Birth Moms & Donor Dads...

Popular Mechanics lists the 25 things men need to know and of course fatherhood isn't even on the list. I guess they do that by instinct?

The agony of the broken connection of birth mothers and children would be different than sperm dads who purposly set out to be fathers without connections. Or is it? Technology is making things more complicated in other ways. Stories of parents learning on the playground that their children are related - they share the same sperm donor and tales of grown children trying to track down sperm fathers to figure out their personal identity puzzle.  An article defining sperm fathers asks,"For at least a decade, there has been growing national concern about the trend of "father absence." Men who abandon their biological children are now subject to DNA testing, child support orders, even jail time. They are stigmatized as "dead-beat dads." How then can we explain the glorification of the "donor dad"--the most absent of all absent fathers?"

I think we all need to know what makes us....us.

Two summers ago a scandal was rocking our high school alumni.  Someone had hacked into the site and was calling people in order to try to find the birth mother for her nephew. I'll call her Mrs. T.  She reached me by email and said my name had been given to her as someone who kept up with a lot of people and might be able to help her.  Many people were aghast and worried that a scandal might hurt a mother who had tried to keep this buried in her past.  Apparently she had contacted many others before she reached out to me. Pregnancy (then) was something that was hidden, absolutely, or newly eviscerated with legal abortions.  Lots of things in 1972 were secret with a capital S, or just NOT TALKED about. Mrs. T. stirred up the rumor mills.

I encouraged Mrs. T. to use other methods to find out these long-hidden secrets.  I had helped my adopted aunt unseal her birth records in the mid 1990s so I passed on the name of the attorney we had used.  I sent Mrs. T. the name of the woman who's business it is to connect birth parents and children. My sister-in-law tracked down her birth mother with the aid of that professional assistant. Mrs. T. was concerned especially about any medical history knowledge that would help her nephew who was facing health issues.

The agony of unknown identity and the agony of birth mothers has been something the internet has helped.  These experiences are so personal that the telling of them online, especially in communities that link others can be healing. What pain is there with these issues of connections that aren't?  Stories are being told and culturally we are informing ourselves in the process.  One story of a birth mother wrenched my heart recently... she wrote on her blog called Writing My  Wrongs, "Losing my daughter required me to lose not only her but the person I was then and the person I was intended to be. I lost my family, was estranged from them for years, I lost the love of my life, I lost my home. I had no where to live. Losing her was not the end of any so called journey. It was just the beginning. It was a road to hell."

Over a year later Mrs. T. called me back to tell me they had discovered the birth parents, finally.  The birth father had died and his parents had no living descendants.  They were elated to establish a relationship.  Her nephew's puzzle of the self was falling into place, new piece by new piece. A NYTimes article on adoption notes a 20-year study that found  "birth mothers in open adoptions experienced less adoption-related grief than those in closed adoptions. And all of the adopted teenagers in the study who had continuing, in-person contact with their birth families wanted those relationships to continue."

One adoptee who blogs a lot about adoption from her viewpoint has put together this video as part of a contest relating to adoption:

Thanks to Jill for the list of the things men need to know. Connections are the fabric of life.  Do the tears and frays and holes bother you as they do me? Families and blood connections aren't always the best relationships to hold onto and other relationships can be more significant life-blood but knowing.... just knowing those biological connections makes life ____________?

Comments

[carron hardin]

I have an adopted daughter, and from the beginning, offered to take her to find her biological mother in another country. She would say, she had no interest in that and that I was her mother. She did, and does, have interest in a brother and sister who were adopted and are in yet a third different country. She holds on to a tiny framed photo of them that I gave her. But, somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she has no interest in the parents who abandoned her. Too painful to examine, I suspect. I, on the other hand, devour information on my large, and already discovered and documented, geneological background. Knowing about "my people" helps me understand our family and who we are. And, like alot of families, our family has it "colorful characters", as my grandmother used to say. Regarding sperm donors...that's a tough one. They make it possible for women to conceive who might not do so otherwise. Are they any different from a one night stand with a random person met in a bar? I think so. They are donating, knowing what the outcome will hopefully be. Also, they do it for money. Not to spread their seed, so to speak. They usually have them fill out extensive medical background information for the recipients. I worked with a 37 year old girl who had no boyfriend and wanted to have a child and did a donor. She felt like it was safer. But then you have the situation where you need a bone marrow donor. Maybe that should be asked before men donate. I am in favor of open adoption records. To be available to adoptees after the age of 25. Babies out of wedlock, are not such an issue as they were 50 years ago. The times they are a changin'.

[Old Horsetail Snake]

Informative and thoughtful, Ms. Pie. Gave me lots of room for thought. And changing of mind.

[joared]

I think there is a vacuum for children who don't know either or both of their parents that leaves them with an empty spot in their gut no one can fill -- a feeling that surfaces throughout their life from time to time.

Why do we have children? To selfishly satisfy our own wants and needs? I'm not so sure sperm donors are taking such a noble action as many might like to believe they are.

[Kathy]

I think my husband knows how to do about 7 things on that list, but the things that aren't on that list matter much, much more.

[Claude]

In this country, sperm donors donate their sperm for free. The whole thing is quite regulated. Only men who have a family can donate, as a gift from a family to another family, thus enabling a childless family to have a child. Their identity remain a secret.
If it wasn't a secret, I doubt that those men would agree to donate sperm any more.
It's money that makes everything wrong.

[Anonymous]

My two granddaughters have the same sperm donor and therefore are full siblings. According to the rules of the sperm bank my daughter used, at age 18 the eldest daughter will be able to contact the donor, who can establish a relationship with her and her sister if he wishes to.
As well, recipients have set up a web site that makes it possible for mothers who have used the same donor to contact each other. My granddaughters have at least four half siblings living all over the Western U.S. They may plan a get-together some time.