At AnonymousUs.org, new stories from donor conceived persons have been posted. This one from a 31 year old mother of three who says about her sperm donor biological father:

…I want to see a picture of him. I want to know if I have his laugh. I want to know those kinds of things. I don’t want to be his best friend. I’m not looking for a new daddy. I just want to know where I come from. I think that is fair. Adopted children get to find out someday. Why don’t donor conceived children ever get to find out? It makes me sad to know that I will never know. For 19 years I have tried to come to terms with the fact that I will never know, but still, there is a hole that can never be filled.

And this one titled “Growing Up Without a Father“:

When I was young I would create elaborate stories of who my father was. My friends would ask me about him and I would say he died before I was born. There was a series of pictures in our hallway that had a sailboat tipping over and half a dozen men falling overboard. I chose the man with a full beard in a long yellow rain jacket. I said that was my father and the picture was of how he died.

When I was in kindergarten we had to create a poster of who we were. We were supposed to talk about our favorite color, sport, food, and our family. After I presented my project a kid asked me why I didn’t have a picture of my father on my poster. The teacher quickly changed the subject and I went back to my desk thinking for the first time ever, why don’t i have a father? That kid was the first of many questions to come. To this day people still ask about my dad. I tell them and say that I don’t have one. Most people get a confused look on their face and move on, but some go on to ask what had happened. I just say that he died, to save myself the breath and to satisfy their intrusive curiosity…

Categories: Fatherhood, The Future of Parenthood

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