Now, anonymity is being turned on its head. This week saw the launch of the first-ever online story collective for donor conceived persons and others involved in reproductive technologies. AnonymousUs.org allows persons conceived through sperm donation and similar practices to tell their stories anonymously, without fear of hurting their parents, getting flamed on the Internet, or having to go on record about intimate details of their lives. The brainchild of donor-conceived activist Alana S. (who is also a blogger at the site I edit, FamilyScholars.org), AnonymousUs.org is already filled with powerful stories from donor conceived persons, donors, legal parents, adoptees, and others whose lives have intersected with these technologies….
If hackers and the forces of Wikileaks can bust through Pentagon files and bring truth and transparency to the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and numerous other hot bed issues- what else can it bring truth and transparency to?
I am following Olivia Pratten’s case in Canada over the legality of hiding or destroying documents that identify the biological parents of children born via sperm & egg donation. Read here. If you check out the comments section, you might notice the bulk of the attitude may be paraphrased as: Your donor chose to remain anonymous for a reason. How dare you sabotage his privacy …brat.
The public consensus (as I observe through the comments section) is hostile to the ideas people like Olivia Pratten, and all the rest of my fellow donor-conception activists represent. They are hostile because they can only relate to the donor’s perspective. They fear child support. They fear liability. They fear the guilt and dilemma of not knowing how to move forward in this new frontier where nobody seems to have good answers. They can’t fathom what it means to be responsible for a dynamic, real, human life. It is highly inconvenient for the donor when his/her genetic child arrives into their life (20 years after donation or so) and suggest some type of relationship (heaven forbid). For the public, ignorance and clean lines are best. News flash to anonymous sperm donors: nothing is a secret anymore. If people want to find out something, they will. And I assure you, people who have a deep-seeded need to know who their real parents are, will.
Wikileaks’ founder, Julian Assange ‘s response when asked about his “core values”:
Capable, generous men do not create victims, they nurture victims. That is something from my father and something from other capable, generous men that have been in my life.
Wikileaks says that it accepts “classified, censored or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic or ethical significance“.
There must be a donor kid among us that can also hack a system or two. If they can puncture The Pentagon’s main-frame, surely Valley Cryobank is doable too. In fact, I might make it a personal mission to stalk one of NYC’s hacker conventions and find myself a sympathetic computer genius to unveil the thousands of men who sold away their children via full support from the state.
In The Australian today, New South Wales legislative council government whip Greg Donnelly writes about Elton’s new baby, with reference to other sources including the “My Daddy’s Name is Donor” report.
…But perhaps the question that Zachary may ask himself time and time again is: Where is my mother? These may not be the first words he utters and no doubt he will have some carers who are female. However, there will come a time when the boy and indeed the man will surely want to know who his mother is, and where she is, notwithstanding the love and care his dads may provide…
I am in Iceland for the holidays because I figure, if you’re gonna do winter- do it all the way. There is only 4 hours of daylight here now and those few hours are less “day-like” than “dawn-like”, so I am entertaining myself with Icelandic history lessons, speed tourism, and hand knit wool sweater lust. Let me tell you a bit about Iceland: Besides volcanoes, glaciers, fjords, geysers, and craters, it has the freest press in the world, was rated the 3rd most developed country in the world in 2009. They have universal health-care and free tertiary education for all citizens (it helps to not have an army). The country was founded in 874 AD- had its own parliament by 930 AD. It’s a violent climate here and history hasn’t been completely generous- Icelandic people have suffered infertile soil, The Black Plague, several incidences of small pox, and the various effects of volcanic eruptions including damage to livestock and famine which have again and again slashed the population. Even today, there are only 320,000 Icelandic residents.
Most folks here can trace their ancestry back to the very first settlers. Births are well documented and each child must have their name approved by the Iceland Naming Committee. There are no permanent surnames. If your father’s name is Bill, you are Bill’s son or Bill’s daughter (Billsson or Billsdottir). There is a strong sense of history. And the local folktales are well transferred. You feel their sense of pride.
Life isn’t quite as difficult these days. Walking around Reykjavik there seems to be a million happy babies, equally clinging to both mothers and fathers. When I visited here in 2009 it was a common sight to see mothers leaving their prams and baby carriages outside of store shops, babies inside the carriages. People here speak English with a slight Irish accent- heavy s’s, and thick, th’s. They are a hissing, thiss-ing bunch with alien-like cheek bones and skin so pale it almost blends in with the snow.
Christmas Eve I was lucky enough to find myself in one of Iceland’s oldest churches. It was about as big as you’d imagine an old school-house, only with 2 stories and relatively ambitious architectural elements- like archways and hand-carved banisters. I felt like I was in a refurbished barn in some small town in the Midwest where everyone suddenly won the lottery and showed up to Christmas Eve service wearing breath-taking jewelry and dollops of hair gel. Besides the choir made up of 6 Elvish teenagers and a substantial string section, the musical feature was one of Iceland’s gay icons- Páll Óskar. He sang beautifully, and a significant fraction of the audience came solely to see and hear him. This was a detail of the evening that reminded me I was indeed not in a small town in the Midwest, gay pride blending with old religiosity.
Iceland supports LGBTQ in a way that seems incredibly significant (coming from US SSM wars), and yet, isn’t significant at all. Nobody fights about it here (or so I gather from all of my inquiries). Reykjavik’s mayor performs comedy and regularly shows up to national events in full drag. Iceland’s reigning prince of Indie music, Jonsi, from Sigur Ros, wears his crown of musical glory with virtually zero controversy over his sexuality. Last year the Gay Pride event attracted almost 70,000 people, or about one-fourth of Iceland’s entire population. LGBTQ identities are celebrated here, and from what I can tell, the main issue about coming out is the small population- supply doesn’t exactly meet demand here when it comes to available bodies and hearts.
Great, right? Gay marriage is legal officially. No hate. No fights.
But guess what is illegal in Iceland? The sale of human sperm and eggs. Guess what else is illegal in Iceland? Surrogacy. This is a nation with more authors and artists and “green” people per capita. They’ve got geo-thermal energy and an environmental track record to impress the most liberal among us. But they also understand the value of knowing one’s history and ancestry. And they definitely hold high the idea that children deserve to know where they come from, and know their biological mother and father. If you are LGBTQ, they will welcome you here and do their best to make sure you thrive, but there are some things that are not tolerated- an embarrassing name that doesn’t sound Icelandic is one, the sale of human eggs and sperm is another.
Everyone (including lesbian couples) have access to IVF, and adoption for SS couples is A-okay, but there is no sperm bank, no egg bank, no surrogates.
That is a system I can support and get behind. That is a society with principles and properly functioning moral compass.
Captain Nemo is a fictional character created by Jules Verne and featured in his stories Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island. Nemo is Latin for “no one”. Barn, in Swedish, means “children”. Kapten Nemo’s Barn then, means, good job, Captain No One’s Children.
A recent documentary came out and aired on Swedish television just two nights ago by filmmaker Agneta Bernárdzon. The story is of two children, who in the 1940′s were swapped at birth and brought home to be raised by the wrong families. In the 40′s in Sweden there was no tagging system at hospitals and clinics. A note was placed under the child’s pillow with the mother’s name, and newborns were picked up and manually carried into their mother’s quarters where nurses, if they had forgotten the mother’s names at the end of the walk down the hall, had a 50-50 chance of getting the right baby into the right mother’s arms. When new mother Vilma Enqvist reached for what she thought was her newborn son, the nurse said to her “I’m not sure if this is the right one, but you are the mother, you should be able to tell or not.” When Enqvist responded with confusion and insecurity saying “Actually ma’am, I’m not sure if this is my son or not…” the nurse replied, “Are you saying this child isn’t beautiful enough for you?”
That successfully shut Vilma up and she went home with the newborn boy she was given. Three years later, it became very clear that it was indeed not her biological son, and she and her husband grew the courage to engage the law in possibly swapping sons with Dagny Smith, the mother she shared quarters with that day at the hospital- so they both may have their true biological children.
This became a huge deal in Sweden. It revealed the inefficient systems in hospitals where more than a comfortable number of children were going home with the wrong families. The pride of medical staff conflicted with justice and many families didn’t dare to question the veracity of their town doctors, who were almost by definition the most educated and respected citizens in their respective communities. But Vilma Enqvist did dare to question- and the moral dilemma she faced grew fiercer as each year passed.
It became clear that a swap had truly been made when the boys were 3-years-old. But it took another 4 years before the fate of the children was determined and the courts made their final decision. Vilma Enqvist wanted her son, Bo, back at home, with his biological family. But she was morally torn because she had grown to love her non-biological son, Walter. It would be tough giving up Walter, but surely he would have a loving family with his biological parents. The only catch was that Mr. Smith, the non-biological father of Bo, was himself a foster child and spent the majority of his childhood swapping back and forth from one family to the next.
When Mr. Smith was born, his mother didn’t want him, so he was sent north to live with a foster family while his mother got her life together in Stockholm. Then as a young boy, his mother decided she wanted him, and he moved south to Stockholm. Then, after only a couple of years, she decided she didn’t want him for the second time, and he again was sent north. He had decided definitively that Bo was his son, and there would be no swapping. He would love this boy fiercely, and indeed they were close. He appealed continuously for 4 years to keep Bo and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. But when the boys were 7, Mr. & Mrs. Smith were forced to give up Bo to Mr. & Mrs. Enqvist.
But the Smiths didn’t want Walter. Because of Mr. Smith’s history as a foster child, he gave up one son, and decided it was already horrible enough that one child had to upset its life completely to live with a new family. He wasn’t going to make this a double tragedy. And so the Smiths grieved fiercely, but moved on. When the boys grew up, they began spending a lot of time with The Smiths and when Walter married at age 25, both the Enqvists and Smiths were invited to the wedding.
But I must relate to you how this affected Swedish society. It wasn’t just an annoying and deeply frustrating moral dilemma for the family and their legal advisers. This story shook the whole of Sweden because, all of a sudden, families and children everywhere were deeply insecure about whether or not they had their “real mother and father” or their “real children”. What does it mean to be a real family member anyways? Biology obviously was important to most everyone, and it became an intense topic of debate. If it wasn’t important to Vilma Enqvist, she wouldn’t have spent so many years in court, or so many tears and time as she read hate mail from people telling her she would go to hell for demanding her son back. If it wasn’t important for Bo, her biological son, he wouldn’t have delivered the documentaries closing quote responding to his mother’s question about whether or not she did the right thing. “Yes, I think you did the right thing,” he tells his mother. And even Mr. Smith demonstrated a need for connection when Walter, his biological son, came over for the first time and delivered Mrs. Smith flowers on her 50th birthday. “This is the happiest day of my life.” he said.
My point is biological connection is important and always has been. Adults have proven to be very upset when they realize they have been deceived as to the truth in their biological connection to their children and families. Questions in biology, maternity and paternity have gone to the Supreme Court. Whole countries have made it major debate topics when one family gets someone else’s child. So why is it so surprising that we, the offspring of commercial conception, find it so appalling that we have been separated on purpose from our (dare I say it?) real parents?
I might also add that it is completely illegal to buy and sell human eggs and sperm in Sweden today.
…and hopes said readers have more compassion (and better understanding of basic science — sperm donation does not necessarily involve IVF) than reporter Roy Edroso who wrote this story does.
Speaking of, a question for Mr. Edroso: In your world, does everything break down into a right-left divide? It must be a dispiriting way to live.
Last night I was editing a chapter that will appear sometime in the future in a scholarly volume. Because of word limitations I had to cut some material. I’ve retrieved from the cutting room floor one brief section, below, that I’d like to see the light of day. Interested in reactions!
How Redefining Marriage Redefines Parenthood–Links Between Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage and the Mainstreaming of ARTs
There are affirmative, early reports that use of third party donors (that is, sperm and egg donors, the latter sometimes combined with “gestational” surrogates) to conceive children does appear to be increasing in jurisdictions that have recognized same-sex marriage or similar arrangements, as couples with new legal protections now seek assistance from fertility clinics to achieve pregnancies.
A report out of Britain in 2007 claimed that “Lesbians and single women in Britain are increasing their share of donor insemination, accounting for 38% of such treatment last year compared with 28% in 2003 and 18% in 1999.”[i] What is especially noteworthy is that this trend, if the numbers are verifiable, was occurring before 2008. For decades, even after civil partnerships were legalized in Britain in 2004, British fertility law has said that the child’s “need for a father” must be taken into account when offering fertility treatments. Despite that clause, rates of lesbian and single women inseminated by clinics have been rising. In May 2008, after a long and heated national debate, the fertility treatment authority dropped the “need for a father” clause, removing the last policy barrier for lesbians and single women to access donor insemination services in the nation’s clinics.[ii]
In Massachusetts, a news report from December 2007 read: “Since the legalization of same-sex marriage there has been a marked increase in the number of gay couples seeking assisted reproduction, a medical center specializing in in vitro fertilization said Friday. ‘Each year we’re seeing an annual increase of about 50 percent in the number of same-sex couples coming to us for IVF to have their children and build their families,’ said Dr. Samuel Pang, Medical Director of Reproductive Science Center of New England. RSC has eight locations throughout New England…and is the seventh largest medical practice of its kind nationwide. ‘I don’t know how much equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples has affected the upward shift, but it seems to be the trend over the last three or four years.”[iii]
And in Denmark in 2006, their parliament passed a law allowing lesbian couples and single women the right to obtain free artificial insemination at publicly funded hospitals. Mikael Boe Larsen, chairman of the Danish National Association for Gays and Lesbians, said “…people are almost euphoric, people are crying, and especially the lesbians are extremely happy since it is a governmental approval of their family form.”[iv] Denmark passed a law in 1989 allowing gays and lesbians to enter registered partnerships.
In other nations, too, there is evidence that marriage rights and rights to ARTs are seen to go hand in hand. In Victoria, Australia in 2005, the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby released a survey of 652 gay and lesbians persons which revealed, among other things, that 98 percent of those surveyed wanted same-sex marriage to be made legal in their nation, and that more than 90 percent felt that gay and lesbian couples “should have access to assisted reproductive technologies such as clinical insemination of donor sperm and IVF.” Moreover, the survey revealed that “77 percent supported altruistic surrogacy as a right.”[v]
In Norway, in the new law affirming the right to same-sex marriage, passed in 2008, there is also affirmation of the right for lesbian women to have access to artificial insemination.[vi]
In nation after nation, the right to marriage is interpreted also as a right to access reproductive technologies that deny children a relationship with one or more of their biological parents, often but not always their father. And once that right is guaranteed in law for gay and lesbian persons, it can hardly be denied, now or in the future, to heterosexual persons. Read More
…most of the pain being expressed by donor conceived persons, is expressed by those whose fathers remain totally anonymous, and/or who were lied to by their social parents. We can not assume that the same dynamic would exist for those raised in more open circumstances.
Until pretty recently sperm donation has been an anonymous transaction and parents were encouraged not to tell their children the truth about their conception. Since the 1980s “known” donors of one form or another have become more common, although anonymity is still the norm. Meanwhile a greater proportion of those using sperm donation are lesbian couples or single women who anecdotally appear more likely to tell their children at least some of the truth of how they were conceived. So, kisarita is right that most grown donor offspring were conceived through anonymous transactions amid secrecy.
However, there are persons speaking for themselves now who were conceived with open identity donors, or whose parents always told them the truth about how they were conceived, and what they are telling us is that sperm donation raises a host of troublesome questions for the persons conceived this way, even amid openness.
In our study of adults conceived via sperm donation, 304 persons in our sample of 485 sperm donor conceived persons reported that their parents were always open with them about the nature of their conception. As Table 4 reveals (on p. 112 of the report), those whose parents were always open with them still had an elevated risk of negative outcomes compared to those raised by their biological parents.
Ancedotally, I would also point to COLAGE’s recent report, the “COLAGE DI Guide.” I wrote a long blog post responding to this report here.
For those who chose identity release donors, their statements and those from their children reveal anxiety about the child actually meeting the donor, even though the mothers chose this type of donor at the outset. The guide discusses the mothers’ fears that the grown child will meet the donor and then reject one or both of the lesbian mothers, in particular the non-biological lesbian mother.[xliv] If the sperm donor is heterosexual, they fear their child will embrace the “normal” heterosexual parent.[xlv] The guide explains that often the growing children “are scared because they do not want to hurt their parents’ feelings by deciding to meet their donor.”[xlvi] As one college student explained, “I wanted to make sure they did not get offended and think that there was something missing in my relationship to them.”[xlvii] And, as mentioned earlier, when children raised as siblings are conceived with different donors, there is anxiety and guilt when some can meet their donor and others cannot.
Finally, for those who chose known donors, there is surprising candor in the guide about what happens when the lesbian mothers and the known donor have falling outs. “My mother has many resentments against my father, so she is wary of me attempting to have a closer relationship to him and getting disappointed,” says a donor conceived person with a known donor in Los Angeles.[xlviii] Another said her lesbian mothers have a “bad relationship” with her known donor and “always talked about him in a negative way.”[xlix] As mentioned earlier, others talk about the relationship with their known donor not meeting their expectations, like the young woman who said, “My donor doesn’t seem to be particularly into the whole father thing with me, and it caused me quite a bit of pain trying to get him to be.”[l]
Little Adults
This ambiguity has not gone unnoticed by the author of this guide. Of the sperm donor, he says, “we must decide what this person means to us.”[li] He notes the “challenging task of defining the relationship with your known donor.”[lii] One who has “been there” offers this advice: “For those who are meeting their donors when they are older, I would advise to know the parameters of what you want from the relationships beforehand.”[liii] The author reassures the reader, “It is completely normal and okay to speak up about the kind of relationship you want with your donor.” (p. 31)
When the institution of something once called “fatherhood” falls apart, this is what happens. We leave each child to “define” the relationship of him or herself to the person who is his or her biological father. The children must “decide” what that person “means” to them. They should “think about the parameters” of what they want. They should “speak up.”
Probably some of them can manage this task quite well, at least on the outside. The 11 and 12 year olds quoted in the guide sound eerily mature, like people twice their age. The people in high school or college quoted in the guide sound like they are forty. Their parents make a lot of money (in this sample) and they’re impressively articulate and sound mature. Compared to the thick, complex negotiations of their childhood, the “real world” might not be so hard for them.
But what of the others? Two-thirds of the donor offspring in their sample are girls or women.[liv] Where are the boys? Where are the fumbling young people, the ones who are too confused to log onto a web survey, or too angry at their parents to take a survey their parents tell them to take? Where are the ones who got in trouble at school that day and are the last kids their moms would want to be studied by some researcher? Where are the ones who just aren’t gifted with emotional intelligence, who aren’t skilled at negotiating ambivalence and speaking up about their own needs in the face of their parents’ tender feelings, who have no clue how to explore and accept the limits of undefined relationships? When we ask children and young people to behave like little adults, what happens to the ones who can’t rise to the challenge? And what happens to the ones that do?
First ever podcast episode for The Anonymous Us Project.
This episode there are two stories: “Beginnings & Ends: A Matter of Parental Choice”, and “Silence”.
What about the ethical elephant in the room, though? Does it not matter at all that Dad won’t be around? A study carried out in the US among 485 donor-conceived adults suggested that donor offspring are more than twice as likely to struggle with substance abuse and delinquency, and more than 1.5 times as likely to struggle with depression compared with those raised by their biological parents.
They also fare worse when compared to those raised by adoptive parents, according to the authors of ‘My Daddy’s Name is Donor’, Elizabeth Marquardt and Karen Clark, from the Institute of American Values, who found that two-thirds of donor offspring believe that they should have the right to know the identity of their biological fathers.
“What seems especially troubling for some donor offspring is the deliberateness with which they were denied knowledge of or a relationship with their sperm-donor biological fathers,” says Marquardt. “Before they were ever born, their mothers and others decided that this man — their father — should not be of importance to them.”
But Donoghue believes the concept of a father figure is a rather woolly one. “Does it mean a male parent or someone to learn a masculine social role from? My son seems to be getting his sense of what a boy is, and what a man is, from his wide social circle and from TV; he doesn’t need a man actually living in the house for that.”
After finding out that my parents used a sperm donor to conceive me, the first place I went to on the Internet to find support was a bulletin board of moms that I frequented. It didn’t occur to me to use Google to find other donor conceived people. I just went to the sites I always went to. I posted a message asking if anyone was conceived with a sperm donor.
My very first reply was from a lady whose sister had used a sperm donor, and the little girl was about 3. This lady told me that I needed to write my parents a thank you note for raising me. She was very hostile and rude about it.
I don’t think I was mad about it so much as I was hurt. I needed someone to throw me a lifeline to pull me out of the depth of despair that was taking over my life, and she threw me a ton of bricks to sink me even deeper.
Since then, I’ve had a few responses that I assume were not well thought-out before they came out of the person’s mouth. I’ve been told that sperm donation is like giving blood, and that it’s like adoption. A couple of people have asked if I still think of my (social) dad as Dad.
So I’d like to clear up a few* misconceived ideas about donor conception. Read More
Apparently they now let freshmen college newspaper reporters write for Newsweek. Or at least, that’s how this piece reads.
The reporter, Doree Shafrir, interviewed me by phone back in early June for a story she said then would be for New York magazine.
Let’s see… to respond… our report, My Daddy’s Name is Donor, says nothing about gay marriage or about abortion.
The Institute for American Values has not, as she claims, been working to “defend heterosexual marriage from homosexuality” for 23 years. In fact, we didn’t start talking about gay marriage until after the Goodridge decision in Massachusetts in November 2003, and we have no organizational position on the matter. Different leaders among us take different positions (as do different bloggers at this blog).
The Institute has never done any work on the issue of abortion.
She’s right that I do think we should treat donor conception like adoption, and I do think donor conception is a problem no matter who’s using it — gay, straight, married or not.
Mainly, I do support the right of donor offspring to know who their fathers are. She’s right about that too.
Take a look and see if you can follow her logic that takes these simple observations and tries (through what must have been exhausting calisthenics) to turn them into a fire-breathing conspiracy. I can’t.
Funny how God often throws you curve balls when you don’t even realize you are up to bat.
The Lord changed my life unexpectedly last May when I discovered at 32 years old that my parents used a sperm donor to conceive me.
Though I wasn’t part of the survey, I find myself in the category of the 32% of donor conceived adults who identify themselves as Protestant according to MDND (pg. 69). Yet I’ve found no one else online who is talking about being donor conceived from a Christian perspective. It was that frustration coupled with the desire to not waste my experience that prompted me to begin blogging.
The longer version of my story can be found here, but the gist of it is that my mother unexpectedly told me the secret about my conception when I asked her about my dad’s health issues. She hadn’t planned on telling me that day, and I hadn’t planned on opening up Pandora’s Box.
It was shocking and life-altering to learn that my sweet Dad wasn’t my flesh-and-blood father. I truly did mourn the loss of what I thought was a full, unbroken relationship. And then I began mourning the loss of the sperm donor – my biological father. Even more than a year later, I still can’t believe that I have a “biological father.”
But it is what it is. And God has been so kind to me…even in this. And perhaps because of this, I’m seeing His kindness even more clearly.
I’d like to introduce a new guest blogger, Stephanie Blessing. She will be writing on the theme of the spiritual experience of persons conceived via artificial insemination, including what the churches are (or are not) doing, and what they could be doing.
One fascinating finding of our study is how many persons conceived this way were raised in a faith tradition and identify with a faith tradition today. I blogged about those findings in the post, “Religion and Reproduction in the 21st Century.”
Stephanie’s bio and photo are available here. An excerpt of her bio:
Stephanie Blessing is a Christian, the wife of a pastor, and the mother of five children. She found out in May 2009, at the age of 32 years old, that she was conceived in 1976 by an anonymous sperm donor via artificial insemination. Like many adults who discover that they were conceived using this method, she suddenly found herself in a crisis moment. She quickly went to the internet in order to find some kind of assistance in helping her to reason through this new situation in her life from a biblical worldview. After searching for several weeks, she found that, aside from some clinical articles, no one was talking about this issue from a God-centered perspective. She has begun writing about her own story in order to share the hope that she has with others at her blog, My Father’s Daughter.
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.
A good exchange unfolding between me, Karen Clark, and the women of Birth Mother, First Mother Forum, on adoption, donor conception, and the new “trendy reproduction” (“If you’ve got the dough, have it your way at Cafe Repro Tech.”)
There’s some irony is all this single mom craze. Lorraine and I lost our babies because our men didn’t stand by us. Of course the acceptability of being a manless mom (unwed mother in old fashioned parlance) depends on who you are. If Jenn[ifer Aniston] were a poor black woman or Mexican woman with an “anchor baby”, calling attention to her desire to excise the dad from her child’s life would be met with an investigation from child welfare officials, once more proving the rich are different from us.
