The family reunion has gone and past and I’m back in Brooklyn, trying to make sense of my time there. This trip was particularly stressful because I decided that I was going to finally tell my mom about all the work I’ve been doing in opposition to commercial conception. She knows that I’ve spent the last year and a half writing the script and assembling a team for a film about my sperm-donor father. She didn’t know it was critical of her decision to have me this way. She didn’t know I was blogging and interviewing about it. The conversation didn’t go so well.
Ten years ago my mom’s best friend died. His name was Gary. Gary married his high-school sweetheart and eventually had two beautiful children with her that they raised on a gorgeous, 1,000 acre farm he inherited from his family in central Missouri. Four years after the birth of his second child, Gary was diagnosed with terminal cancer. It was only a matter of time. In order to imprint lasting memories in the kids’ heads Gary and his wife planned a string of family vacations to exciting places like California and Montana and Disney World. Everyone agreed and understood that Gary’s death was an incredible tragedy for his entire family, especially the kids. The entire community pitched in to help raise those kids. It was a palpable loss for anyone and everyone tied to him.
This trip, we went to go visit Gary’s family, as we always do when we’re in Missouri. I love his kids as much as I love my own cousins. I have almost as many memories playing as a child on his farm as I do at my own grandparent’s. On my second-to-last night in Missouri I had dinner with Gary’s family, my mom, step-dad, and little brother. Above the dining room table there is a big portrait of Gary, thinner than he was known for because the cancer was starting to eat away at him. Gary is the first thing you see when you walk in the house. He observes his family as they eat with him every night for supper.
His daughter, now 17, wanted to take me on a drive around the town. We went to her high-school, the same one my mom went to. We went to the 4H building where she dedicates most of her time, butchering livestock and planting crops. It’s where she finds her “sanity”, she says. Then finally we went to Gary’s grave-site. Ten years ago I remember coming to this same spot and putting Gary in the grave. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mom cry so hard. “Those kids…” she kept saying. “Those kids are gonna miss out on the most amazing man…”
On Gary’s tombstone an artist rendered different graphics of his favorite things: his big rig truck he used to tow cattle all across the country in, his farm, and portraits of his wife and children. Tombstones rarely allow for extensive prose- the short, sweet quote Gary and his family chose to emboss in stone, forever to characterize his values was “The greatest gift we ever had came from God. We call them ‘mom’ and ‘dad’.”
The next day I decided to tell my mom about my blogging. I decided to explain to her how extensively I plan on combating commercial conception. “I want to prepare you. People will be asking me about you and our relationship and I want to be respectful of your privacy, but I also need to communicate the human story behind all of this so people understand the gravity of emotions involved.” She became upset. She wanted to know what I’d be saying about her. I described as calmly as I could the specific character traits I found in her that qualify her as a typical donor kid mom, and why they’re problematic. What came next was a wave of anger and threats with little to no understanding. “So you’re saying you wish you’d never been born?” she cried. “Well, not exactly. I’m saying this was a hugely unjust method of bringing me into the world and I don’t think either one of us got the family we really needed.” I told her I need to get personal and share my story because the fertility industry is selling egg and sperm as fake cures for baby cravings and there are some daunting correlative repercussions that aren’t being talked about. Parents are getting suckered. Kids are getting spiritually hijacked.
“You’re focusing way too much on the DNA,” she said, “It’s really not that important.” I asked her, “So you’re saying my biological father isn’t important?” “Yes,” she said. “He’s not important.” This was said right in front of my ten year old brother and my step-dad. Two men, one at the onset of a developing sense of masculinity. I thought about Gary and his tomb. And all the contradictions…
I left Missouri with the understanding that my decision to pursue a future in activism against donor conception will directly hinder my relationship with my mother. So effectively, by continuing to be a blogger and a filmmaker and a speaker, I am sacrificing the only real parent I’ve ever had.
I worry because I desperately seek an end to these practices, but those of us best suited to fight the beast of the fertility industry are obligated to go at it alone, as wounded animals, dependent on our enemy, trying our best to fight our nemesis, all while we suckle it for nourishment.
“I need you to understand my loss,” I said to my mom. “I need you to recognize that I’ve been mourning my father for years now completely alone.” “What loss?” she said. “You have a father.”
The problem with that is my “father” keeps changing every time my mom gets remarried. And the men she fashions this title to are more interested in being her husband than in being my parent. I do in fact, have a father. But he wasn’t very interested in being my dad either, as his actions clearly defined.
Categories: General
Alana, thanks for writing this. It clearly articulates the tension that many of us feel as donor conceived people when we talk with our mothers about this.
““So you’re saying my biological father isn’t important?” “Yes,” she said. “He’s not important.” This was said right in front of my ten year old brother and my step-dad. Two men, one at the onset of a developing sense of masculinity. I thought about Gary and his tomb. And all the contradictions…”
Stabbing the heart of the matter. Right there it is. That’s it, in my opinion.
I forget, was your mom a lesbian at the time she conceived you with donor sperm? Was she married to an infertile man? Or just single? This was right around the time of the Murphy Brown-Dan Quayle dust-up, am I right? I wonder how many people thought that obviously the smart and successful and honorable Murphy Brown was smarter and more enlightened and more correct than the idiot Dan Quayle, and that was all people needed to know to form their opinion on single moms by choice.
I am glad you are sharing your feelings in front of your step-brother, so he doesn’t just get the media’s message like your mom probably did. He will remember what you said and it will give him a reservoir of strength and dignity and manliness that will easily repel the thousands of slights he’ll feel from everyone else.
Oh dear, before this discussion goes off in its usual directions, I just wanted to say thank you and good luck. I am too much of a cynic to ever under-estimate human’s capacity for maintaining contradictory ideas over time, but give your Mom a chance. I know from personal experience that it can take some time and several missed opportunities to come around. She may not, but she might once she’s had a chance to mull it over (and it might take years).
Also from personal experience and I am still not sure that I can articulate this, while you are out talking about your family, try as hard as you can not to treat her as a straw man or a totem of “The DC Parent” instead of as a person even if her behavior is typical. You might be correct, but is that how you would choose to get treated? Does that make any sense? …and… I have learned that de-humanizing your family can be a turn off for people you might want to be in your family.
Finally, I agree with Elizabeth that the quote she picked is central. Still, it is worth remembering that ‘important’ doesn’t (practically-speaking) mean anything unless you specify to whom. I cannot count the number of arguments that I didn’t have to have with my family if I had kept this in mind. Your father is important *to you* and that is enough. Getting someone else to acknowledge that he is important to you, is no guarantee that he will then be important to them and you will have gone through all of this stress for what seems in retrospect to be kinda of a Pyrrhic victory. On the other hand, that’s me.. and round and round.
I’m just going to go back to good luck.
Thank you.
Hernan: Bravo!
Alana,
You are a gifted writer. Insightful and thought provoking.
And yes to what Hernan said.
mom was married to infertile man, john.
and yea… i’m worried about my half-brother being raised by a misandrist for sure.
Thanks Hernan.
Yea, deciding what details to pick out when attempting to characterize Mom is tough. She’s the most important woman in the world to me and I’ve loved her perfectly and loyally for years up until some of these realizations.
But her faults are consistent with a lot of baby-boomer faults and some of our American ideals that have infused her fiber are the very ideals that make disposable fathers so plausible.
i think i did it right in the movie script. i think the love and the criticism are both there.
Did some hard-hitting research, found that Murphy Brown was probably a few years after you were born, and she actually wasn’t a single mom by choice but was abandoned by a boyfriend she’d been having sex with. But still, I think there was an attitude back then that she should be celebrated for not being dependant on a man, least of all the child’s father, just because she wanted to be a mom, even if the actual character was much more sanguine about it. And that attitude predated the show’s sly celebration of it.
i totally get wanting to be a mom and not wanting to be a wife.
however…
the murphy browns of the world have too much on their plate and spirituality trails far behind in their tool-belt of skills.
immortality blesses those that learn to cooperate.
Alana: “immortality blesses those that learn to cooperate.” Huh? What nonsense. For a good writer, you certainly have lapses. This sentence is utterly incomprehensible, and I think if I understood it I would throw up.
@Jay, please adhere to our Comments policy:
“Bloggers and commenters: be rigorous, be powerful, be funny, but don’t be mean.”
that was a 5 am comment after a birthday party.
It was in reference to something I read about how children are the closest thing we have to immortality.
Your genes can continue forever if you raise healthy kids that go on to raise healthy kids that go on to…
let’s duke it out another day, I’m officially 24!
Alana, everyone is entitled to a 5 a.m. moment. But you are too excellent a writer to lapse into sentimental twaddle, especially when it doesn’t really even say what you intend. I have enjoyed your posts and don’t want to duke it out with you: I think you write your truth and you do so without trying to hurt other people.
Oh, Alana. Happy Birthday!
Thank you! I’m going to the beach!
Polly should be delighted by that one…
Yes I am delighted for you Alana!
Am reading this on a chilly morning in the small but beautiful Australian country town, Beechworth. Haven’t been able to keep up with FS posts for a week or so…and was missing this wonderful conversation with others so far away.
Alana, your disclosure to your mother of you TRUE feelings about the manner of your conception, reminded me of my first conversation with my adoptive mother (when I was about 23), saying that I very much needed to know the identity of my first (genealogical) parents.
She was shocked; distressed (I had to support her emotionally; much reassurance that she would always be my mother; etc). Over the years we would sometimes revisit the subject of my need to know my birth origins; she gradually became less threatened and understanding of my feelings.
It’s a long long story….but many decades later she met my other mother; they subsequently corresponded over the years and I hope each found some peace and comfort from knowing each other.
I know DC mothers and fathers who have a deep understanding of the importance for their children to have a whole sense of identity; and who now comprehend the difficulties that DC has brought to the lives of their children.
I hope your brave efforts (and those of other DC persons) is the beginning of a new understanding throughout the world that all members of the human family need to know and connect with their kin.
[...] S, who blogs at the Family Scholars blog offers this testimony about some of the ambiguities, complications and stresses of being a [...]
Have you seen the film (in theatres now) “The Kids Are All Right”? It deals with a lot of the complexities of what you’re going thru and it’s a really amazing and heartfelt story. I saw it recently and think it may help.
Alana, after reading your story, what I see is someone very hurt by the actions of her mother and a multitude of disappointing father figures, and who is acting out that resentment by focusing on the fertility industry as the enemy. I hope you can work through your family issues, and some day understand that sperm and egg donation is probably not what’s at fault here. I doubt your feelings would have spurred you to these actions were it not for such a dysfunctional family (apart from your sperm donor) that you’ve grown up in.
Best to you in the future –
Hi Ralph,
I wouldn’t qualify my family as particularly dysfunctional.
I think it is a faulty structure that comes with unique problems, of which there are *FEW* tools for parents to overcome.
The issues I faced are predictable and formulaic based off of predictable types of human motivations.
I am not unique in this. I am only unique in my ambition to talk about it.
Alana,
I agree with Ralph’s main premise, which is that if your mom had fewer ‘issues’ with men who became your step-fathers, then you’d lave less ‘issues’ with your upbringing. I’m not suggesting that your family is any more or less dysfunctional than any other family in the US, but I am thinking that your feelings about your current situation would be different if your ‘sperm donor’ was one of the men that your mom dated, lived with or married.
Let’s do a thought experiment, a bit of envisioning about what might have been… In stead of reflecting on the past and thinking about a future that perhaps your biological father might have given you, think about what the adults in your life, at different phases of your childhood, might have given you.
Sure, your bio-father might have given you stability, right? On the other hand, there are plenty of bio fathers (and step fathers, and boyfriends of mothers) that skip out..
Perhaps a bio-father, in a solid relationship with a mother (perhaps your mother), would be a better male role models. Right? Or, your mom (or any woman having a child) might choose a difficult man… Chemistry in relationships being what they are, some men are more likeable, better people, more charitable, better role models. People build relationships together….
Perhaps you would have received, in another alternate scenario, the love that some people get from a stable man in a good relationship with a stable woman… right? But two adults form the grown-up part of a family. And sometime adults, whether they conceive via the fertility industry or not, aren’t very good at relationships…
While you could focus on your mom’s mistakes, especially her “BIG” mistake to conceive you via assisted fertility, you might also focus on normal teen and twenty something stuff, like the fact that your parents are imperfect. That they make good and bad decisions, about love, about relationships, about where to live, about schools their kids attend and about their kids. As get older and move from twenties to thirties, you might start making some of your own decisions about these things and forming your own opinions.
But please don’t locate all your issues (very normal, young adult issues) with the upbringing you had on your mom’s choice to have a child by donor..
Rather than working tirelessly to affect an industry that helps a lot of people create solid, loving families (and a lot of weak, less than loving families too), it might be helpful to separate out what is sperm-donor related and what might be related to the dynamics of your family.
Think about what you love about your mom and stepdad(s) and about your mom’s personality, and her upbringing and her parents, and her relationship with your first step dad and your second step dad and your third step dad and any other boyfriends she might have had. And think about the pluses and the minuses and the complexity there. And you might find
Sorry, here’s my properly edited note:
Alana,
I agree with Ralph’s main premise, which is that if your mom had fewer ‘issues’ with the men who became your step-fathers, then you’d have less ‘issues’ with your upbringing and that these issues are affecting your advocacy against sperm donation. I’m not suggesting that your family is any more or less dysfunctional than any other family in the US, but I am thinking that your feelings about your current situation would be different if your ‘sperm donor’ was one of the men that your mom dated, lived with or married. Because he’s not, you get to fantasize or envision alternate possibilities that might not have been or might be.
Let’s do a thought experiment, a bit of envisioning about what might have been… Instead of reflecting on the past and thinking about a future that perhaps your biological father might have given you, think about what the adults in your life, at different phases of your childhood, might have given you.
Sure, your bio-father might have given you stability, right? On the other hand, there are plenty of bio-fathers (and step fathers, and boyfriends of mothers) that skip out..
Perhaps a bio-father, in a solid relationship with a mother (perhaps your mother), would be a better male role models. Right? Or, your mom (or any woman having a child) might choose a difficult man… or a series of difficult men. Chemistry in relationships being what they are, some men are more likeable, better people, more charitable, better role models, better father figures. But your mom and these men build relationships together… And, perhaps you would have had these same issues if she got pregnant with one of them and he was around and he was know to you..
Perhaps you would have received, in another alternate scenario, the love that some people get from a stable man in a good relationship with a stable woman… right? But sometime adults, whether they conceive via the fertility industry or not, aren’t very good at relationships… They’re not fantasy-stable. They’re just people.
While you could focus on your mom’s mistakes, especially her “BIG” mistake to conceive you via assisted fertility, you might also focus on normal teen and twenty-something stuff, like the fact that the adults in your life are imperfect. And that parents make good and bad decisions, about love, about relationships, about where to live, about all sorts of stuff related to themselves and their children.
But please don’t locate all your issues (very normal, young adult issues) with the upbringing you had on your mom’s choice to have a child by donor..
Rather than working tirelessly to affect an industry that helps a lot of people create solid, loving families (and a lot of weak, less than loving families too), it might be helpful to separate out what is sperm-donor related and what might be related to the dynamics of your family.
Think about what you love about your mom and stepdad(s) and about your mom’s personality, and her upbringing and her parents, and her relationship with your first step dad and your second step dad and your third step dad and any other boyfriends she might have had. And think about the pluses and the minuses and the complexity there. And you might find your stuff doesn’t come from being a child conceived by sperm donation, but from a young woman struggling to figure out what she likes and what she doesn’t like about her upbringing.
Best,
Tom