NPR producer Alicia Montgomery has written a thoughtful reflection at the NPR blog on our report, My Daddy’s Name is Donor. She shares her own experience growing up with a single mother, her experience as an African American woman who has been “hearing about the inevitable failure of my family and everyone in it for years,” and why she decided to have a child alone via donor insemination, in part because she felt that if, growing up, her mother “had handed me a folder and said, ‘Listen, the reason your father didn’t show up is that – before you were born or even conceived – he signed this piece of paper agreeing to have no contact with me or with you until you turned eighteen,’ that would’ve been better than what I had.” 

For me – and for so many other kids I knew whose fathers weren’t around – what did the most damage was the emotional whiplash of having your dad there one day, and gone the next.  On your 5^th birthday, he’d swoop in for a weekend of ballgames, movies, gifts and pizza, and then do nothing for your 6^th, a card for your 7^th, a gift for the 8^th, and back to nothing for the 9th.  The suspense injects a little bit of poison into every celebration, every milestone, and every holiday.

Categories: Fatherhood, Marriage, My Daddy's Name is Donor

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