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Sperm-Donor Siblings: A Family Portrait

nytimes.com

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Re: Sperm-Donor Siblings: A Family Portrait

#31

Post by krapht »

ip26 wrote: post #28
ahelwer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is true. There are ads for becoming a sperm donor on the Seattle light rail.

I don't live in Seattle- do big shot lawyers & doctors happen to ride the light rail to work? :)

There's a couple restrictions on supply, depending on country:

1) Limitations on number of donations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_donation_laws_by_country...

Even when there are no legal limitations, sperm banks will often limit the number of donations made by any single donor. Most donors will not travel to donate to multiple sperm banks.

2) Limitations on donor anonymity. (probably useless these days - acquaintance of mine tracked down her anonymous donor father via 23AndMe, and was devastated to discover he didn't want to have any contact with her. seems obvious, but...)

3) Limitations on donor compensation. (same reason there are limitations on blood and organ sales, I imagine). However, you have to pay highly achieving men significantly more than others for them to take time out of their day to donate into a vial. And also to abstain so that their donations are high quality.

Re: Sperm-Donor Siblings: A Family Portrait

#32

Post by bilbo0s »

xwdv wrote: post #6

Aside from the bizarre, uncomfortable poses in the photographs, the subjects all look somewhat dejected, as if their existence in this world is very clinical. Not sure if that’s what the photographer was going for but kudos to him for keeping such a consistent style across multiple loosely related people. I imagine it could be like herding cats.

>across multiple loosely related people...

They may be strangers, but these people are all closely related genetically speaking.

Re: Sperm-Donor Siblings: A Family Portrait

#33

Post by UsefulAlt »

thrw19 wrote: post #24
earthscienceman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. You can hear my voice. I'm the child of a sperm donor. I didn't learn about it till I was 18... which was more than a bit strange. The emotions that come from the combination of society's familial expectations, your own complicated family, and just the general fact that it's nice to be alive is a really strange cocktail. But... I'm not sure resent is a word that I would ever use, even in my bizarre situation of…

Do you think things would have been different for you, if you knew about it since you were a child? I'm a 35 years old male that can't have kids. Not possible, say the doctors. I love children and me and my wife are considering using a sperm donor. Should all work as we hope, we are not sure how to approach exactly this situation of telling our child about it. At first I thought we should just keep it a secret, but t…

I found out last year that I was a sperm-donor child. My sisters have resented me my entire life because they were adopted, and our parents bent over backwards in trying to appease them.

(I found this out through 23AndMe, when I was contacted by a half-sister I didn't know I had, who was looking for information about her genetic father. Turns out her family lied to her about her origins too.)

To find out that I was half-adopted myself didn't bother me at all in one sense- I loved my Dad, and that didn't change. But I now have real anger towards the fact that neither of my parents told any of us the truth while they were alive, and maybe my relationship with my sisters would have been different if we were all at least a little in the same boat. My parents were loving people, but were just from a generation where things like this just weren't talked about. Like an earlier poster said, it's all just... Vexing.

The one thing I am certain of is that finding out your Dad wasn't your biological father while dealing with spiteful siblings who are trying to destroy you for the vulgar, prosaic money reasons that often erupt in families as the estate was divided was a supremely shitty way to find out. Tell the truth early and often, and hide nothing.

Re: Sperm-Donor Siblings: A Family Portrait

#35

Post by buboard »

dqpb wrote: post #19

It seems to me that being a sperm donor is an absurdly good evolutionary strategy.

It's true but do evolutionary strategies matter anymore? We are at most 2 generations away from complete DNA design, and i m even sure that many people will be digging graves for more "exotic" sources.

Re: Sperm-Donor Siblings: A Family Portrait

#36

Post by komali2 »

thrw19 wrote: post #24
earthscienceman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. You can hear my voice. I'm the child of a sperm donor. I didn't learn about it till I was 18... which was more than a bit strange. The emotions that come from the combination of society's familial expectations, your own complicated family, and just the general fact that it's nice to be alive is a really strange cocktail. But... I'm not sure resent is a word that I would ever use, even in my bizarre situation of…

Do you think things would have been different for you, if you knew about it since you were a child? I'm a 35 years old male that can't have kids. Not possible, say the doctors. I love children and me and my wife are considering using a sperm donor. Should all work as we hope, we are not sure how to approach exactly this situation of telling our child about it. At first I thought we should just keep it a secret, but t…

I was born out of wedlock to a mom that was single by the time I was born, and have never met the biological father. She wrote a little picture book explaining what a biological father is, how it's different than my "Dad" (she had since married someone unrelated), and there was even a little photograph of him in there. And lots of stuff about how her and my dad love me a ton and how it's not a big deal.

So I grew up with the knowledge since basically the day I was sentient, and therefore it as much a part of my life as my fingers and toes. I almost never think about it. Last time I did was in the doc's office when she was asking about family history, and I had to remind myself that my dad's family history doesn't count.

So you have one vote over here from telling the kid from day 1, possibly in a format that they can come back to and explore / show to other kids when they ask (i.e. the picture book I got)

Re: Sperm-Donor Siblings: A Family Portrait

#38

Post by UsefulAlt »

crispyporkbites wrote: post #16
CommieBobDole wrote: post #4

I guess it's just the photographer's style, but every one of those portraits looks like the subject been posed in a way that's unnatural for them, and they're not enjoying it.

Meh, I think they all look like they’re trying hard to look like they’re not enjoying it, aka hipster, it’s not cool to be happy

FWIW, as someone who found out by surprise that I was a sperm-donor child (and that I have at least one half-sister who was equally surprised by the knowledge of an unexpected half-brother) I find the expressions of the people in the photographs extremely relatable. It's pretty much the exact expression I had on my face when I first found out, which is essentially a combination of "wow this explains a lot of things" + "what the fuck" + a constant background oscillation of "but this changes nothing/everything/nothing/everything/nothing/everything". I'm in my mid-40's, so it's not a generational thing.

Re: Sperm-Donor Siblings: A Family Portrait

#40

Post by DoreenMichele »

thrw19 wrote: post #24
earthscienceman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. You can hear my voice. I'm the child of a sperm donor. I didn't learn about it till I was 18... which was more than a bit strange. The emotions that come from the combination of society's familial expectations, your own complicated family, and just the general fact that it's nice to be alive is a really strange cocktail. But... I'm not sure resent is a word that I would ever use, even in my bizarre situation of…

Do you think things would have been different for you, if you knew about it since you were a child? I'm a 35 years old male that can't have kids. Not possible, say the doctors. I love children and me and my wife are considering using a sperm donor. Should all work as we hope, we are not sure how to approach exactly this situation of telling our child about it. At first I thought we should just keep it a secret, but t…

I think for medical reasons alone children deserve to know where there genes come from.

Bonding with a child is separate from that. Plenty of people hate their biological parents because their parents were lousy, abusive people who never treated them well.

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