Soon-to-debut FamilyScholar blogger Olivia Pratten writes:
I have been speaking out publicly about my donor conception for many years. I am always very critical of the anonymity, the means to which I was brought into the world and I’m almost always disapproving of the infertility industry.Â
Inevitably someone will say to me “but you were so wanted.”Â
My answer is always, “yes, and your point?”
To natively think that being wanted means I will not have feelings to my conception is illogical and naive. Many children conceived naturally are also very wanted. Does that mean if one of their parents decided to leave the family or if that parent became ill, that the child has no right to have feelings about this?
Of course not. Our existence of being wanted in the world is completely irrelevant to our experience of BEING in the world.Â
Anyway, usually the unspoken inference of being  told we’re “wanted,” is that we’re supposed to be so grateful to the point we’re expected to be silent.Â
Which begs the question, why are we expected to be a happy and silent? When the parents using the technologies are called the “consumers,” that means the resulting children are the “products.” The industry is selling a product that is supposed to be happy, content and grateful. Thus, when the “product” speaks and voices displeasure, it’s threatening, because we’re evidence that there’s no guarantee we’ll arrive happy and grateful as promoted and promised by the infertility industry. Â
Categories: My Daddy's Name is Donor, Reproductive Technologies
I agree with you Olivia that being “wanted” goes no way to defending donor-conception.
But actually you and I *weren’t* wanted. Only a woman who has a child with a man she knows can say that she wanted that baby. That is, she wanted to raise the human being who was the result of a union between her and him.
You and I, as donor-conceived people, were *not* wanted.
What was wanted was any baby, from any man, more or less regardless of who that man was, and which of his trait you and I would inherit.
Hi.
I’m a gay man who has had a child, with my partner of 8 years, through surrogacy and egg donation. The egg donor and surrogate will be known to our son.
One way that I explain to people our experience with the artificial reproduction process is that it is the opposite of being ‘knocked-up’. We were very involved in the planning and conception and the growth and birth of our child. Our child’s conception and birth was considered, thought about, planned for, dreamed about, fantasized about. He was most definitely wanted. He is loved and treasured.
We did not have sex to have our child. We did not have wedded, heterosexual, within marriage, we-want-to-have-a-child-sex. We did not have wedded, passionate, spur-of-the-moment at the wrong time of the month (or the wrong time of our life) sex. We did not have wedded, spur-of-the-moment, right time of the month sex. We did not have any of these types heterosexual sex as unmarried heterosexuals.
But so many children are born to heterosexual couples via each of these eight scenarios. So many. Many more, around the world are born in wider range of unloving scenarios.
I can’t help you address your own feelings. I do not expect that you (or my child) will feel grateful for the gift of life because you were conceived a certain way. If you did feel grateful about all the circumstances in your life, I would say you are quite unusual. As is the case with many people, I’m not always sure what I believe and I have to remind myself to humbly respect others’ points of view.
I do believe you should speak your displeasure, your discomfort and your concerns. And I will encourage my child, to best of my ability, to do the same. I think you (and my child) have the right to feelings.
But, your feelings are not necessarily other people’s feelings. They may be the feelings, incarnate, of a class of individuals that have been given voice in the survey recently published by your colleagues. They may be feelings that when well-expressed, are a way of promoting a well-balanced debate about how a society should recognize or ‘allow’ families to form.
But, please remember one thing: your experience is one of many. In a debate about whether the intention and context of the conception of a child is relevant to the lived, real life of other persons, consider the many ways children are conceived, the many scenarios given for heterosexual conception above. My guess: not all of the children conceived in those situations are feeling love, their parent’s love, in a measurably better way than you are.
Best,
T
T, just because many people are born in less than ideal circumstances does not justify creating more people in less than ideal circumstances.
Let’s be very clear about this: to be donor-conceived is to be placed in a highly compromised position in terms of emotional well-being.
Tom,
My initial though is that we are all born in less than ideal circumstances. For example, being a child of a donor is less than ideal for many people. But being a child of a divorced family is less than ideal too. Being born in a poor family is less than ideal. And each of these situations can be highly compromised.
Societies can do more to encourage good child-rearing and family-making choices…It can encourage people to not get married so early, since age of partners is a significant predictor of divorce. And, society should do more to make sure that people don’t live beyond their means and that there is more economic justice because economic stress is a major factor in divorce. But that doesn’t mean that people should have a certain income level or a certain education lever before being allowed to get married. It doesn’t mean that we should or can avoid deeply felt pain of living in a divorced family by outlawing any marriage, gay or straight, if the engaged are under the age of 30.
I don’t believe that these restrictions should exist because they will not work. But I do believe that we should do all we can to help people manage and even thrive despite their less than ideal circumstances.
With child-rearing, as with marriage-making, you need to work hard to make it work. You need to be humbly optimistic that it will work out, that you will not be predicting, before it starts, a compromised situation and that some way, you’ll be able to help the ones that you love, get the love that they need.
Best,
T
Sorry T, you’re kidding yourself if you think that being the child of parents of the “wrong age”, or of parents who divorce is anything like the tragedy of being intentionally separated from one of your parents.
[...] this post, commenter “T” responds to donor offspring Tom by writing: I’m a gay man who has had [...]
@Olivia
Perhaps it is odd, but as a child of adoption I also react strongly to the “wanted” statement. I suppose that being wanted is better than being unwanted, but my reaction is also “yes, and your point?”.
I resent my existence and my placing with a family being commoditized and that my being in the family is more about completing them or fulfilling their hopes and plans than it is about life. I think that you can be unwanted, but still accepted. I think that you can be greatly “wanted”, but still be subtly unaccepted because the connection (biological or otherwise) just isn’t there.
I look forward to reading more of your articles.