This is so incredibly sad. At this point in my life, I empathize with the involuntary donor quite a bit. While the author might not understand his position not wanting her to have any contact with him or his family, I certainly do.
It's clear this doctor has a pattern of deceptive behavior beyond merely his practice. It's also clear that if one doctor does it, someone else has or will. I wonder how the medical board can better filter out chronic deceivers or at least better regulate it.
Can you explain that in more detail? Because I don't understand it at all.
If somehow it turned out I have other children, I'd love to know how they're doing and if they're similar to me or my kid. A personal data point on the nature vs nurture debate!
I can understand not wanting additional financial responsibilities - but that can't be the worry here, the author is in her 30s.
I think people with families can be incredibly protective of it and anything that may create emotional upheaval in it. If I were in his situation, I'd be thinking more about how this might impact my wife or children. Depending on upbringing and religion, I can see it being immensely traumatic for the rest of the family. I'd care more about protecting that stability than satisfying my or my donor child's curiosity. You can say that family would be wrong, but sometimes being right isn't the most important thing in a marriage or in parenting.
Imagine this story if it didn't happen through artificial insemination but through, say, an ex-girlfriend who didn't reveal the pregnancy until the child was in adulthood. That literally happened to a friend of mine. While the father had no control over what happened, it was immensely disruptive to his family. To them, it was a lot like discovering he had a second family...cue the thoughts on if you'll be loved less, etc. While you can say there's a world of difference between the two, the emotional journey for the family can end up looking very similar. Again, it isn't fair, but anything emotionally charged like this isn't.
I'm not saying it's necessarily what I'd do, but I understand.
I'm still not grokking the trauma. It's a cliche, but impregnating someone doesn't make you a parent, in the sense that's relevant to your comment. It's investing the time, attention, emotional and financial resources that grants one that status.
If I learned that my dad was not actually traveling on business but instead tending to his alternate family, that would be sad. If I learned that he had biological offspring that he had no material (otherwise) connection with/to, I'd simply shrug.
If "impregnating someone doesn't make you a parent" then why does the author even want contact with her biological father? There is zero rational reason for them to have contact or a relationship except that she clearly does want one. I don't blame him for not wanting a random new family member.
It's perfectly rational to want to make contact with the person you inherited half your DNA from. I don't get from the article that the author was necessarily seeking a long-term, or otherwise deep relationship with their biological father.
I think it's perfectly understandable to want to make contact with him, but not necessarily rational.
If she doesn't want a relationship with him, why is she trying to make contact? (He's already given her medical info.) It's rather clear she does expect a relationship of some sort.
Either scenario is plausible. She may want nothing more than to spend no more than 2 hours over coffee learning about him. Or, she may want to kindle a long-term relationship. The author doesn't give us enough details to know one way or the other.
Dude's seed was stolen, he wasn't a donor, he paid to have it stored for future use. When he tried to use what was left it failed. So I cut the guy a break on this, he never consented to either sex nor was he a donor. I'd like to think I'd want to speak to her, but I haven't gone through any of that process.
I think the failure to grok stems from you imagining yourself in this position and thinking about how you'd feel instead of imagining other kinds of people and how they'd feel.
If it helps, women tend to think about parenthood differently by nature...probably because their involvement in the act includes giving birth. A woman would likely find it more difficult to maintain that "sperm donor" separation. If the wife of the man is that kind of person, they might find it very hard to imagine the man maintaining separation (much the way you find it hard to imagine not maintaining it).
Even meeting once is spending time, attention, and emotional resources. And for the family, even that little bit can be the seed of questions of whether one meeting means there will be more. If I were in the man's position, it wouldn't be worth distress I'd cause. Better to have none than one.
However, we're getting into increasingly hypothetical territory. We're doing a lot to assume emotions and motivations on people and assessing their validity. Valid or not, I do see a world where I'd make the same choice this man made, and I wish them the best for it.
Very few emotional responses are rational, and I'd hardly call any sort of reaction to this universal.
in a more precarious manner, our legal systems were not well updated to deal with IVF. Some states do not explicitly protect donors from being sued for child support. And even worse if the child was actually conceived.
In any place where fertility treatments include using donor sperm or eggs, this is a non-issue. Legally, your parents are the people written on your birth certificate.
I'm come with a feature of skipping all the other stages, straight from news to acceptance. Let other people have denial, bargain, anger, etc.
I'm more like "huh, how about that, humans have a track record of doing things like that or being involved in things like that"
If I found out I had a different parent, or a different sibling, I've already acknowledged the possibility of this. It happens. Now, we've all even read this article, now we all know "it happens". Meh. Moving on. Nice parlor talk if I want to shake up a conversation.
I think you and others implied a value judgement that I didn't make. I think some people are searching for a Truth that will make it all make sense, and others have found a truth that works well enough for them, and they don't want to shake it up. I've been on both sides of the coin myself.
Yeah, I completely sympathize with the donor. He didn't want this child and should not be forced to add another family member because the author (selfishly) wants contact with her father.
The author is also clearly in denial. If she "didn’t care about finding [her] biological father" she wouldn't have put tremendous effort into it (including writing this article).
I’m assuming you had the privilege of knowing your biological family, in which case it can be difficult to fully understand one’s motivation behind attempting to locate them.
“Anonymous” sperm and egg donors that are able to be found and contacted at least they knew they what they were signing up for in that 3rd parties would be using their gametes to have their own children. In this case, someone who had banked sperm for their use in the future only had it instead used in this situation.
This article brings attention to the dismal state of the fertility industry that has no professional accountability despite providing services to create new life. It is rather insensitive to trivialize what this person is feeling by calling her selfish for wanting to know who her father is as if it’s some luxury and lacking in empathy to dismiss these feelings by simply stating she is in denial. In addition to the trauma caused by learning that she was donor conceived, learning that clinic royally fucked up has robbed her of the opportunity to establish contact with her biological family due to the situation the clinic put her in.
It's clear this doctor has a pattern of deceptive behavior beyond merely his practice. It's also clear that if one doctor does it, someone else has or will. I wonder how the medical board can better filter out chronic deceivers or at least better regulate it.