Susan Timoney of the Archdiocese of Washington has a lovely reflection on My Daddy’s Name is Donor. It opens:
One of my favorite stages in the lives of my nieces and nephews is when they start putting the family connections together. That “Grand pop” is Dad’s father, that I and their dad are siblings who were once little kids. Of course, they find these ideas to be some of the craziest things they ever heard. Imagine, “dad” as a little kid! For days they will announce each relationship. The phone rings and they say “Dad, it’s your sister, Aunt Susan,” or they will ask someone who walks into the gathering, “Hey, did you know that when Mom was little, her mother was Grand mom?” They love tracing all of the relationships and it inevitably leads to questions about where we grew-up, where we went to school, who else is related to us. At some point, out comes the photo album and we marvel at how much Grand pop, when he was 12 looks like Daniel who is about to be twelve. It is these conversations that help a child find their place in the world; feel connected to a group of people who have influenced and them in ways that can’t always be seen.
My seven year old is doing exactly this, right now. And it is so moving and I find myself thinking often of the people I know who can’t have these conversations with the parents who raised or are raising them.
Categories: My Daddy's Name is Donor
Maybe one way to talk about this (one way) is to help those of us raising kids through gamete donation do better than perhaps some before us in how our kids learn and understand their origins in their journey to adulthood. The experiences of donor-conceived children and their parents before us, both good and bad, are vital for this. I can’t imagine that most parents of donor-conceived kids don’t think about these issues and understand, at least to some degree, how important they are.
I think this communication and dialogue is separate from differing views about to whether gamete donation should be more regulated, discouraged/encouraged, or eliminated.