ian when he was 3: "We'll be watching television, and he'll point to a man and say, 'There's my daddy.', and I'll say, 'No we don't have a daddy in our family'. But it kind of just goes right over his head--whoosh-- he doesn't get it...
EXPT #3:
..."Will some little boys trail after men they don't even know, perk up at those lower-decibel voices, or hang on to the pant legs of the men who cross their paths? Maybe. Do they need a male to take them to the bathroom? Okay. But is that pathological father hunger?"...
...Is this a sign of 'father hunger'? Commonly assumed to be inevitable among boys raised without at-home dads? No...
SOURCE:
http://books.google.com/books?id=UyJcFB8fcx4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=raising+boys+without+men&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oQlcVNStCISqyQTE4YGYDg&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
______________________________________
Now before you go think that some rabid conservative wrote this observation, think again. This was written by a feminist and LGTB activist who was defending and promoting kicking dad out of the picture as a healthy and wholesome environment far superior to a traditional family.
So in the eyes of the author,
"Boys habitually asking about their fathers, clinging onto the legs of every male stranger that passes their way, insisting that every man they see on TV is their dad, is not a sign that they need/want a father. Even when little boys 'LONG for a live-in' father, they don't need/want a father"
One must wonder, is this all really a promotion of the virtues of an innocent 'alternative family', or is this the normalization of silencing the wants and desires of intentionally-fatherless children in favor of what the intended parents want?
I'll let you be the judge.
Date submitted: November 06, 2014
To Adoptee vs donor child
You are looking into egg donation - that means you are looking into financially underwriting or requesting that a woman abandon her biological child or children without allowing those children the bare minimum due process of a court approved adoption where their bio mother would stand up and identify herself and have to explain the reason why she was not going to raise her own offspring and face scrutiny as to whether she was profiting from not raising her offspring herself. You are looking into obtaining another person's child to raise off the record and out of court - obtaining custody of them so early as to conceal the adoptive nature of your relationship by having paid their mother to experience her pregnancy for her so that nobody would be aware that they are her offspring. The contract you'd have her sign would have clauses in it which require her to abandon her parental responsibilities for her children once they are born.
It's just a well concealed government sanctioned black market adoption - the government agrees to look the other way and not prosecute women for maternity fraud because its such big business and gives wealthy and upper middle class people children to raise which infuses the economy with money and so on and so forth. The person whose identity is stolen has to play the role of someone they are not because their absent parent promised that their child would perform in the role of forever child to people who wanted one. But they had to take away their identifying papers and sequester them from bio family or they'd walk away at 18 and reclaim their identity. Its horrid. In legal adoption the point is to provide a minor with a family to raise them when there is no alternative for their own good they are not supposed to be adopted out as a service to people who really want to raise kids.
Date submitted: November 06, 2014
RE: RE: Deep thoughts for the donor conceived
First of all, YES fertility clinics and donors do exist for "people like me".
I do fully understand what I am doing and I fully appreciate the feelings of others. They are in the grieving process of parents they will not know or you could consider lost. I too had a grieving process to go through for a child I am unable to conceive on my own. I went through it and looked at the options. I may have had a chance to adopt, but too many people out their get knocked up and then have them aborted (sorry for the graphic thought here, but I am right on that).
These decisions are hard and not taken lightly, at least not with me. Every avenue of this has been explored, even reading these websites. As for your comments about other organs, yeah I do get it - just take a look at the feelings people have toward their organ donors (albeit the feelings of gratitude - nevertheless, some connection). So I do understand how a connection is present when genetics are involved and a need to get information. I agree that some people are crazy by suing the fertility clinics because the child doesn't fit in their picture perfect family but this is not the norm like you suggest.
Finally, you think about this - do you have people in your life that are not genetically connected, but you love to be around them and think of them as a brother or love them like you love your own father or mother? Another thought, do you have people that are genetically related and don't want to have anything to do with them and love them but not like them and only see them because you have to? Who do you know that had a choice in their conception? Who do you know that accidentally got pregnant and really didn't want the baby and treated the child that way?
There are no clear answers here, so next time tell your own story.
Date submitted: November 05, 2014
Response to: "Understanding the Infertile Perspective"
There is a big difference between the 'donor' conceived and the 'infertile' (which also means social 'infertile') perspective and reality. No one INTENTIONALLY creates your (social) 'infertility'. There are no public, social, market, institutions that are INTENTIONALLY responsible for your (social) 'infertility'. Children are not band-aids for (social) 'infertility'. They are autonomous human beings with equal dignity. So called 'donor' conception is an affront to their and everyones human dignity. Don't pass on your perceived sense of loss so tangibly on to others. Advice such as, 'just deal with it', 'make the best of it', 'count your blessings', 'I understand and empathize but it is what it is' etc. that's given to the 'donor' conceived should apply to the (social) 'infertile', pre-conception. The (social) 'infertile' and the 'donor' conceived are not on equal ground. Don't INTENTIONALLY pass on the loss in the first place. It's simply wrong.
Date submitted: November 05, 2014
Understanding the Infertile Perspective
Despite our groups coming from different circumstances the donor conceived and the infertile are both misunderstood, vulnerable and not properly supported. Those who are donor conceived are told to be grateful they were born. Those who are infertile are told we should "just adopt" or embrace a childfree life. We both come from a place of hurt that is out of our control that we had nothing to do with. Our pain is rarely recognized by outsiders who try to solve our problems rather than just listen and empathize with us.
While I could never understand the emotions and place the donor conceived are coming from I can empathize with you and I can provide you insight into the place infertile couples are coming from. Many people will respond to infertile couples that infertility "must be difficult". The reality is it's more complicated than that. Infertility is something that is life changing. Many couples who go through infertility end up divorcing. Even couples that do conceive still deal with a life time of grief.
Infertility can take an upbeat person or happy marriage and rip them a part. A once confident person can become an insecure scared individual who feels inadaquette. Something that is so natural for humans to do as walking is not something you are able to do. You feel like you are less of a human being that you are too weak to pass on your genetic blood line to a next generation. In our child filled society you don't fit in with friends and families who have kids. In social circles you are excluded from conversations that involve kids because you weren't physically able to do so. You fear of growing old with your spouse lonely with no friends or family to spend the holidays and special occasions with after your parents pass. And you blame yourself that it was your body that prevented you and your spouse from being able to have a family.
I am sharing all of this with you to not get your sympathy but to assist you when interacting with those who are infertile to gain their ear rather than them tuning you out. Telling them that they are entitled goes directly to their feelings of inadequacy and hurt. Telling them that they should not be afraid to live a child free life (as I was told by a DC person w/2 kids) tells the person that they were meant to live a lonely life with no family to grow old with. They didn't cause your conception just as you didn't cause their infertility.
Your best course of action is to empathize with them just as you would want someone to empathize with your donor conception story. Avoid offering advice to them. At the end of the day it's their decision to make and what you say will not convince them to not utilize third party reproduction.
This world would be a much better place if we better supported each other no matter where we came from. It would be better if we didn't shame others by saying they arent grateful or are entitled.
Date submitted: November 05, 2014
Re Re: To
"RE: To
How can one "abandon" a child that never or may not ever exist at the time of donation? The answer is that they can't. In reality it's a cell donation that conceives a child. The donor agreement acts as an adoption where the donor basically signs a TPR should a child be born from their donation."
"the donor agreement acts as an adoption"? Now we are getting somewhere. What kind of adoption is it when someone names themselves on the original birth certificate of another person's child without court approved adoption process intended to protect children from being sold and trafficked? What type of adoption is it that occurs by private contract only? What kind of adoption is it that gets concealed by the falsification of a person's original birth record by naming an unrelated individual ans their parent and concealing the identity of the abandoning parent? What kind of adoption would it be that would shield an abandoning parent from criminal charges? It's tidy isn't it? It's called black market adoption and for donor offspring its actually sanctioned by the government in order to provide abandoned children to people who want to raise them because there just are not enough quality abandoned children around and it's so hard to set up the illusion of the perfect nuclear family when people have to gb outside their marriages to have a bio kid.
"The only situation is where an abandonment takes place is when intended parents reject the child."The intended parents become the legal parents because they bought that ability to pretend to be the parent of the kid - they don't abandon their pretend children they smother them with plastic love. Filled with entitlement because they worked so hard paid so much to have them. It's like buying a puppy, people think they dogs are members of their family but they forget they bought the dog or "rescued" the dog. What if you were caught roaming the street and someone "rescued you" put you in a cage assigned you to a family and they "loved you" and would take you for walks on a leash and kept you fenced up for your protection? Where's your pack of dogs you came from?
In the cases of non biological parents rejecting the child there is a strong sense of abandonment when that takes place. In a lot of these situations the non biological parent never prepared themselves for parenting a non bio child or they were forced by their spouse similar to the way couples have a child to save a marriage that results in divorce where the child is forced to have visitation with one parent and lives with the other (they have no say in the matter). The main driving force behind why a non bio parent would reject the child they were supposed to parent are societal attitudes toward non bio parents and families as being inferior to biological families.
Biology is not the only thing that matters. But get it through your head: a person cannot be the social parent of another person's child unless that child was orphaned by the death of a bio parent, abandoned by a bio parent off the record or relinquished by a bio parent on the record.
Adoptive parents do abandon their adopted kids Social parents do abandon social kids but they can't abandon them unless someone else abandoned them first. How can you say the only abandonment would be by a social parent? How did they get to be a social parent in the first place? Think.
Date submitted: November 05, 2014
In response to "Is this my relative?"
I'm actually 'donor' conceived but I wanted to write on behalf of a very special non-biological aunt in my life. She is my social father's sister. My 'donor' conception was kept secret from everyone including me until I was 18. I was terrified that if my non-biological family found out, they would feel similar towards me as you are afraid you might feel towards your sisters non-biological egg 'donor' children. I knew they'd be very mad at my mother for what they might perceive as forcing my social dad to accept and raise me as his own biological child. And they might be very justified in that anger because he sacrificed so much in order to make my mother happy by giving her what he couldn't, a child. I eventually gathered the strength to tell my social father's sisters 24 years later. Two of them said nice things to me then dropped it and me for the most part. But one of his sisters, was there for me in the most needed way. She not only said nice things, she expressed her anger over it all but in a way that legitimized my feelings and supported and reinforced our relationship. She is very special to me. She got it when no one else did.
Your feeling a very legitimate and I can fully understand why you feel the way you do. But, those children might very likely suffer all kinds of disenfranchised grief, by their social/gestational mother, their social/biological father, extended family and not ever be able to know or have a meaningful relationship with their genetic mother or maternal biological family (half siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, ancestry, heritage). Adding to this, they will have to wrap their heads around the fact that their genetic mother sold them pre-conception with the intent to disconnect them. And the two people who are supposed to love and care about them the most, wished for this and designed it this way. They most likely won't ever be able to express this loss to anyone.
But maybe you can be that special aunt who was there for them. Who got it. Who they have a very special bond with. You might never have 'children of your own' but these children might really need you to be there in a way for them that no one else, including your sister, can.
Think about it and thank you for sharing.
Date submitted: October 31, 2014
Is this my relative?
My sister is facing fertility issues, but has not been diagnosed with premature ovarian failure. I was diagnosed with premature ovarian failure a couple of years back. My sister has been married for two years. She is 39. She always wanted to adopt a child -even if she were not married, she may have done it. It arises out of her philosophy of helping/contributing to society. It really does not upset me or her that we have this fertility issue.
My sister's husband, who knew of her likely fertility challenges before marriage, married her with the agreement that they will try to have babies of their own and if it does not work out, they will adopt. The culture he comes from, they are big on having kids. He changes his tone three months into their marriage when my sister was still not pregnant. She went through IVF two or three rounds with no success. My sister's idea of adoption was pushed aside with the discussion that " we will definitely adopt, but let's try for babies of our own first". My sister was not really comfortable with the IVF process, but still went through with them with the reasoning that "this is the only thing he really wants, and I want to give him". Let me not get into their relationship before they get married. My sister is kind and sweet, but the worst passive aggressive person and met her match in the worst passive aggressive personality.Both my sister and her husband are medical doctors. She married him barely a year after her Residency, so she has not been working for long. She is the kind who wanted to help refugees and orphans and wanted to work with those (at least that was idea in medical school). My parents worked their arse off for our education.
They recently announced her pregnancy, with donor eggs from a woman of Indian background. He is hoping for twins. My sister has told me before during her IVF that she is scared of having to carry multiple babies since she is small (5 ft!) and older. All I could feel is anger towards my sister's husband for making my sister go through all these. All I could see for the future is the pain (I am sure some fun and satisfaction too the innocent child/ren will give, for a certain period of time) and work my sister will have to bear in order to fulfill the wishes of a man. All I could see is a woman who gave up all her dreams and possibility of being a big contributor to society in exchange for selfish needs of a single one man, who by definition could not be a nice man (at least to me) since he makes her go through all these.
I don't want to be part of the child/ren life. I know once they are borne, I will be the worst person on earth if I ever treat them different because all this is none of their fault. My parents are also trying to be supportive of my sister, and trying hard not to show their disappointment. They are traditional and worry about the prospects of her divorce (to a certain extent) if she does not have children. My mother even told me she hopes their attempts with donor eggs don't work out, but of course she cannot/will not say this to my sister.
I am at a disadvantage in discussing anything on this topic - because everyone may be quick to say I am bitter because I cannot have kids. A fulfilling life to me does not need to include rearing children. I do not want to be there for a baby shower, I do not want to ever babysit this child/ren. I would do all that for an adopted baby. But I cannot do that for babies who are "bought". Especially because all this was done at the initiate/manipulation of my sister's husband. But I want to be there for my sister's health. This child/ren will never be my niece or nephews. The relationship I have with my sister is probably going to cease slowly too as I need to avoid situations where I will have to hide my true opinions and feelings, which I am not good at or which I don't do.
Date submitted: October 31, 2014
RE: To
How can one "abandon" a child that never or may not ever exist at the time of donation? The answer is that they can't. In reality it's a cell donation that conceives a child. The donor agreement acts as an adoption where the donor basically signs a TPR should a child be born from their donation.
The only situation is where an abandonment takes place is when intended parents reject the child. In the cases of non biological parents rejecting the child there is a strong sense of abandonment when that takes place. In a lot of these situations the non biological parent never prepared themselves for parenting a non bio child or they were forced by their spouse similar to the way couples have a child to save a marriage that results in divorce where the child is forced to have visitation with one parent and lives with the other (they have no say in the matter). The main driving force behind why a non bio parent would reject the child they were supposed to parent are societal attitudes toward non bio parents and families as being inferior to biological families.
Biological Family Elitism is the notion that there is only one definition of family and that biology is the only thing that matters in family. All other ways of creating a family are rejected and legislation is advocating to identify non biological families as inferior and second class families. The idea that an adult can be a parent to a child that they didn't conceive is rejected. Thus Biological Family Elitism encourages secrets, insecurity and fear that results in children being damaged. It is driven by people who are insecure about their own families who want to feel superior to others as if conceiving a child makes them a superior being.
Our world would be a much better place if there was a greater respect for non biological families and they were recognized as being just as important as biological families. Mom and Dad may not have concieved their child and provided their genes but they guided that child to become the adult they are. Mom and Dad have a bond with that child through experience not blood. That experience forms a bond out of true love and support rather than fake love out of obligation. These attitudes will encourage greater openess, fewer damaging secrets and a new found respect for everyone. Most importantly kids who come from these will benefit from it.
Date submitted: October 28, 2014
To
You said
"I think there is a longing for something you are missing in your life. Frankly, it is not wanting to know the person who donated a single cell (sperm or oocyte)."
Here is where you are wrong. Look carefully at their contracts and you will see that they must agree to give up their offspring or the clinic would not buy that single cell from them. The promise to abandon the resulting child is essential to the entire contract - the cell is secondary and only required if they agree to the first part which is to give up their offspring without going to court for a proper adoption. So they are giving up their children in great and painstaking legal detail....look it up. Look at your own egg donor agreement...how many paragraphs are dedicated to the parental rights she's abandoning and to her not challenging your false claims of motherhood with dna evidence disproving fraudulent statements made attesting to your maternal relationship on the birth certificate?
"Honestly, you are putting off your happiness and who you have become to want to know someone who sold a cell of their body."
Again if she were only selling a single cell without granting permission to allow her egg to be fertilized and to allow you to carry her pregnancy and to allow you to raise her child, you would not want her single cell. Why would you want the cell if you could not take her baby home when it was all over.
"The human race donates human tissue all the time (heart, liver, corneas, kidney, etc). What if someone donated a portion of their liver to save your child's life and now they want visitation rights to your child because part of them is now living in that child."
Its true that a liver or any donated material retains its dna even when it ceases operating for its own body and is transplanted into the body of another individual supporting that person's life instead. Unfortunately what you fail to grasp here is that a donated gamete never stops supporting the reproductive function of the body it came from, its not transplanted and it does nothing to support the reproductive health of the recipient. The person donating is actually a patient of who agrees to fertility treatment they just have no intention of keeping and raising their resulting children. An egg donor requests fertility treatment, she conceives and the child born is her offspring. She can't intellectualize that away any more than the woman gestating can fantasize her way into having created the child because she intended to raise the child. We are not talking about a single cell we are talking about a whole person who is someone's whole and complete child and a full fledged member of their family. Every cell in that child's body is 50% mom and 50% dad. It's not one single cell at all its everything they are if not everything they experience.
"I am really trying to get you to look at YOU and realize you don't have to worry about where one of your cells came from."
Again lady with the one cell thing. Half of their biology is not one cell? It's like you want to freeze their biological mother's involvement in their existence way back when she donated and she was not even the mother of a living breathing person who shares half her genetics then. Time passes for everyone at the same rate you know?
You talk about how the recipient will do all this stuff for them by raising them but stop and think about it how bonded could you be to a woman who you know wanted to separate you from your own family in order for her to experience pregnancy and child rearing with her husband who is in all likelihood your bio dad. Like what was he thinking to go out and look to make a baby with a woman he knew would abandon their child just so his wife could raise one with him. Nice folks that commodification kind of undermines any boo-boo kissing or soccer game coaching right? They paid your bio mother to go away so they could have you all to themselves. They are hiding your siblings and other relatives from you they falsified your identifying documents - you'd not be looking for a single cell you'd be looking for your own family even if they did sell you out at the time maybe time has snapped them out of it and if so maybe you could let bygones be bygones just to get away from the people who paid for you to be their puppet.
All that love and nurture stuff is great for non bio families that come together in an ethical and non-com-modifying way where the separation from family was for the protection of the child rather than in service to a "commissioning couple". Parenthood is responsibility for the children you create and Adoptive parenthood is responsibility for those children that you choose to adopt in court - this is just black market adoption fraud. The kid won't remember the pregnancy part they were not born yet, they'll just know they are not related to the woman raising them and that she wanted a kid so badly she bought one and bought herself a pregnancy experience like a ride at a carnival. The reason a person ends up with an other person's child really matters and the reason can't be because they wanted a kid so badly.
So separated families caused by bio parents who signed donor agreements and kept their word are not pining away over a single cell....they are pining away over having been sold or bought or given as gifts or relegated to the status of a niece or favorite aunt when by rights they should have a full fledged parent child relationship. They are pining away over having been rejected as their own parents child as their parents try to pretend away the gravity of what they've done with platitudes about parents and intention.
Date submitted: October 26, 2014
RE: Deep thoughts for the donor conceived
Quite frankly, you are the reason why sperm and egg selling scares me. Its extremely disconcerting that there are children out there product of a mother who doesn't have a clear idea of what she's doing, let alone, how human reproduction works.
In donating sperm and egg, no you are not donating one single cell to a another human's body. You're co-creating a person with a reproductive partner, meaning you are co-creating all the cells in another person's body. You are co-creating a life, (you cannot donate a life). You are mothering another person, who is biologically considered your offspring (synonymously your children). You can donate a kidney or a liver, but those bodily origins do not determine your half-brothers, half-sisters and your entire maternal heritage. Hopefully you understand that, hopefully. Kidney and liver transplants do not influence your personality, your interest, or even your physical features, they also do not determine your lineage and ancestry.
You are not donating a single cell to another person. There is no such reason for a donation of singled cells to other persons to even exist. The human body generates billions of new cells every second. You're selling your children off to strangers before they are even conceived, you're commercializing their existing, and stripping them from their humanity, in exchange for profit.
Do not presume to tell the victims of this practice that they shouldn't be looking for their mothers and fathers, in an effort to excuse your thoughtless actions. They have every right to know their relatives, just as much as you will feel you have the right to know the descendants that you personally want to keep and raise.
Good day.
Date submitted: October 25, 2014
Confusion
I just got out of talking with a gay relative about the use of anonymous egg-donation, and sperm-donation. He was mostly angry about this Ohio case with the white lesbian couple suing a sperm-bank, because their daughter did not look how they ordered her to. Their little girl was biracial, and the couple paid for a white-looking child.
The gay relative argued he was mostly upset because he felt the couple was racist, and its going to affect the child later down the road, because the child knows that she's "unwanted".
He totally bypassed the part where this little girl's life is inherently commodified and objectified, that she was PAID for, and that her parents are asking for a refund because she wasn't the child they ordered from the company!!!!
When I mentioned how many cryo-children feel unwanted by their biological parents (the ones who sold them away in the first place), he quickly got defensive.
Since he wants his own biological children through surrogacy/egg-donning, he doesn't feel that cryo-children are entitled to feel this way about their gamete-donors. "If someone wants you, you should be happy with the people who want you" he says. "If there are adults who feel this way about their donors, then that's their choice to feel that way. That's not anyone's fault, but theirs."
I said "If you honestly love your children, why wouldn't you respect their possible feelings and ensure that they would get to have a relationship with their biological mother, and siblings in case that be important to them? You know that some gay couples do co-parent with lesbians for that EXACT reason, right?"
"Because I don't want to do that. And I feel that if I love the child, the child should be grateful."
"You're not considering the child's feelings, yet you think they should be happy with whatever you choose to do with them." I say,
"But I deserve something to love" he argues. "I should get to love something, and the child should understand that"
This entire persona of want and love is silly to me. It's self-centered, its as if you're entitled to your want for your own biological children, you're entitled to pay for something to love, but the children are not entitled to want their own biological parents. How hypocritical!
We shouldn't be moving into a world where we literally buy children to "love something", and then ask for refunds when they're "unwanted".That strips them from their humanity! And more disturbingly, We do this to our pets... I completely understand any gay or infertile couple's long to nurture a child, and I'm sure that plenty of them would make excellent loving and nurturing caregivers, straight or gay.
However, their needs to nurture 'something' shouldn't come before the feelings and dignity of the children their bring into the world. Period.
Donor-conceived kids, I am genuinely sorry about your circumstances. I know I'm a outsider, but I cannot comprehend the pressure to be brought into the world by people who feel that you're their entitlement, and you are their "right". I cannot comprehend the feeling you have deep inside, to be constantly told that you should be grateful and considerate of your parents and social parents, even when they weren't considerate about you. I cannot comprehend how it must be to live in a world where you aren't entitled to mourn for the lost of your biological parents who abandoned you, without being judged by a society who will never understand the pain you carry in your hearts. I will never understand how it is to be the product of a company, and to have your biological parents shopped for online. And then, to later be demanded loyalty by the people who had partook in bringing you into the world in this extremely degrading, dehumanizing manner, because you were "wanted". I will never understand how it feels to be advertised by multi-billion dollar companies who campaign to a willfully stupid public that "The Kids Are Alright", while you all wallow in your confusion and your loneliness.
I've heard them say that they love you because "they spent a lot of money buying you,"
I've heard them say "It could be worse, they could be in a third-world country. They should be grateful!"
I've heard them, trust me I have... I can't help but think how that must be like for you all to hear this, and go about your lives.
I know not all donor-kids feel the same way, but the ones who are hurting, feeling betrayed, and feeling confusion and feeling alone or guilty about their mourn, I'm so sorry. All I can do is inform people the way you feel, but I honestly wish I could do more.
Date submitted: October 03, 2014
Adoption tore my family apart.
My younger sibling was put up for adoption at birth over 20 years ago. Our father hadn't done much to be a father to me and my mother chose adoption in hopes that my sibling would get the stable-two-parent-family-with-white-picket-fence type upbringing that she wouldn't be able to give them. My mother and I have since made contact with my sibling but we have been unable to meet them in person as they live several hundred miles away.
Overall, we feel the entire adoption was a waste. All the years my mother and I mourned the loss of my sister's presence were for nothing. While they did receive a financially stable upbringing, the adoptive parents were far more dysfunctional than the biological ones ever were. Adultery, physical and emotional abuse, separation, and so on. Our mother could have done a much better job on her own.
Though the lawyer did a background check, the adoptive mother had changed her name and slipped through the cracks. As it turns out, she was not infertile as she'd claimed to be. She had a child and had lost custody of them. Had our mother known that, she would not have gone through with the adoption.
The adoption was also meant to be an open adoption but the adoptive parents cut off contact almost immediately after the first year mark was up. There was nothing we could do from our side about it.
My sibling and I struggle to get along because we're such different people. I love them because they're my sibling but I don't love them as a person. Maybe that will change once I meet them and speak with them more but as of right now, I still feel like an only child.
I view adoption as a cruel and selfish thing. If you truly wanted to help a child, you wouldn't adopt them. You would help their real parents be able to keep them and raise them.
I also would like to say that people need to stop promoting adoption as an alternative to abortion. Adoption is not some beautiful and loving alternative to abortion. For me, adoption is far more cruel than abortion could ever be. At least abortion is painless for a child. Adoption pains them and their family for as long as they live.
If you're considering putting your child up for adoption, please reconsider and remember that adoptive parents are just as, if not more dysfunctional, than biological parents are.
Date submitted: October 01, 2014
Result of love?
I have a friend whom I love dearly but we are not in touch anymore. We are not in contact as we live in different countries and she is hurt by how I see her. I used to sometimes visit her in the past when I was on holiday and things would be fine with us.
She had a peculiar family situation in a very conservative country such as ours. Her brother is gay and when he openly said it, it was probably a shock to her and her family. But they came to terms with it. Later, she also fell in love with a woman. Her parents probably thought they would never have grand children as both their daughter and son were gay!
But then, as a young woman she really wanted to have a child. I understood this but still I could not feel love in my heart for her decision to undergo artificial insemination. I don't know who is her donor but it is very possibly someone from her close circle and it is not an anonymous donor.
I am happy she became a mother. I think she is probably a great mother. She has since then separated from her girlfriend. She is probably now in another relationship and I think this time it is with a man ( so in that sense she is not really gay I guess). So, OK, her son probably knows his father and has some sort of relation to him. And lives with a loving mother and probably visits his father often. But still..
.I don't understand and cannot come to terms with this decision to bring a child into the world without love. To concieve the child knowing that they will NEVER live with his father. Becuase of course knowing who is your father is important. But it is alos important to LIVE your life with your father and to KNOW him. It is also important that you were a result of love between a man and a woman. Of course there are some children who , as result of rape, are not the result of love. But still, the rape was a terrible injustice. and so I see that this type of decision, but a woman on her own, is a terrible injustice to the child. we all want and need love and stability. and to know and relate to our father and mother.
Because I see how my husband interacts with our child. The day to day. I cannot imagine if we lived divorced and my husband would only see his child once a week. But you can say- this happens in many divorced families. I agree. But I just cannot come to terms with anyone's decision to make a child that will NOT have a family. Divorce happens. Rape happens. terrible things we do not choose or foresee. But making a conscious decision to make a child for yourself in a way you are comfortable with will obviously have a consequence on that child's life. There is no other way. One day he will ask questions. and even if he has answers...how will he manage to have a loving relationship with another woman(if he is heterosexual) if he himself was not a result of that?
Date submitted: August 23, 2014
RE: Maybe the Grass is Greener....
You could have been raped!
Yes, yes I could have. Thank goodness I hadn't been.
You could've been abused!
Yes, yes I could have been. There are many cases where such cryo children are. Did you read about the donor girl who was abandoned by her social father in a divorce, and sexually harassed by her stepfather? Interesting read.
Had you even heard about that case in Australia, where a loving gay couple who "just wanted to be fathers", paid a surrogate and egg donor to have a child that they used in almost 200 porn videos, and so they could sell him around the world on a gay pedophile network, as a sex slave? They even bragged about how they had been having sex with him from the time he was a toddler. No one even knew it was going on, because the boy was trained what and what not to say to outsiders by his loving fathers, even to the faces of the news casters who had filmed this loving innocent family in the promotion of gay surrogacy.
You know what's funny? When people undermine how cryo kids feel with rape and abuse, unaware that there are cryo children who have been raped and abused.
You know what's also funny? When people try to vouch for the cryo kids' social parents, when they are completely unaware what it's like to grow up knowing their parents abandoned them for money to strangers, and their human life was a business service, just like buying furniture.
Two wrongs certainly do not make a right. It just makes more emotionally and physiologically damaged children who are not considered, and not respected.
Do you know what it's like to grow up in a home where you long and crave for the attention of the 'man who gave you life' but your lesbian parents' militant gay politics says that "Children don't need moms and dads. All they need is love! And anyone who disagrees is anti-gay bigot"?
Do you know what it's like traded for money, lied to in the face of your mother and social father for their benefit, and then having to bottle up these feelings of mourning for the birthfather who never loved you, and wants nothing to do with you, an entire family who doesn't know you exist, and dozens of half-siblings you'll never know?
Of course you don't.
If you wish you had lesbian moms or a singled mom and a anonymous father, all fine well and good. You can legally divorce and disown your parents and all your family, and try to get adopted by a lesbian couple or a singled mother. But please don't try to use yourself as an example of how donor offspring should feel, and how grateful we should feel about being the commercialized goods of a business service.
You have NO idea how it feels to be one. You feel like an object, and there is no dehumanizing feeling like that that in the world.
Maybe it's not by your intention, but you're coming across as if you're only thinking of yourself. And if you feel the cryo offspring are thinking the of themselves too, please consider that the people on this site are hiding their identity so it won't hurt the feelings of their parents. Please consider some of these kids have been rejected/exiled from their families simply for wanting to know their fathers. Please consider that their loving parents separated their donor offspring from their anonymous families and lied to them for the parents' benefit. And please consider that most cryo offspring do not go publicly about their feelings, all so the infertile or gay or single adults can get everything they want, at the expense of their children.
Lastly you're entirely mistaken, we CAN do something about the past. We can BETTER the future and make things better for our children in future generations, based on the mistakes we made in the past. One way is to stop making using the "no childhood is perfect"speech to EXCUSE doing things that have an entirely probable chance of ruining the life of your children. Like using a sperm donor, for instance. And hey, you shouldn't be too upset about that. You said it yourself "genes don't mean love". Great! Adopt then, since genes don't matter.
Date submitted: August 06, 2014
Maybe the grass is greener...
I've spent all night reading stories .. and I am seeing so much suffering, especially over not having a father.
While I will never know what it's like to not have a father, I feel for many of your sufferings. I'm sorry you feel such an empty hole in your soul.
I am not an IVF child. I was conceived, on purpose, in a heterosexual marriage. I know many of you read that .. and think that it is exactly what you want. It seems like a dream. But it is not always a dream. Family can be dysfunctional or functional no matter how you were conceived. My father touched me inappropriately while I was a kid and it always made me so uncomfortable. Some of you said that you want a father because then you could feel that "unconditional love from a man who isn't romantically interested in you." Yeah well, I'd like that, too! But life isn't always great. When I was 14 I was raped, and I never told anyone because my parents told me if anyone ever had sex with me I'd go to hell. So I pretty much kept torment inside of myself my entire childhood and upbringing. Always had a smile on my face. I look back and I have no idea how I did it.
But the reason I'm posting is that when I turned 16 my parents played a joke on me and pretended I had been adopted. I felt shock, and horrible, but then also some sort of relief. I felt that if my current parents didn't really love me, then maybe there was someone out there who did. Well, turns out there isn't, because it was a joke, and my parents are my social and biological parents.
Sharing genes with someone doesn't make them love you, or respect you, or treat you like a human being. My father might have loved me, but he was also a completely messed up individual who didn't really understand the meaning of the word love. If there is some sort of mental or personality disorder for what's wrong with him, I don't know. But he wasn't normal. If he loved me, I can't remember a time when I genuinely felt it without being coupled with fear.
I read some of these stories, and I wish I was raised by two gay moms who fought a lot, or by a single parent who didn't abuse me.
I'm not defending the industry because I don't know so much about it, but I think acting like genetic parents are somehow superior to social parents might be just a case of "grass is always greener." I do believe that maybe an impotent father may lash out at adopted children (There is proof of this, as well as stepchildren being abused.) But genetics will NOT stop your genetic parents from abusing you, hurting you, ignoring you, and so on.
I know I got a bad start in life but I try every day to be thankful for the things I do have. I will be thankful for knowing my genetic parents, but I hope others can find something to be thankful about. Life is not perfect, and childhood rarely is. There is nothing we can do to remedy the past, but we have an infinite amount of choice in making our future one we want to live in.
Date submitted: August 04, 2014
Rethinking fatherhood
I'm a transman, meaning I was born a female but I identify as male, and though I've completed sex reassignment surgery and I'm now legally a man, science has not come far enough to give transmen actual sperm-producing testicles. So, my options for parenthood were 1) be a biological mother or 2) be a legal father with the aid of sperm donation or adoption. My wife and I have been together ten years and we married in 2009. We started looking into using a sperm donor so that we could have children together. We completely ignored the possibility of adoption because we live in Utah and the Mormon church has a lot of influence in adoptions here and we didn't think they would be helpful towards a couple where one of the potential parents was transgender.
On a side note...
Before you say "Well, you didn't have to tell them you were transgender," 1) a background search would quickly reveal that my name was Mary Elizabeth for over 30 years, and 2) If I were going to put my child up for adoption, I would want the people who want to raise them to be honest about who they are. They're giving you a child! The least you can give them in return is the truth.
Anyway, back to my story...
Internet searches and visits to fertility clinics never failed to bombard us with images of smiling children and stories of nothing but complete happiness from all involved. My wife and I felt that there was no downside to sperm donation. The child would be wanted and loved and that's all that mattered. That was all they needed to be happy and healthy people.
And then we came across this website, Anonymous Us, on a Facebook parenting page we'd joined. The comments, some of which came from women who'd become mothers by sperm or egg donation, were scathing and hateful towards the donor conceived person who penned the story in the link, calling them ungrateful, whiny, a brat, a bitch, and even going as far to say they should go kill themsleves. The sheer hatred people had for donor conceived people who were anything other than eternally grateful to everyone involved in their creation made my heart ache for the ones who were unhappy. I imagined that such people must feel so isolated with no one to talk to without being judged (Being transgender in a conservative area, I'm very familiar with that feeling).
I spoke with my wife about how the stories I read on this site made me feel and ultimately, we decided to not go through with sperm donation. My wife was disappointed, because she'd always wanted to experience pregnancy, but she was on the same page that I was. We're not sure of where to go from here in order to become parents but we know without a doubt that we made the right decision in not using a donor. The whole experience has brought my wife and I closer as we have made peace with the possibility that we may never be parents and have come to a place in our relationship where we're fine if our family never grows beyond the two of us.
I have a biological niece out there
Recently, my sister donated her eggs to a married couple. The intended mother did not want to use her own eggs because she had a condition which she didn't wish to pass on to her children, but she still wanted to have the experience of being pregnant and giving birth.
Remarkably, the parents want to keep in touch with my sister. Their daughter was born almost a year ago, and they recently had my sister over to their house to meet the baby. They even took videos and pictures of the baby's first meeting with my sister.
As soon as the daughter is old enough, the parents are going to explain to her how she was conceived. They also plan on having another child using the embryos created from my sister's eggs.
My sister is enforcing strong boundaries. She won't tell me or the rest of the family the name of the baby. She won't show us any photos. She is being respectful to the parents and letting them do all the initiation in communication. When the children are interested in meeting the rest of the family, they will come to us.
I find this whole situation fascinating. I have a biological niece out there. I hope some day to meet her and whatever siblings she has. But, as each situation differs, I have to be prepared for the possibility that she might not be interested in a relationship with her egg donor's family.
For anyone considering egg/sperm donation, surrogacy, adoption, etc, I think VISIBILITY is one of the most important things you can give your child as soon as they are old enough to know how babies are made.
I once had a friend/neighbor who didn't find out until he was 14 that his father was just an anonymous sperm donor. It was something he was very upset about. If his mother had told him from the beginning, as well as kept in touch with the father, I am certain that the situation would have turned out better.
Messed up sense of entitlement
One of the biggest complaints I hear from the elders of my time, is that the younger generation, is the most selfish and most self-centered generation of people they have ever seen. We're so vain, we're so self-absorbed, all we do is care about ourselves, and feel as though we are entitled to have whatever we want, supposedly. It's quite ironic, because at the same time, I've read several articles on child psychology that discuss in depth how most children (even into their adulthood days) typically reflect the behavior and attitudes of their parents as they age and grow up to young adults themselves. In other words, genY didn't learn their ways from osmosis, genX.
Let's talk about entitlement. Forget about the "rights" our parents and their parents had to rage war on other countries, be racist towards black people, homophobic against gays, deforest/pollute/ impoverish the world of its natural resources so that the generations after them can be ecologically bankrupt, (all for some tasty hamburgers and flashy new material objects that we really don't need). Let's focus on the past two decades' sense of entitlement of having "the family of their dreams" at the expense of their kids.
Lets talk about parents being entitled to lie to their children and tell them that their sperm 'donors' are not their fathers, because, these men were paid to abandon them.
Let's talk about parents being entitled to keep information about their children's heritage away from them, to fulfill their own emotional insecurities. At the same time, having the right to know about their own family lineage and their own biological parents. Double standard, much?
Let's talk about how parents being entitled to tell their kids that "Genetics aren't important, 'love' is!" but completely disassociate themselves to the fact that social parents opt for donor conception, SO one of the parents can still have the biological children they want.
Let's talk about parents having the right to put their children at risk of dating their half-siblings, and having cute little incest-babies. Oh you're confused? Well, actually don't be. Let's face it, sperm banks aren't the most natural choice to go about making a family, so of course these men can breed hundreds of offspring with absolute strangers, in their area or all over the world.
Lets talk about how there are "favorite" sperm donors who cost more, who are often picked, not for their fabricated personality but because their sperm would "breed" the designer pets-- I mean children-- that the (typically rich) people (who can actually afford this shit)personally want. I guess that's not vain... is it?
Lets talk about how people now have the "right" to buy human DNA, if they can afford it, like building materials at a hardware store, and buy "human life" with several easy payments of 500 dollars at the IVF factory. That's fair, right? Because these parents are completely entitled to human beings--I mean--- "the family of their dreams" as the advertisement posters say, right? Even if it's degrading the children down to commercialized products, manufactured--I mean-- "bio-engineered" by money-hungry scientists. Let's not talk about how sometimes these "specialists" can mess up their customers' orders. So when you specifically paid 4,000 dollars for your child to have the DNA of a Russian professor, the IVF specialist accidentally mixed your "order" in with another couple's, and your chattel-- I mean child's-- DNA is instead, a college dropout, trying to get a little pocket cash by lazily masturbating to porn and selling his sperm to strangers. Yes, that's happened. And people did demand refunds because their order was wrong. People can do that, right? We do the same when our amazon orders are wrong, or when we specifically asked for pickles on our Big Macs and no ice inside our Dr. Peppers. So why can't we get refunds when we don't get the children we "wanted"-- since according to the mainstream pro-abortionist feminists, that all children are worth these days apparently, how "wanted" they are�
... What ever happened to two (or more) people who care about each other just having kids, and raising those kids? Why do we have to take something as intimate and sometimes even "spiritual" as giving a human being life, into a business service? Are we that low and corrupt as a species? I mean, from hindsight we've always been fucked up, but this seems really low for us.
I hate capitalism, with a throbbing passion that burns with the fire of a thousand suns, but while some of its antics are forgivable at times, promoting that couples can now "buy" a child's life and "buy" their DNAs from shopping books, is something that is the lowest of all lows.
Canada banned it, and several other countries have banned it as well, but in money-loving USA, economics is simply that much more important than ethics.
That's just the way it is, and we're perfectly "entitled" to do so.
Thinking of using Open Donor Insemination
First, I would like to really thank everyone on this site for their open and honest posts. It is very generous and helpful. I am really struggling with something and hope you can help. I am a 38 year old single woman and am seriously considering artificial insemination from an open donor (meaning child will be able to contact at 18). I am struggling with this so much because while I desperately want children, I feel it is selfish to make the decision for my children that they will not have a father. Sure I may meet someone, that is a possibility but it hasn't happened and even if I did, he still wouldn't be their biological father.
I guess I'm here to ask for your opinion. How is it to be a donor child by an open donor?
If I did decide to do this,I would tell my children at a very young age. There is some very helpful information out there on how to do so. But knowing early doesnt mean it will be easy for my children. I just want to give them the very best in life. Life has so many ups and downs, I don't want to make things harder for them by being inseminated....but what is my alternative? I really do want children. Your thoughts will be very helpful. Thank you in advance.
Egg Donation Documentary and Research
Hello everyone,
The emotional conflicts you all address--whether donor, intended parent, parent of donor-conceived child, or donor conceived child--are so intense, and mixed, and deeply personal. There is so much about going through infertility that the public, medical professionals, and even those in the fertility industry fail to comprehend.
I am a medical anthropologist and have done extensive research for the past 20 years on gender and infertility, on sperm donation and 'alternative families', and now on egg donation, in order to help increase awareness about the complexity of these issues.
I am currently working on a documentary film (and research) on egg donation--including egg donor experiences, the experiences of intended parents, and the fertility/egg donation industry.
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and am looking for parents and intended parents via egg donation, who would be willing to share their experiences on film. Egg-donor conceived children would also be welcome to share their experiences.
We have already interviewed donors, agency representatives, and infertility specialists. In this documentary, we really want to show all sides of the story. Our main goal is to inform others going through the process of infertility treatment (as both donors and intended parents), in a fair, balanced, and sensitive way.
Also...
If you are a donor, parent, intended parent, or child via egg donation, and are interested in the research project, that would be great too.
please contact me at: diane.tober@ucsf.edu
Thank you,
Diane Tober
Survey
Are you part of a donor family as a parent, child, or donor? Help people better understand what it means to be part of a donor-conceived family--with different sex, same-sex, or single parents.
Respected researchers at Wellesley and Middlebury colleges are seeking donor parents, donor offspring (13+) and egg, sperm, or embryo donors to take an anonymous online survey about their experiences. Be entered to win a $50 gift certificate for your time.
sites.google.com/site/donorfamilystudy/
We hope that you will take one of our surveys for our research on
"Donors, Donor Siblings and the Making of Families." The research explores
how parents understand their reliance on donor gametes (sperm, eggs, embryos)
to help them conceive and give birth to their children. It also explores how the children
of these families understand their connections both to the members of the families in which
they are raised (parents and siblings) and to those people to whom they have a genetic
tie (sperm and egg donors; genetic half-siblings). Finally, the project explores how sperm donors and
egg donors understand their role in the creation of other people's families.
Wondering
I am a nurse studying Bioethics and was just wondering what it is like to be a child conceived by sperm or egg donation. I have learned a lot by just reading a few stories. I am sorry to see the hurt and difficult thoughts that some individuals have expressed. This makes my heart ache and I wish that there was something I could do to help. Nurses look to promote wellness that is supported by evidence. I will need to continue to find or do research that supports the practices that have evolved in the field of reproduction. In the meantime, know that you are loved and have a purpose in your special circumstances.
Thank you so much for sharing your stories. I grew up in a traditional family with siblings so I am trying to learn and relate.I would like to send everyone a big hug and let you know that love is everywhere and there is always hope.
Donor Sperm
I came across this page because I want to know how the child feels of a donor. I married my high school sweetheart and on our 5th anniversary we started to try to start a family. A year later, after no baby we found out through multiple test that my husband could never have a biological child of his own. We were in despair because we always imagined children as part of our lives. Knowing that I could still have children, we explored the option of donor sperm. We both would be thrilled to get pregnant but my main scare is how will our kids feel? We found an open donor and had always planned to let our kids know from the very beginning. I know everyone has different experiences growing up where even you hate your own biological parents! From my perspective, this child would be ours and a donor is just that a donor...not a father...not a dad...a donor that helped us make a beautiful child. But I don't want life hard for our child either and if the overwhelming evidence shows kids conceived by donors it horrible--I would rather be childless and not put a child through something that would be difficult because of a dream we have.
Date submitted: April 27, 2014
I want to be a mother.
I stumbled onto this site educating myself on this 'beyond massive' decision I am trying to make. I am 45 and single I have always wanted to be a mother and have a family. For many reasons it hasn't happened for me by marriage
(sadly)... I have grieved tremendously - Ive done IVF using my egg and a sperm donor.. it didnt work.. I have waited too long... Now I am contemplating egg donor. The first thought in my mind is how do you explain this to the child. Your intension are pure love.... you gotta fight so hard to make this happen - unlike a 22 year old parent who, without any thought gets knocked up. A parent who chooses this route really really wants you - above anything else.... because it is tough and costly and terrifying.
But reading all these posting I am now terrified and am thinking I cannot do it... I could not bare the thought of the one thing I wanted so desperately and loved beyond anything would turn and have so much hatred and anger...
It seems to me though, for many of you, your anger is the product of bad parenting.. Not all, I understand there will be confusion and sadness and anger, even in the best case scenario, and I if I were to do any part of this I would make sure the donors are willing to be open with my child and answer all these questions later in life...
But gosh you guys are breaking my heart.... The people I know who have used donors... are SOOOOO IN LOVE WITH THEIR CHILDREN... and wanted them so desperately and are amazing parents... the idea that some of you have written after you learned about your donor status - you then hated your "mother or "father"... that is sadly insane, I dont know if its because the writer is young and this is the rantings of teenage early adult angst or what but, but from an educated financially secure adult who has spent years researching and contemplating and wanting a child so badly, the only thing I can tell you is that you are focusing on the wrong thing... Fantasizing about a sperm donor you are clling a father, and saying you want to meet the person that supplied the DNA and calling them a father is crazy... you are DNA... its a DNA donation... thats it... your mother and father who raised you... no matter how you were created LOVED you enough to go thru sooooo much pain and financial heart-ship to get you and you're a miracle...
Im not sure now what i will do, but please give your parents a break. They love you. The guy that donated, you dont have to make that ugly either... he was kid in college - not thinking about the consequences... but he gave your parents or your mom a gift - the gift of YOU - the most tremendous dream she ever had... Think about her sitting there or me sitting here, crying every night over the idea of not have my own beautiful child...to love and raise, I dont care what it will look like - I care that I can feel it grow in my belly and eat the best food so it will be healthy and love and give him or her everything i can so we can have an unbreakable bond... like I have with my parents. I wish there was man - its not that you don't want the traditional way - it just hasn't happened... I am sooooo profoundly sorry for the tremendous anger some of you feel toward your parents. This has made me very sad and given me a lot to think about.
Date submitted: April 12, 2014
To: Future Authors: A message
I've quietly observed this website for the past few years, and have written one story. Somewhere in the beginning of 2014, I've notice an odd trend. Some of these stories are well written emotional, educational and authentic sounding even if they do not fully disagree with the infertility industry itself. At the same time, some of them sound entirely fabricated an overenthusiastic about the industry.
I found these stories hard to fathom for many reasons.
The first one being if these children were overjoyed about their conception, with no drive or intention to find their donors, why would they be searching the internet about anything to do with anonymous donor conception in the first place? The website is kept from the mainstream, and is not advertised on television like other popular sites like dating websites or social networks. Heck the author of this website didn't even get to talk about it on a television interview like some website-creators too. So most children stumble on this site by accident, after typing in 'anonymous sperm donor' into their computer a couple of times.
The second reason would have to be the audience. The main authors are children who are looking for their anonymous parents, which explains the reason why they admit to stumbling on this website by mistake. Some had even used the site to find their parents, like the story 'Still On The Search'. The audience is mainly social parents who had or are going to plan to conceive with a donor, or donors themselves. Both Donors and social parents have criticized donor-conceived children for how they feel, in a similar fashion that the overenthusiastic cryo-children have. The message is a mantra, "You are the most wanted kids in the world because your life was someone's paycheck, you should be ashamed of yourself of making your social parents feel bad because parenting is mostly about making them happy, you and your donor made your buyers (I mean parents) happy, so you should be happy too."
The third reason is convenience. Two happy supportive stories about same-sex commercial sperm donning, both with a youthful girly British writing style, appear in a row after a lesbian conveniently wrote asking if she should use a co-parent or a donor. From what I have read from some posts on this website promoting co-parenting, Co-parents do not make industries money, but donors do. From what I've also observed, stories from children from same-sex families are entirely rare. Before the lesbian's inquisitive post, there were only two stories about children from lesbian parents. Both were several months apart from one another! Other than that, there has been no other stories from kids of lesbian parents, who used commercial sperm donning, but, two *in a row* with girly British writing styles conveniently appear after the lesbian's question?
In addition to this second reason, right after the most professionally written and most horrific stories that criticized the industry outright were conveniently happy stories of overjoyed children with the best parents in the world. These supposed cryo children adored their parents' decisions. Such stories even criticized other cryo children and blamed them for their misery. Such stories had also encouraged social parents to support commercial sperm donning and lie to the children product. This can be seen in 'After reading some of the stories here, I completely understand why my parents did not tell me'.
Right after 'The Business of Humanity' directed at intended-parents and donors and said to them,
"To any potential donor my word would be, 'don't'. Please do not condone the practice of depriving children of their families. Because no matter how much anyone may want a baby, donor conception has been and will always be about the child. Because I am part of a generation of children that derive from billion dollar corporations commercializing life, corporations that sell human beings."
Was the story 'To: Parents of Donor Conceived or those thinking about it', which had encouraged parents to in essence to do whatever they please and however the child reacts is simply the child's responsibility. The message was that a parent should not live their lives considering their children because it's too stressful for the parents. This entry had also promoted the idea of donor conception to be surprising, fun and exciting. And promoted that donor children should be thankful that they made their parents happy, which is their life's worth, apparently.
After the two stories, 'Ambiguity of Identity' which wrote about the unfairness and emotional suffering about looking for a lost donor, and the story 'I Don't Want To Meet Him, Sorry' that spoke passionately about how the donning industry treats the donors like breeding studs, objectifies children, create public health problems, and is unregulated, was the story 'Identity'. Not only did the story match the previous story ['I Don't Want To Meet Him, Sorry'] in content (*both* these women conveniently did not want to meet their donors) both *ironically had polarized views of donor conception. In 'I Don't Want To Meet Him, Sorry' the cryo child did not want to meet her father because he objectified women in pornography, abandoned and disowned his children for money, and help to commodify her conception. In 'Identity', the cryo child did not want to meet her donor because she denies him being part of her heritage. She is completely supportive of her parents decisions, and as 'To: Parents of Donor Conceived or those thinking about it', is completely happy she could make her parents happy. Again I ask, if such a child is so happy about her circumstances and has no desire to meet her donor, and is perfect advertising success story that these fertility companies love to use for propaganda, why on earth is she online searching anything to do with anonymous donor conception in the first place?
There are plenty more coincidences, one of the most recent one was how 'I am a new breed of bastard' and 'All men are created equal endowed with rights by their creator' was followed by the story 'The Truth Revealed' that like 'Identity' and many other stories that are the infertility industry propaganda's tools, lectured and criticized other donor conceived children and cried the same mantra of "be happy because you made your parents happy". What I found most interesting about the latest questionable story 'The Truth Revealed' was when the author had wrote in quote,
"Before I wrote this post, I read the comments/stories above me"
I suppose the author had been here a couple of times, if she had read comments and stories above hers�
One must wonder, are these *the children who are truly overenthusiastic about an industry that commercialized their lives, that endorsed in their parents taking their biological parents away from them without their consent, and encouraged their parents to lie to them, or are these the social parents or even members of the industry itself forging these stories to give out a false message?
If the Infertility Industry wasn't a multi-billion dollar corporation, and if their clientele weren't extremely desperate (and sometimes, incredible selfish) people who have a tendency to attack the creator of this website on the frequent basis, I wouldn't be this highly skeptical. But since such circumstances exist, and this website is viewed by many of the industry's clientele (and perhaps the industry itself), I am very skeptical.
If you are potential author who is not donor conceived please do not impersonate a donor-conceived person to promote your personal stance on this extremely complicated issue. This website is supposed to be honest and sincere. It is supposed to get across the true feelings of those who are product of this industry, not those who profit from this industry, or who have personal gain from this industry.
Thank you.
Date submitted: April 12, 2014
All men are created equal endowed with rights by their creator
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal
"The opening of the United States Declaration of Independence states as follows:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;[4]"
I cannot stress the importance of this enough - this is the deliberate creation of a lower cast of individuals who are denied the same freedoms, rights, and legal protections of due process afforded to the rest of society. If these people's bio parents were following the same rules that all other bio parents have to follow and the unrelated people who want to raise them had to follow the same normal rules for obtaining custody of another person's offspring everything would be fine. It is possible to follow those rules, the rest of society does it there is no reason not to treat these individuals equal other than to have additional control over them, their identities that outlast the normal 18 years of authority the rest of society has over their own offspring. They need parental authority that lasts for the life of the person they raised.
The only way to give these people different rights is to say they were differently created than the rest of us and thus not inherently equal. They were not created by their bio parents, therefore their bio parents can't endow them with inalienable rights - the rights they get flow exclusively through whoever wants to raise them. Maybe that is a bio parent or maybe not. The people who want to raise donor offspring have to be viewed as the creators of the donors offspring and they do that by saying that they conceived their child with the help of a donor rather than with the donor who is a normal human being who has normal human offspring that deserve normal human rights. The donor is exempt from criminal abandonment charges and thus his offspring lack the same legal protections as other human minors.
Donor offspring are endowed with the limited rights assigned by their commissioners. While the rest of society has inalienable rights endowed by their creators. Commissioners like adopters have more authority than creators do when they raise their young - they have to have authority that outlasts childhood in order to force the person they raised to retain the assigned identity over the course of their lives.
It sounds extreme but it is extreme. These are just regular normal people who donate, they're human and the offspring they create are human there is nothing different about them whatsoever other than they were not legally protected against abandonment and they were not endowed with the same inalienable rights the rest of us enjoy an they are denied the due process of court approval before becoming the ward of someone who wants to raise them. Their medical records are falsified to keep them in check and maintain the facade. This website is devoted to hearing how people feel about being 'created this way' how it feels to be differently conceived. They don't have bio fathers and mothers they have donors and -commissioners are said to have 'created their families' this way. They drive home that the people raising them are their creators, and that their creators had to use donors to create them.
Now look at that first line of the declaration of independence and tell me you don't see that their unequal treatment is tied to them not being created equal to the rest of society. They create a reasonable facsimile where others with extra authority over them are referred to as their creators and through them their limited rights do flow. This is very serious and very strategic and very very wrong.
All they have to do is start asking to be treated no different than anyone else. Ask that their bio parents be accountable for them to the same extent that other bio parents are accountable and that anyone else who wants to have authority over them follow the same rules as the rest of society does.
Critical to this bid for equal rights is that they absolutely must not refer to themselves as donor conceived and must refer to their bio parents as parents otherwise nobody will understand that they are being denied anything. They need to use their words. THEIR words.
They would not be perceived as biting the hands that fed them if the people who raised them were not holding their tongues with one hand and shoving words into their mouths with the other.
Date submitted: April 10, 2014
RE: Raised by a single mother
Dear African Woman,
Thank you for acknowledging the challenges you faced growing up without a father. The many women aspiring to be single-mothers-by-choice, need to read this so they can know what they may cause intentionally on their kids.
As your doctor advised and how I had advised the lesbian woman bellow your story, in situations where marriages aren't possible and you openly acknowledge the need for a father, it would be best to coparent with the child's biological father. This is becoming a growing option to create non-traditional families, especially for single people and gay couples. These situations fair better than marriages specifically because you are seeking a man (or a gay male couple) who will fulfill the emotional, medical, spiritual, and financial needs of your children, rather than the romantic / companionship needs of yourself.
As I've said to countless others who are in your situation, there are websites who tend to women/men like you. These websites include Modamily.com, Coparentmatch.com, and Pollentree.com.
If you have any more questions about the process, the legal and social burdans and benefits, you can go to this website www.partneredparenting.com. The website's writer, Rachel Hope, is a passionate spokesperson and advocate about this type of parenting. She has even written a book about how she raised her educated; well-adjusted; emotionally secure son, outside a marriage, with the boy's involved loving and caring biological father (Rachel's best friend).
Also, ma'am, since it seems you are having some issues with your father, I would personally strongly advise you seek counseling and undergo some emotional healing before going into this parenthood journey. Your father's emotional damage on you may interfere with your mothering, unintentionally.
Date submitted: April 01, 2014
Raised by a single mother
I am African woman and just to say,as kids we never question our parents.
I was raised by a good woman,who gave up her life for me and today I am one of the youngest entrepreneur with 2 awards. I read every story here and it's made me ask myself if what I want to embark on is the best. I am presently looking for a donor,my doctor is advise I seek for co-parenting.
My worries:
It was horrible growing up without a father,I don't want to bring a child into this world denialing them the chance to know where there come from or go thru what I went thru.
I must have spoken more to a stranger then to my birth father when I met him,I hate him and it made me sick,I am very gentle by nature and don't have a wicked bone in my body but the day I met my birth father I wanted to hit him and ask him why he abandoned me.
Hes so proud of me but I feel like shouting on top of my voice and telling the whole world he's just full of sh*t
I know how most people feel here,I knew him when I clocked 19,I grew up fast,having to care for my mom and the family.
How do I not pass this life to my unborn child.
Marriage is not an option, I do not want to.
Please advice
Date submitted: April 01, 2014
RE: Tell me donor children, what you think I should do?
Dear (future) lesbian co-mother,
I just want to take the time to say, like the author of the story "Positive Stories?", thank you for your passion and your admirable concerns for your future kids. We need your sympathetic and bighearted energy on this website. If you've looked at other stories, you have probably seen that the concerns were clearly centered around the parents and the children usually always lagged secondarily. You will make the most amazing lesbian mother, you and your future wife. :)
So with that stated, let me take the time to answer your story carefully....
I am sorry that you grew up in a home where you felt distant from your parents, I think that has much to do with the fact you were growing up as a lesbian in a straight house. Most gay/bi kids feel this distance, and it's perfectly understandable.
I read about you wanting to bring your children's father into your family and I also read that you think he would have a dilemma with two women raising his kids without him. I also saw how you weren't sure if you were to use your wife's brother sperm or your BFF. Here's my advice, stick with any non-relative. This will make things much simpler, less incestuous- sounding, if your wife (your co-mother) wants to carry kids too.
I would also encourage you to consider coparenting. In this situation your baby-daddy will partake in his children's life, consistently. Your child's fathers could actually be a gay male couple, in the same situation you are in: the love of their life is of the same sex, but yet they want to welcome children into the world in such a way that fulfills their children's needs. Or he could a singled man, who hasn't found The One yet, but doesn't want to welcome a child into the world without a mother. You all can share raising the child together, will simply sharing a very close sibling-like relationship with one another.
There are many websites that can help make this possible for you and your wife like Modamily.com, Coparentmatch.com, and Pollentree.com.
I know it's not in media, but these parental arrangements are extremely common in the LGTBQIA community. Same-sex parenting is NOT synonymous with gay parenting. Gay families come in all shapes and sizes, they are not limited to the status quo: two lesbians and a donor, or two gay men and a surrogate.
To address your concerns about you feeling that you are inadequate for not being able to create your child through lovemaking, please don't feel that way. If you choose to raise your child with the child's dad(s), more than likely you and your wife/co-mother will have a close sentimental relationship with this man (or this male couple). So the child will be created through the love you have for this (or these) man (or men), along with the deep love; respect and consideration you have for your children, prior to their conception. If anything my advice to you, (if it is possible), please make sure that your children are created outside of a lab environment, are not paid for, and that there was absolutely no pornography involved in the sperm retrieval. These are the complaints that most donor conceived kids have about their conception. Furthermore there is a number of unaddressed health burdens that are associated with kids created through IVF technology, that are not associated with kids created through home-insemination.
Lastly, I wanted to address your low self esteem as a aspiring lesbian mom. Please do not think you're less than because you cannot provide your kids with a traditional nuclear family. If you choose co parenting with a singled man or gay couple, you actually have significant advantages that traditional homes do not have. Your child will be raised by the love of three or four parents, they will have two mother figures and possible two father figures, in their lives. And trust me, the kids DO notice:
>>>"I think my friends are a little jealous, because I've got two mommies and two daddies and they've only got two parents," said Simon, 6, squirming with his 3-year-old brother, Joaquin, on the knees of their four gay parents."
Date submitted: March 31, 2014
Tell me donor children, what you think I should do.
I am a lesbian. Well, that's the easy way of putting it. I am in a lesbian relationship and have only ever loved women. I am in no way closed off to falling in love with a man and living with him for the rest of my life. In fact, I still wish it will happen one day. You want to know why?
Well, I am in a "normal" or "typical" family. I was born and raised by my biological father, mother and lived with my biological brother. I never had to deal with not knowing where I come from, not knowing who my biological parents are, not knowing if I have any siblings and if so where are they and who are they , so I can't say I can relate on these terms. But I can tell you that my "normal" or "typical" family was not at all normal or typical. Looking at my family from the outside, you would think we were perfect, probably. No drug problems, no abuse, no divorce, no poverty. But still, I had my own reasons to not want to spend my time at home, I dind't have a good relationship with my parents, in fact, I didn't tell them anything that was ever going on. If I was ever down, upset, depressed, scared, excited, I didn't feel I could talk to them, and I didn't have a place at home to express my feelings. I had to go look for it outside of my home, look for people who were not my family. My parents were the cause of a few years of on and off depression, of a massive amount of guilt and a lot more negative components of my life. I, just like you, would wake up in the morning feeling different, feeling unlucky, feeling injustice that the world decided to make we walk in some filthy shoes where everyone else got new ones. (This was a metaphor, I'm not really referring to shoes). I also my whole life looked at my friends' families with jealousy.. Why don't I get to feel this close with my parents? Why can all my friends talk to their parents about their date or boyfriend or girlfriend or share with them how sad they are or even about a fight they had with a friend and I can't? The point is, that I also had my reasons to feel like my family was wrong, lived in the wrong way, behaved in the wrong way, made the wrong decisions that ultimately caused me to suffer and have trauma and some other negative feelings I don't know if I'll ever be able to get over.
Before you start to get angry, I'm not in any way shape or form trying to make you feel like you don't have a reason to be upset, or that you shouldn't complain about your life. I believe it is very hard to be a donor child and I would encourage everyone to write about their struggles and be able to relate to one another. I am writing this because I want to ask you all a question.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I am a lesbian and my entire life I've dreamed of having children. I feel that I have so much to give to this world, and all I want to do is create a family and give them all love and happiness and provide them with everything they will need to be able to fulfill their dreams. But as you can understand, doing so is a lot harder for me than it is for heterosexual couples.
For one, I think that creating a human being from the act of love is the most holy, spiritual and positive experience life has to offer us, and I can't begin to describe how difficult it is for me to try and accept that I may never be able to do that in my life.
And two, I want my children to be able to live the best life possible. It really is truly what I want to do. I was thinking of maybe getting my future wife's brother's sperm and having his biological father play the role of his uncle in his life, or get my best friend's sperm and have him be available for my children to meet and connect with when they're ready. These two options obviously are not ideal and very difficult, not just for the child but especially for the biological father, having a child he knows but can not raise, and also for me and my future wife, having the biological father be a part of his life can easily take away from our ability to parent him fully, and can cause a lot of conflict in his childhood. Again, I wish I could just love a man and marry him and then everything will be easier, but unfortunately I doubt that will happen.
I am writing this for two reasons. One, I want you to read the story of a person like me who can not marry a person of the opposite sex yet still wants to bring life joy and happiness to her children and build a successful family. Maybe for some of you it can help knowing that even though I grew up in a "normal" family, I maybe have had a more deprived childhood than you. And maybe it'll help understanding the situation I am in, understanding the situation your parents were in when they had you, and understand that hopefully, in most cases, your parents and I really want whats best for you, we want to fulfill our dreams by enabling you to fulfill yours, and our future children to come.
And lastly, I want to know what you think. As donor children, parents, and people who know of donor families, how would you tell me to make a family? Do I deserve to not fulfill my dreams because I was born a lesbian? Do my future children deserve to not be born although maybe they can have an amazing life? Does the world deserve to not have my future children in it although maybe they will be the next Albert Einstein? And if not, then what is the best way to go about it in your opinion?
Thank you and I wish you all the best of luck finding yourselves and finding some inner peace.
Date submitted: March 30, 2014
How can I find my dad?
I know nothing about my dad. And for some reason the past 3 years that's all that's been on my mind. Its getting worse, that its to the point where any older man I look at I day dream about. I even write stories about it, or even rewrite books that have to do with father and daughter stuff. I know I must sound crazy to you guys but I just cant help feeling that way. I've seen "What a girl wants" so many times I know all the scenes and the words to the whole movie. It doesn't help any that my mom is gay, and freaks out every time I try to bring it up. She wont tell me anything about him. Its like she wants to be my dad, and she wants her girlfriend to be my mom, they want to be this big happy family. But we cant because its wrong, it even feels wrong. I want my mom to be the person I talk to with boys not the one to hate them. I want her to wear dresses and date guys. I want a father figure that is a guy not a woman. Please help me anyone.
Date submitted: March 16, 2014
Thanks to all of you for the raw but necessary truth...
I'm 43 and married my husband just over 2 years ago. We have been trying to conceive naturally for a while, even before we married, but that hasn't worked out. I always wanted to be a mother, and always thought it would happen one day. We went to see an IVF specialist a couple of times but it looks like my eggs are not too good. Many people have suggested using an egg donor, but besides the cost, I've been struggling with the idea.
I've been thinking about what I was like as a teenage girl, giving my parents a difficult time for one thing or another, and how would that be if I had a teenager challenging me. How would I feel towards the child. How would he or she feel towards me in times of trouble? Would she wonder what her real Mom was like? I'm not a perfect person by all means. My Mom and Dad are still married, but my Dad has always been - let's just say: a shit at times. If during the times he has been a shit, and if he was not my biological father, I am pretty sure I'd be wanting to find out more about my biological father. Instead, I have a reference point for when and how I might be a shit at times, and can blame him and work on myself, and laugh about it together.
I've expressed these concerns to my husband, doctors, Mother, and others and they all say "No, it wouldn't be any different, you give birth to the child, s/he is yours." Or something to that extent. But I just didn't think it could be as simple as that. Would my Mother love my child(ren) as much as her other grand kids? I met a woman who told me she had two sons conceived with an egg donor (and she and her husband are since divorced). She told me that she wasn't going to tell her sons that they are the product of an egg donor. That would be an awful thing to find out years later. I'm curious to know the fate of a gay male couple I'm friends with on facebook. They now have 3 children, using a separate egg donor and a family member as a surrogate.
Sometimes I feel sorry for myself because it seems that everyone and their Mother, are having children... except me. But then I remind myself that it is okay, I'm still whole, my husband loves me and maybe I would be a bad Mother. I would feel so guilty to have gone to such trouble to bring a child meant for another woman into the world and then realize they didn't want me as their Mother. How tragic is that.
I think I was already convinced myself that egg donation wasn't a good idea, so I searched the web for egg donor experiences to find out how life does turn out for the donor recipients and their children, and I found this site. The sad and heartbreaking stories here have just underscored my every fear. Thank you all for the raw but necessary truth.
Date submitted: March 04, 2014
Re: I am a *Would be* Grandparent
Hello, Ma'am,
Sorry for the late reply, I read your post on "I Am A Product Of Surrogacy" Blog, before traveling to this site and reading your sad story again.
I'm so sorry about the predicament your daughter and grandchild is in, but honestly it's not that unheard of, it's happened many times with many different surrogates. Mothers were never designed to give up their babies they gestated. Psychology tells us that mothers undergo mother-fetal bonding, and that newborns can smell their 'carriers' miles away, they are soothed by her voice, and they even desire her over anyone else. Surrogacy is not part of our evolution as a species, or *any species of mammals really.
Here are laws of surrogacy in Washington:
http://www.creativefamilyconnections.com/state-map/washington-surrogacy-laws
In addition, I know this may sound crazy, but there are states your daughter can go to; to deliver her child and not be separated from her/him. A surrogate who was ask to abort a baby by the family she worked for, fled to a different state and wrote her name on the child's certificate. She is now the legal mother.
Read more about it and consider it for your daughter:
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/04/health/surrogacy-kelley-legal-battle/
Peace, my friend. I hope all goes well.
Date submitted: February 23, 2014
I am a *Would be* Grandparent
..who may never know my intended grandchild. My daughter who lives in Washington state, thought that she was doing this wonderful, beautiful thing for a Canadian couple who, the *mother to be* is infertile ~
Lawyers, psychological evals and 3rd trimester later..she regrets this entire episode of her life, and has *bonded* with her *?* child, and wishes to take it all back and make it go away.
Depression has set in.
I do not recognize this child of mine as she was with her 2 other pregnancies.
She has a supportive husband/father to her existing children, babies both under 3.
Can she change her mind and keep this baby?
Just the bottom line ~
Date submitted: January 19, 2014
Don't Romanticize Bio Fathers
I am not donor conceived or adopted. I do, however, enjoy reading the very substantive essays contained on this site. When I was in graduate school a very good male friend of mine told me that he was going to become a sperm donor. They were going to pay him $100 per event. I was utterly horrified and let him know my opinion. It blew my mind that he would think of such a selfish thing. I lectured him about how he could possibly allow an unknown woman to use your sperm to create a human life over which you had no control. The very thought is so supremely selfish.
So, although many of your writers are upset at their mothers for being selfish, I caution people not to romanticize their "biological father", who may just have been like my friend - broke and unthinking.
The relationships you create in your own life and the behaviors you exhibit are what define you.
Date submitted: November 23, 2013
An 'almost' SMC
I am 39 years old. Christian, conservative. Victim of an abusive marriage, which I terminated two years ago. My ex was infertile (thank God.) We never conceived.
I am a child advocate, educator, curriculum writer for the child who learns differently. I (literally) have on my body marks from the emotionally disturbed children I have served. For twenty years I have served a population damaged by adult choices. And, I have only ever wanted one thing: to raise my own child applying all I have gathered and learned through the years.
So, I began a path towards parenthood. Overjoyed that I could carry and raise a child that could never be taken from me. Starting at the beginning and loving and giving to her all the very best of who I am.
I chose my donor, oh so carefully. I had my blood-work done. Completed paperwork. And I purchased one vial. I spoke to my obgyn, he is on call for my ovulation, next weekend.
And last night, I found your website. And I read story after story of adults who were so unhappy. I read about the violation of human rights of the children that are being created. I read the comparison between donor purchasing and human trafficking. And I wept.
I had never considered these views. They broke my heart, and I knew that I would never, ever want to hurt a person like this.
So, to that darling soul in heaven that I will not be carrying under my heart, know that I love you more than life. I love you more than me or my happiness or fulfillment. You are too precious to be brought into this world with pain born into your heart.
I love you,
the woman who was almost your mama.
Date submitted: October 18, 2013
New BBC Documentary on Donor Conception
Award-winning British filmmaker Sue Bourne has recently been commissioned by BBC2 to make a major new documentary about the Danish sperm industry and has approached us to ask if any of our network might be willing to assist her in her research.The film's focus will be mainly on the individuals, couples and families from around the world who have used, or plan to use, donor sperm from Denmark via a UK clinic, foreign clinic, or even at home.
Bourne would like to tell the compelling human stories at the heart of the international sperm trade, to increase public understanding of this complex, fascinating and often-misunderstood issue.
They would love to hear from any individuals conceived via a Danish sperm donor, or perhaps parents of children who were conceived using Danish sperm? Whatever your perspective, your contribution would be hugely valuable to our research.
If you might be interested in having an initial phone conversation with Sue's team, please do get in touch. Ideally we would like to speak to you for about 30 minutes and all communication will be completely confidential, with no commitment to take part in the final programme.
Thank you for reading this, we really hope to hear from you�
If you would like to find out more about this exciting project, please contact Sarah Harris (Assistant Producer) at Wellpark Productions on +44 (0) 20 8932 0133 / +44 (0) 7958710362 or sarahhar@gmail.com
Intentional Parenthood - Lessons in Logic
The next time someone says to you that without them their child would not exist because it was them that decided to use donor gametes to create a child to be parents of - ask them who visited the clinic first looking to create a child? Them? Or their Donor? Who walked into that clinic and said 'hey I really want to create some offspring and I'd like your assistance. I don't have a partner to do that with. Maybe you could line me up with someone interested in conceiving children with me. I'm not interested in gestating my pregnancy though. Maybe you could line me up with someone who could do that for me. I'm also not interested in being accountable for the offspring they assist me in creating. Maybe you could line me up with someone who could do that for me? I'd like fertility treatment to improve the chances of me conceiving and to maximize the number of embryos I can conceive. Maybe you could retrieve my eggs and inject them with sperm for me. No, I don't have any money. No I don't have any insurance either. Maybe you could find someone to cover the expenses for me. Really you think you could hook me up with people willing to pay to help me conceive my children? No kidding. Do you think they'd be willing to raise them for me too? No way. You have a book full of women just like me who want to conceive their children and not raise them really? All I have to do is fill out a profile sheet and wait for someone who wants to assist me in making my dream come true? I'm also looking for someone to reimburse me for my train fair and time off work is that a problem? No? Your assistance, doctor, is greatly appreciated. I anxiously await news of when we can begin this process."
Their idea indeed. The doctor does not assist the infertile female or sterile male by offering them fertility treatments with donor sperm. The donor receives the fertility treatment to improve their chances of conception. The costs of that treatment are underwritten by people who want to raise the donors children when they are born. Sometimes the costs are underwritten by people who want to experience pregnancy like a ride at a carnival or something. It's important to remember that the existence of a person is not dependent upon having to be abandoned by one or both of their parents. That is an insulting proposition under any circumstances. They are here now and any problem they might have in life began after they were born, not before and so cannot be solved by imagining that they never existed. The root of the problem is not the seed dears. Stay on topic and avoid being enticed in to discussions about the miracles of pregnancy and reproduction you were not alive to experience any of that and any injustice you experience is not the result of ART but rather the result of irresponsible behavior by your parents once you were born and of course the laws that allowed them to behave irresponsibly.
You'll go further in making changes to laws if you stay on this side of birth and seek justice for everyone whose born rather than trying to prevent people from 'conceiving children this way.' Just obligate people to their offspring equally and the result is better than a ban on ART. Nobody's rights are hindered. Anyone who thinks they've lost really hasn't a leg to stand on. No?
Signed someone who has a few friends whose parents were donors.
Seeking A Future Sperm Donor
I am a young woman.
I come from a biological/intact family full of siblings and have never used IVF. I am not talking about the past. Much less the present. But the possible future.
In the future I want to use sperm donation after having a family of my own with a future husband.
I'm biracial and want to have at least one kid who looks like me. I don't know whether this is narcissism, cruel kindness or something else speaking, but that's the gist of it.
I feel uncomfortable with my desires.
If I use sperm donation, I may be severing the link between sex and children and contributing to the whole anonymous stuff. If I do it the natural way, I commit adultery and destroy a marital relationship.
I don't know what to do.
I just know that my freaky desires aren't right.
Date submitted: April 16, 2013
Looking for Sperm Donors for Study
Hello!
I am currently part of a research team at SUNY Geneseo. We are studying communication in donor-conceived families and are trying to understand the communicative experiences of sperm donors. We are asking anonymous sperm donors who are 18 years or older and who have donated sperm at least one year ago to complete an anonymous online survey available at https://www.geneseo.edu/survey/57976/lang-en I am writing to ask if you will forward this email to people you know who meet the participation criteria or know others who do.
Thank you for your help!
Thank you for your time.
Date submitted: April 02, 2013
History and Genes
I'm not going to make judgements here - just an observation or two.
There have been "non-marital events" for a long time. Things like women bearing children other than those of the men they were married to. And unwed mothers. Orphanages were once commonplace in Western Europe (Dickens' London comes to mind). And nobody rational ever suggested that all "legitimate" children had caring, decent ("legitimate") parents. Certainly, there was child abuse and abandonment, even incest and rape.
But in all this, the concept of families and some kind of "history" was part of society, even if great-grandfather was himself adopted. Every ancestral history begins someplace in time, be it in 1400, 1900 or 2000. Genealogical knowledge is often - perhaps usually - abused by social climbers and snobs, even (rather ironically) in the United States.
While I would never suggest that anybody "needs" to know his ancestry in any line over ten generations (more than a million ancestors at that point), it might be interesting to know that a great-grandfather served in the First World War, for example. No, we should not take credit for the deeds or misdeeds of our ancestors, none of whom was perfect. Truth be told, some ancestors are probably best forgotten. It's about the knowledge.
But don't we have a right to at least know something about family history, which we can then decide to embrace or reject?
Granted, adoptees rarely learn much about their biological parents, but that has sometimes prompted personal quests for information.
We may not like what we learn, and in any case it may not be especially "instructive." The whole ethnic identity thing, for instance, is misplaced as often as not (the places we now call Italy and Germany didn't even exist as nation states until the middle of the 19th century). Here I'm talking about basic, simple ancestral identity, as well as medical histories.
Genetic genealogy, with its focus on haplogroups and ancient history, fascinating though it may be, cannot address the desire for essential information regarding the last few generations.
No, I'm not part of the family history bandwagon. It's just that kids ask questions. They're curious. Establishing a relationship of sorts with a biological father (sperm donor) may not be sufficiently fulfilling for everybody, though I agree it's a good starting point.
Part of the "problem" is that the child of, for example, a single woman who chose artificial insemination may understandably feel the need to defend his mother and her choice - even though the decision itself was made before thevchild was born or even conceived.
True, we create most of our personal identity, but we shouldn't presume to decide for others what they may choose to identify with in their ancestral histories. Some of it might just be worth preserving.
Date submitted: April 12, 2012
Perspective
When two women claim they are capable of having the same relationship as a man and woman do, the implication is that every man's contribution to relationships, marriage, and family is replaceable and unnecessary. That is what is REALLY a "WAR ON MEN." And two men claiming their relationship is just as much a relationship or marriage as a heterosexual committed relationship implicitly dismisses any contribution of every woman, thus also claiming women are inconsequential to relationships, marriage, and family. That is what is REALLY a "WAR ON WOMEN." And both is REAL (gender) discrimination.
Also, comparing same sex "parenting" to single parents is extremely faulty, because (1.) people don't typically get divorced on purpose and (2.) there is always a chance that an opposite sex parent can come into the mix and help raise the child. With same sex "parenting," the child for the lifetime of the relationship and BY DESIGN of same sex relationships, is always deprived of either a mother or a father. It takes more than just two people loving each other to give the best environment and outcome for a child. Men and women are complimentary opposites psychologically. And parenting is not about what the parents want or about using children as "equality" trophies to justify or validate a particular private bedroom habit...parenting is about what children ultimately need. Therefore, the promotion of same sex "parenting" is what is REALLY a "WAR ON CHILDREN."
Date submitted: March 24, 2012
Telling the Truth Without Redefining Words
I interact with lots of donor offspring who were told the truth early and often by the people who raised them. Telling donor offspring the truth when they are still young is the right thing to do and seems to be growing in popularity. There is a minor wrinkle to work out and that is that people raising donor offspring use terminology that makes it unclear what they are telling the truth about.
"The truth about your conception"
No. Their conception story has nothing to do with what they'd believe if they were not told the truth. The truth is that donor offspring are not the biological offspring of the people raising them. The idea in telling the truth is not to mislead them into believing they are related to social parents and their relatives. So telling donor offspring the truth means telling them that they are not the offspring of the people raising them and that in fact they are someone else's offspring. It does also mean telling them that they have other relatives beyond those they are being raised around.
These statements are not true and should be avoided when trying to tell donor offspring the truth.
"Your father and I conceived you with donor sperm"
"I did not reproduce with the donor I reproduced with your mother"
or
"I am the biological mother!"
"Donor conceived individuals"
There is a growing misunderstanding that egg donor recipients are biological mothers. This is not true. http://www.asrm.org/topics/detail.aspx?id=418
http://www.asrm.org/topics/detail.aspx?id=3634
The good decision to tell the truth often goes hand in hand with the use of words intended to conceal the social nature of the parent child relationship. Truth is undermined by saying it in a way that makes social parenthood sound and feel like biological parenthood. If parenthood does not turn on the reproductive process then there is no need to try and emulate it when describing social relationships.
Date submitted: February 26, 2012
My story for you...
I was born in 1968, and raised by my gay mother. My mother was 16 when she had me. My father was a foreign student, attending college on a student visa. My mother was just discovering homosexuality, so she did not tell my father she was pregnant. She moved away and never told him I had been born. My mother had looked in to an abortion. Thank God it was not legal in our State! She kept me and recieved welfare.
When I was 11, I asked who my father was. I yearned for my father. My gay mother told me "I did not have a father". I persisted, and insisted that she tell me the truth. She gave me the only photograph she had of him. She only remembered his first and last name. She said she did not kow if he was still in the U.S. or back in South America.
I grew up with an identity problem which affected my relationships and self esteem, not to mention the undescribable "longing" and constant ache to know the piece of me that was missing.
In my 20s, I searched for my father through private detective services, contacting the Universities he might have attended, writing to the embassy and student visa departments. I was not able to find him due to "privacy acts". I prayed to God that I would recieve an answered prayer. I never gave up hope to find the father who never even knew that I existed.
Fast forward to present:
I was married 3 years ago at age 40. I was unable to get pregnant, because my eggs were too old. We consulted with a fertility doctor who advised us to use an egg donor. We looked through the description of young girls who were selling their eggs. One donor-girl interested me...she had the same color hair and skin as I. I thought about this idea of using egg donation. My husband and I desired a baby so badly. We were about to do anything to get that little child in to our arms! We prayed to God for guidance. I suddenly thought about the fact that our child may never know his/her biological mother who donated her eggs. I realized I could not bear to allow another child to suffer the same curse of not knowing a biological parent. I knew first hand about this pain. I had an idea! I called the fertility nurse, and begged her to ask this donor-girl if she would be willing to give us her identity in case our child wanted to meet her one day. The anonymous donor-girl agreed to leave her info with the clinic. Next, the fertility doctor offered to do a split/cycle. This meant we could save thousands of dollars if we shared the donor-girl's eggs with another local infertile couple, like us. This same donor-girl actually had a record of previously donating successfully. I suddenly realized this meant our children could have many unkown brothers and sisters in the same city or school, the same age! There were also 2 other local fertility clinics where this same donor could have also anonymously sold more of her eggs. I worried that one day the descendants of our children may have to ask for a DNA test before dating or marrying. We decided against using egg donation.
My husband and I realized that no matter how badly we wanted a baby, that a baby was not a commodity. These babies will grow up to be real adults...real people. I hope that all of you children grow up and write to your Government officials to change the laws regarding anonymous egg/sperm donation in your State. You children do have the power to change the laws so that anonymous egg and sperm donors can no longer be anonymous. (FYI: Adopted children grew up and changed the laws so that adoption records must always remain open, in order for them to find their biological parents.) Our State senators and Congressmen are available to help! These anonymous donors selling their eggs/sperm, should be accountable to meet these children at age 18. No one knows the pain and deep longing a child has to know a biological parent. (only us, the children will know how this really feels). I am sure when enough of these children from anonymous donors, grow up.. these laws will change.
With God all things are possible. Nothing is too hard for God. God answered my lifetime prayer to find my biological father! When my husband and I decided to adopt an orphan baby from South America, we recieved help from a local Peruvian girl who found my father on a social website similiar to Facebook! This girl would never have helped me, if we had chosen the egg donation route! Thank God we chose adoption. My father remembered the relationship with my mother. He invited me to visit him. I met he and my brother and sister and large South American Family! I look so much like my father. I now look in the mirror and see my wrinkles, eyes, and hair. I look more like him, than his other two children. We also held very similiar morals and values. He died of a heridatary illness, four months after I found him. I can not tell you the closure and peace that came from just meeting him. I am a firm believer that with God, anything is possible! I give credit to my faith in God. I feel like a whole pie now. (Before it was like a piece of me was missing). I am complete.
Date submitted: December 07, 2011
Did you know you were suppose to be equal?
There are several countries that allow people to access their donor's identities once they are 18 years old. The U.S. is not one of those countries but that's ok because what the hell kind of country responds to human rights violations by asking its disenfranchised people
"What can we do to make being discriminated against a more pleasant experience for you?"
Donor conceived individuals in the U.S. will, I hope, begin to compare themselves to those they want to be treated like so they can identify what laws need to change to make that happen.
Did you know that according to Chapeter 8 of the Uniform Parentage Act, http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/pubs/2002/reports/essentials/c8.html
the U.S. Supreme Court decided a series of cases starting in 1968 that precluded discrimination against children whose parents were not married to one another? Its true. And believe it or not those court decisions culminated in the 1973 National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) approving the original Uniform Parentage Act which declared
"EQUALITY FOR PARENTS AND CHILDREN WITHOUT REGARD TO THE PARENT'S MARITAL STATUS."
I really hope people will stop referring to themselves as donor conceived when what they are children of unmarried parents who deserve equal treatment and protection under the law.
Did you know that Did you know according to Chapter 1 of the Uniform Parentage Acthttp://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/pubs/2002/reports/essentials/c1.html#ref_3 of the UPA says that is one of the primary reasons they try to identify children's parents is because "Diseases, illnesses, birth defects, and other abnormalities might be passed to children by their parents. Knowledge of both parents' medical histories can help predict susceptibility to certain medical disorders and aid in diagnosis of illness." They say it is to the child's benefit to be in contact with both of their parents.
The UPA also states that identifying a child's parents offers significant social, economic, and medical benefits to children compared to not knowing their identities they say "It helps foster in families a sense of parental responsibility, heritage, and self-esteem. Establishing paternity for a child born out of wedlock and having a parent contribute financial assistance for a child's upbringing (that might otherwise come from public funds) benefit the child and society. In addition to providing an alternative source of income for the family, a noncustodial parent could provide a child with access to such "social entitlements" as Social Security benefits, pension benefits, veterans' benefits, and other rights of inheritance." The UPA goes on to say that ""Children gain social and psychological advantages from having legally identified parents who are involved in their lives. As well as providing a sense of family heritage, this can be a first step in creating a psychological and social bond between an estranged father and his child. "
And the UPA is filled with statements about parentage being conclusively established in contested cases with upon testing, so its clear that not just any old father will do; it has to be their father to warrant recognition as a parent in a contested case
So far so great! Things are really looking up for children of unmarried parents they actually have some rights and people working to identify their parents until you get to the part that specifically excludes children created by of artificial reproduction.
The whole intent and purpose of the UPA is undermined by the fact that they do not treat all children of unmarried parents equally such that the entire group can be treated equally with children of married parents. It blatantly creates a subclass of children who have unmarried parents that don't deserve State and Federal protection. Those children are children noted as being the offspring of gamete donors and surrogacy arrangements and any child born of an extramarital affair might also fall in with this class of children that does not deserve access to their parents medical information and does not deserve to foster relationships that foster a sense of heritage.
Furthermore I think that the UPA's noble stated goals of equal rights for children to access vital medical information and foster that sense of heritage should be extended to adopted individuals as well.
It is my opinion that anyone who has been denied access to identifying information about their genetic families needs to begin to look at themselves and their peers in a different light and see themselves as part of this protected class of individuals that deserves access to these simple rights the same as children born to their married biological parents. Its my opinion that the premise of the UPA with regard to establishing equal rights for children and equal access to support and critical information on their families is the standard to which all other provisions of the act must comply and in turn the standard to which all state laws will be judged against. I think it would be a good idea to stop calling for an end to anonymity and start calling for a start to your rights as United States Citizens.
They just need one of you with deep pockets and a law degree to take it up in court and the law would change.
Date submitted: November 10, 2011
My letter to the chairman of the inseminatincommitte
I typed a letter in 1983 to the chairman of the board of insemination, one of the Swedish parliaments four JO, your boyfriend Alana has to explain the job of the JO, justiceombudsman.
It was one of at least 20 000 letters on the same subject, saying in effect the same thing. Not of being inseminated into existence, but of being robbed of the knowledge of who was my real father.
In my case I received the knowledge at 20, and had suspected this for 10 years, but forced myself not to believe it. My father was then dead and I have never been able to meet him.
I experienced very, very difficult times ahead and had to leave my university studies then, among other things.
Back to my letter. In 1984 the Swedish parliament passed a law that every child has the right to know his/her parents at latest at 18 years of age, but the advice is to tell this as soon as possible. So to say to grow into this knowledge gradually.
The chairman, Thor Swedner ( I think ) was very attacked for this proposition and this law ( it didn't matter at all whom the genes came from and so forth ) and when he defended himself he used mainly my arguments and sometimes even my own wording.
I felt happy with having achieved something- getting a feed back, to my difficulties before.
Sweden was the first country in the world to adopt this law. Many countries have taken this law and directly duplicating it or taking it and making some changes. Great Britain took this law one or two years ago for example.
The numbers of artificial inseminations with a anonymous donor has dropped from 3-4 000/ year to about 300/ year, and is mostly performed in Denmark, as it is forbidden in Sweden.
The law is still in effect in Sweden, even if it is under constant attack. But all those letters, saying the same thing, telling the same story, in different ways, act as a protector of this law.
What I originally wrote I could send you Alana, but you have to ask your boyfriend to translate it to English.
With kind regards
Date submitted: September 05, 2011
Phoney Bastards and Quasi Marital kids
I've helped reunite roughly 200 families for free since the 1997, so I've seen an awful lot of falsified birth certificates. Turns out that adopted people don't have the market cornered on birth certificates containing false and misleading information. For some, there is no sealed original certificate containing the names of their real parents; for them there is no record of the truth except the blood in their veins and the unfamiliar face in the mirror. Falsification comes in the form of a certificate that lists no father, as if that were even a remote possibility. Fatherless? Really? No man reproduced to create that child? No man owes that child his support? No man is responsible for raising that child to adulthood? Why not put father unknown so that if he does ever turn up his name can be entered and he can be obligated to support his child? Why should there be a time limit for unmarried men to claim their children? How can children be adopted out from under fathers who did not know of their children until too late, why is it possible to adopt a child without the signed consent of the father and the woman who gave birth. Birth certificate falsification most often starts with the concept of a phony bastard who needs a father. Not their father mind you, because just any father will do.
Every child has a father that creates them and its him that has a duty to support his child and nobody should interfere with his performance of that duty. Oh but they do interfere and when they do the child ends up not related to the man named as father on their birth certificate. Quasi marital kids, its where the step father is named on the birth certificates of his wife's children. Quasi Marital children are not adopted by their step fathers there is no proof that their own fathers even know they exist let alone consented to allow their step father to raise them. Many people who call themselves donor conceived are just Quasi marital kids, related to the mother on their certificates but not to the father named on their certificates. There is no proof that the man that made them intended to make them, there is no signed consent to show them that their father intended to abandon them to be raised in exile from their paternal families. No proof. None at all. Willing to be known? When? 18 years after birth? A donor number? Really? How do they know for sure that donor's DNA and will match the kid holding the ticket with his number on it? What if it doesnt? What then? What if their father is another patient at the same clinic and not some altruistic baby-thander-offer? What if all the profile sheets are nothing more than creative writing by medical secretaries working their way through night school? No proof, no consent. Quasi Marital kids and phony bastards. Remember that. Those kids have no voice and they need one they've lost their father's family as well.
Anyone considering starting a family of their own using someone else's genes should understand that you cannot buy claim to someone else's child. It does not matter how early you insert yourself in the process it's not early enough to make it be you that reproduces and not them. Artificial reproduction does not make artificial children, it makes artificial parents for real children that already have parents. Remember that too. They will have a sense that they were abandoned even though they did not exist when the sperm or eggs were traded because motherhood and fatherhood for those people would not start until they were born anyway. They sign papers saying they relinquish their parental rights upon the birth of any child born of their donation. The child's parents still chose not to raise them.
There is not a man on earth that becomes a father when he deposits his sperm; it makes no difference if the deposit is made to a sperm bank or a vagina; men become fathers when their children are born. Women become mothers when their children are born. If you are related to a child as that child's parent you are that child's parent and it makes not a bit of difference what the law says or what the people raising your child think. If you are thinking of donating your eggs or your sperm remember that you would not be a parent until the birth of your child anyway. When your children are born it won't matter how they came to originate from you. A father is just as much the father of his children if they have the same mother as if they have all different mothers the tragedy is that this society does not treat the children that way.
I've seen some very happy reunions. People that called themselves donor conceived, that were really just quasi marital kids, let the donor number fall by the wayside and start refering to their donor as their father because that is what he always was. Lots of reunions turning fatherless children into the sons and daughters they are. Maybe some people search and get the door slammed in their faces I've never seen it happen. I've only seen truth bring peace. Sure over time you might not always get along but that is family. Good luck finding yours. Truth and peace that is.
It's scary to need a donor and read these stories.
My husband has a genetic condition called Klinefelters Syndrome, or XXY.
Contrary to popular belief, this does NOT make him "half female". XXY has a scale..some have worse symptoms than others. He bears none of the physical characteristics other than long arms and legs and smaller than average testicles.
Due to his parents lack of care or interest in him, it went undiagnosed until last year, after months of us trying to become pregnant. We went as fas as having both his testicles cut open and parts of them removed to see if we could find any sperm at all...there was nothing. Not even one. It broke our hearts.
Using donor sperm is our only option to become parents, to experience pregnancy and birth together. We are already on the outer in regard to being "normal" parents. I have been reading and researching for months. Reading some of these offspring stories scares the pants off me.
I understand that everyone is entitled to know their biological parent, we plan to tell our children from the beginning. He or she will know that it too 3 people to ring him/her into this world.
It scares me that our child will grow up and never know or possibly even CARE about the hell we went through, because let me tell you, it IS hell dealing with infertility. You can't know how it feels to imagine yourself dying without the chance to kiss an newborn, to change a stinky bottom, to be greeted in the morning by chubby arms around your neck. Most people have the dream to have children. Everyone wants a child for the same reasons, and they are all selfish reasons. Some people are more blessed than others with the ability to have children naturally.
I hear the argument about "Thats what nature intended for you" a lot, but please let me tell you that I am 100% healthy and fertile. I have had every test under the sun to make sure of it. Its definitely NOT what nature intended for ME.
I could walk away from my husband and fall pregnant to another man and never think about infertility again...But what sort of person would that make me? Would I be able to live with myself after that? Would I look at my future children and think, "I broke a man's heart and destroyed his soul for something that I selfishly wanted and he was interfering with that dream" ? Could I live with myself knowing I had walked away from the man I married, the one who I truly want to spend my life with because he is infertile through no fault of his own (vasectomy, drug abuse, accident), to find a fertile man who I could love, but probably always resent because I had to leave the man I married?
As a potential parent of a donor conceived child, I beg you to try to see it from a parents point of view. You are absolutely entitled to be annoyed at your parents for hiding it, for not knowing your biological parent, but please know that it can't have been an easy choice to make for them.
Happily ever after�
I found my prince charming. I waited and prayed for him for so many years, I kissed "a lot" of frogs and my heart was broken a few times but it was worth the wait. His name means "God's gracious gift," and with my faith in God I know he is. We had a perfect wedding. We live literally in a house with a white picket fence. But after year of marriage and no baby, we decided to visit the fertility clinic. Before seeing the fertility doctor we had to attend a fertility class that provided information on fertility issues. The speaker told us statistics on the percentage of couples that are infertile; I didn't think much of it, because I knew it would not be us. She (speaker) told us her story and how her infertility issues lead her to adopt a child. She gave us forms that stated which medical test I needed and which ones my husband needed. We left the meeting but we did not follow up with any of the tests. I just felt that I was under too much stress from working full time and attending school and just being a newlywed. I quit school and just enjoyed our first year of marriage.
Three other couple friends told us about their fertility issues but once again I knew it did not apply to us. They gave us their doctor's name and/or books. I thanked them and put the books in the shelf. After a 1 � of trying to conceive, using all kinds of ovulation kits, we called the doctor and made an appointment. When we met the doctor he told us how he could help us conceive, the doctor mentioned the tests I needed to undertake to see if I was able to conceive and that my husband had to simply complete a sperm analysis.
A few weeks later, while I was at work, I received a call from my husband. The news was unexpected. I didn't think it applied to us. My legs felt weak and my heart was palpitating. I felt that life was closing in on me with darkness. As I drove home to be with my husband, many thoughts raised through my mind. My faith in God was being tested, was God punishing me! My fairytale life was ending, and my hopes and dreams of being a mother were being shattered and the silly thought that I would not experience the first time of taking my child to Disneyland and seeing their joy of meeting Mickey Mouse.
I met my husband at home; we talked, cried and prayed. I dusted the fertility books from the shelf and read them all. Did I mention that my husband "really, really" wanted to be a father. After reading the books and visiting the doctor, we had only three choices one is to adopt, two is to use a donor and the third one is to live childless. The third choice was not what we wanted. The adoption was something to consider as a last resort, but for my story to continue to be "happily ever after" we decided to use a donor.
I read the pro and cons of using a donor and even read scientifically articles on the effects of children being born by donors. And what other industrial countries are doing about this issue. I have to say; I was a bit terrified by the negatives stories of donor children. But after coming across this website and reading the stories of "Donor Conceived" children and parents I decided that it is the right choice for us. I thank God for the technological advances available to us, if this were a century ago we would not have this choice. My husband and I would have lived childless.
To conclude, I recently got inseminated by using an anonymous donor. I prayed to God that I become pregnant and I look forward in being a mommy. Once again thank God for the donors, they are giving infertile couples a chance to be parents.
A happy solution
I'm a 40 year old woman who has never found the right partner. I am totally ready to have a child - but it's nearly impossible to meet guys when you already want children so much, it just scares them off. I just can't take my time in a relationship with the baby question so strong in my thoughts.
It has been like that for at least 8 years now and recently has got so strong that I have come to the conclusion that, against all my previous ideals of what my life would look like, that if I want a baby I have to focus on a baby first and a primary relationship second.
As an independent woman I am used to doing things on my own anyway, which is another predicament whenever I meet a new guy and suddenly have to get used to a new person and all that goes with them, and consider a baby as well - no wonder it's never happened and I have had so many shorter relationships that never seem to progress!
So, I have faced my reality that the baby must come first if I am going to have one at all - but how? I have learned a lot on this website, about the challenges that children of anonymous donors face not knowing their real father, being half of their identity. I thought that if I do go down that track, I would at least like to find a donor that is at least willing to meet their child at some stage, to give them that connection, and to be as honest and upfront as possible about the situation. Thanks to everyone for sharing their stories.
I then thought that maybe there's guys in my life, who may have never settled down and found their ideal relationship, that might feel a part of them is incomplete that they have never had children. Maybe we could do some co-parenting, they might play a role like seeing them on weekends or special occasions, a bit like an uncle. I would be fully responsible for the baby, but if they were willing to share their time, provide financial and / or emotional support, then they would have a more active role. I would love my baby to know their father and think if it's someone I know, I can come to a good understanding with them (legally as well if appropriate).
I would be open to a relationship as a couple only if it worked, as the priority is a harmonious relationship to suit the needs of our child. If either of us wanted to be with other people, that would be fine. I have already run this by my family and friends, and have heaps of support and willingness from them, to help me raise this child.
I think for me, my ideal relationship has a chance of coming when I have a child, and my biological clock is no longer ticking. This child will grow up knowing their father, know they were loved and wanted, and maybe be raised by my ideal partner when they appear. Either way they will be very much loved and wanted and will have great relationships around them, as there won't be pressure on these relationships to be forced to stay together for the child.
I wrote myself a wish card and put some lovely quotes and positive words on it, as well as the type of father I was seeking (someone who cares for me and respects me and would like to play this role) and displayed it on my desk.
The next day one of my male friends who I have been confiding in, in a deep conversation, said they would be the father!!!
I know he'll be a great dad and look out for both of us. He is excited too, and extremely supportive and considerate.
We are going to start trying soon. It's unconventional, but I'm extremely happy and grateful for this outcome. It feels perfect to me, I feel like I have blessed with him being sent to answer my prayers!
I share my story, as this website helped me, and I hope maybe this inspires someone else too who is seeking their own solution. With all my love, xx
The Deception
My sister had twins using donor eggs and her husband's sperm. When she called to tell me she was pregnant, she said she has been having IVF but did not tell me the eggs were from a donor. Something felt 'not quite right' about the pregnancy and I began to suspect donated eggs. My mother confirmed it was true when I spoke to her.
Watching my sister go through pregnancy with another woman's and her husband's children felt perverse and disturbing. My sister continues to deceive me and has never told me that the twins are not genetic relatives. My heart broke when I heard it was true. But even before finding out, although I had been deceived, deep down I could feel there was something wrong. The deception itself is also ineffective because it does not change the genes of the children.
My sister is not the mother of these children, no matter how mentally distressed she became by her infertility, no matter how much she loves the children, no matter how much she wants it to be true. She has taken on a mothering role, one which she will perform excellently and she will undoubtedly provide a loving home along with her husband. But still she is an impostor. I believe it is unethical to create a baby to satisfy personal desires which will then harm the child. Robbing the twins of the opportunity to be raised by their biological mother is not something I feel good about. It is like their maternal identity has been stolen and that of another grafted on. It's a poor substitute which I can't condone. And it is something those children will feel and will carry with them for their whole lives. All the parenting love in the world will not completely fill that gap that exists in them, as countless adoptees and donor-conceived people will testify.
My relationship with my sister has broken down. The glossy brochures of IVF clinics full of pictures of happy smiling babies do not want to tell you of their dirty secrets. They don't want you to know how this procedure harms existing families destroying relationships. The IVF clinic exploited my sister when she was at her most vulnerable and distressed. I would like to see donated eggs and sperm made illegal and the doctors prosecuted.
Date submitted: April 18, 2011
reproductive choice
I had myself inseminated following a very painful breakup; upon discovering allegations of incest regarding the man I was dating. Why? I'd cry tears of longing when I'd see mothers together with their children of all ages; I come from a culture in which childlessness is simply not an option, my sister 12 years my junior was pregnant. In summary I heard the clock ticking and it seemed like there were no appropriate men out there.
Once I had made the decision to inseminate, I resolved to do the best for my kid. For example, I planned never to marry if I had a girl, because I wouldn't want my girl to be exposed to a strange man. I made sure to choose an open donor.
The first time I considered going to a sperm bank I had just cried and cried. It took me months to get used to the idea and in hindsight, I never truly did- I guess I was deluding myself. As soon as I left the office after my insemination, I began crying again.
The crying lifted and I started to get excited. But when I actually discovered signs of pregnancy I was terrified. I thought of all those internet comments from bitter donor offspring, even though I had made sure to go with an open ID program which they hadn't. The two things that terrified me most were: poverty and hardship as a single parent, which I had dealt with before making the decision, but now added to that were those accusing internet donor offspring voices that might one day be pointed at me by my own child.
The next couple of weeks were torturous. I walked into 3 different abortion clinics and walked out, until I finally took that pill, and miscarried my very planned and expensive, but unwanted pregnancy a couple of days later.
I was hit with a tidal wave of grief, it felt like I was drowning. I had always pro choice, never viewed abortion as murder, especially one so early as mine when no embryo was yet visible, but never dreamed that I'd actually have an abortion myself. Not guilt, but loss. The person who I hurt was myself.
Before aborting, I figured that if I couldn't take the grief I could just go get pregnant again. But I haven't done that. I'm in limbo, can't figure out what is the right thing. Nothing has changed; not my culture, not my sister who's now pregnant again, not the biological clock. If anything, three years later, it's ticking even louder and there are even fewer men.
The only thing that makes me feel better is feeling that I did the right thing, but I don't know that that's true. Life isn't perfect for anybody. I think there's a good possibility that things would have turned out just fine for my kid, as they will if I try again.
But I'm stuck.
Date submitted: November 29, 2010
Read stories from:
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- Adoptee
- Donor/Surrogate/Birth Parent
- Fertility Industry Professional
- Parent
- Partner/Friend/Other
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- Phoney Bastards and Quasi Marital kids
- It's scary to need a donor and read these stories.
- Happily ever after�
- A happy solution
- The Deception
- reproductive choice