In an article in Slate, the practice of using donor sperm to conceive is coming under scrutiny as more donor-conceived children reach adulthood. Many of them, it turns out, are not all that happy about not knowing who their father is:
Others speak of the searching for their biological father in crowds, wondering if a man who resembles them could be “the one.” One donor-conceived adult responded to an open-ended question on our survey by writing: “Sometimes I wonder if my father is standing right in front of me.” Still others speak of complicated emotional journeys and lost or damaged relationships with their families when they grow up. One wrote at the end of our survey: “I still have issues with this problem and am seeking professional help. It has helped me to become a stronger person but has scarred me emotionally.” Another said, “[I am] currently not on seeing or speaking terms with family because of this.”
Listening to the stories of donor-conceived adults, you begin to realize there’s really no such thing as a “donor.” Every child has a biological father. To claim otherwise is simply to compound the pain, first as these young people struggle with the original, deliberate loss of their biological father, and second as they do so within a culture that insists some guy who went into a room with a dirty magazine isn’t a father. At most the children are told he’s a “seed provider” or “the nice guy who gave me what I needed to have you” or the “Y Guy” or any number of other cute euphemisms that signal powerfully to children that this man should be of little, if any, importance to them.
I always thought this would happen eventually. I’ve known a few women who have conceived with donor sperm, and I sometimes wondered whether these women were really suited to motherhood after all. It may be that many of the problems donor-conceived children report are tied to having somewhat dysfunctional mothers, but one cannot discount the fundamental human desire to know one’s origins.
Human religion, culture and art have all been deeply preoccupied with our origins from the beginning, and it must be deeply disturbing to a number of people to have no idea who their fathers are.
Our society has become so radically dismissive of the importance of fatherhood that it may seem absurd to many people that biological fatherhood could matter at all, but the experiences of these children quite clearly suggest that it does matter very much.
