Diary of a Sperm Donor: Volume 3 - Dilemma

There are important differences including variations in regulation, organization, and in cultural edicts about transparency. Adoption is regulated by the state and adoptive parents must adhere to these regulations in order to be granted adoptive status. There is no corresponding regulation, one that includes evaluations of parenting fitness and the need for approval via social workers, of ART in the United States.

Some believe that they would not be approved for adoption should they admit to planning to conceal adoption from their child.

INTRODUCTION

Parents via donor-conception have much more leeway, therefore, to self-determine if and how they allow others including their child born via donation to know about the fact that they do not share a genetic connection with their child or that they utilized donor gametes. The organizational, market, and cultural differences between adoption and ART shape the experiences people have becoming parents and raising their children. Though these differences exist, I would argue that both the basic ideas undergirding anonymity in ART and secrecy in adoption and the corresponding protests against such arrangements are similar.

The driving force behind secrecy and anonymity is an ideology of the family as a genetic, bounded-unit containing only two primary parents. There is a well-documented expansion in the social acceptance and openness toward disclosure of various family forms in the United States. Biology is being reified as all-determining at the same time ideas about the family are expanding to include non-biological forms of kinship. Third-party reproduction meets at the crossroads of these two cultural shifts. Given this, it should not be surprising that donor-conceived families are both expanding to include relations with donors and donor-siblings, those outside of the legal and social definition of family, and that genetic ties with donors and donor-siblings are seen as increasingly important and familial.

Adoption, too, met at these crossroads. In the early to midth century, adoptive parents and birth parents sought secrecy to obscure genetic connections. Change did not occur in adoption until the late 20th century when the protests of adoptees and birth mothers against such practices gained legal and cultural traction.

The adoption rights movement began at a time when the culture of adoption discouraged early and open disclosure of adoptive status. Legal changes were spurred by and helped to spur profound changes in adoption culture. The same may be said to be occurring for donor-conception. The expanding literature on anonymity in donor-conception, exemplified by the piece by Nelson, Hertz, and Kramer, is evidence that a cultural dialog is occurring.

Anonymity being an issue in ART has only become such as children born via donor-conception have aged and have begun to protest. Challenges to adoption secrecy emerged in much the same way, as adoptees and birth parents began to speak out about such arrangements and to craft changes. Adoptive parents are now socialized early in the adoption process to understand the importance of disclosure and to honor ties in a variety of ways to birth parents.

We can already see similar changes beginning in donor-conception. What form openness might take both legally and for the culture of ART—mandatory identification, more extensive mutual voluntary registers, state regulation, regular contact, the creation of new kinship terms—will be interesting to witness. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

Sign In or Create an Account. Close mobile search navigation Article navigation. Anonymity in third party reproduction: The Views of Three Stakeholders , J. Constructing Donor-Conceived Families and I. See Barbara Melosh , Strangers and Kin: The American Way of Adoption ; E. Wayne Carp , Family Matters: See Melosh, supra note 13, and Modell, supra note Heather Jacobson , Culture Keeping: Cahn, supra note 13, at 2.

The Debate over Sealed Birth Records See Jacobson, supra note 18, on evaluations of prospective adoptive parents, and Jacobson, supra note 4, on lack of similar evaluations for parents utilizing ART. Though certain states may have regulations that limit access to certain services for certain clients, most services are available for most clients—if not in one state, then in another.

See Jacobson, supra note 4 at 18—20, for example, on variations in access to surrogacy services by state. See Jacobson, supra note 4 at 16, 19, for a discussion on cost and regulation in ART. See Jacobson, supra note 18, on the ways in which adoptive parents contend with this ideology of the family. Sociological Perspectives on the New Genetics: Random samples of parents and offspring are also unlikely although there is one known study of attitudes toward donor conception among offspring that drew on a representative sample.

A total of donors egg donors; sperm donors responded to the survey, as did parents raising children conceived with donor gametes and offspring conceived with donor gametes. Donors and offspring are more likely to be heterosexual than are the parents; parents and donors are more likely to be above age Donors are the group most likely to be currently living with a partner. The majority of respondents in each of the three groups took the survey through the DSR invitation. We have no way of knowing how many of them also belong to the other organizations that provided access to the survey.

All three groups were asked a series of questions, many of which were the same. In the survey, some statements were phrased affirmatively and others negatively to prevent a response pattern from occurring. Both of these questions were scored on a five point scale: On Likert scales like this, the middle position is assumed to represent a position of neither agreeing nor disagreeing in this case neutrality rather than confusion about attitudes. Most of each of the three surveys consisted of closed-answer responses.

Respondents were given the opportunity to answer some questions freely and some questions left room for respondents to add information. In what follows, when quoting from respondents, we have corrected spelling and grammar when it is clearly typos. Otherwise, the responses are as written on the surveys. With the help of research assistants, the first two authors developed codes for open-ended responses. The written comments illuminate the quantitative data and offer further insight.

In this regard, survey data are often augmented with contextual data, such as qualitative comments, in order to provide additional information. We rely on both analyses of categorical data with chi-square tests of significance and analyses of ordinal data with difference of means ANOVA; t -tests tests of significance; we use the standard of a probability of 0. The respondents to our survey tend toward neutrality on the issue of anonymity with a slight bias against anonymity mean of 2. Of course, it is impossible to know with these data precisely what kinds of interactions and relationships respondents believed would be possible and desirable if there were no anonymity.

Offspring tend most strongly to agree with the statement that donors should not be anonymous mean 2. The difference among the three groups is statistically significant at the 0. We look at these three groups of stakeholders in some detail below. On average, sperm and egg donors essentially agree on this issue. Moreover, donors who were known from birth, anonymous donors, and donors who agreed to have their identity released when their offspring turned 18 do not give significantly different answers to this question. There is also no statistically significant difference between those respondents who came to the survey through the DSR and those who did not or among different categories of sexual orientation.

There is an association between age of donors and attitudes toward anonymity: Younger donors are more likely to have been given a choice about what kind of donor to be 51 per cent of those below age 30, 58 per cent of those in their twenties and 74 per cent of those 40 or older say that they were not given a choice. For some of the older respondents, the absence of choice might be influencing their responses. However, these are also people who have had a longer interim since donating; there might well be age-related yearning for knowledge about offspring and subsequent turning against anonymity.

Further understandings of attitudes toward anonymity emerge from a number of questions in the survey. Respondents were asked to comment on how they made the choice they did about what kind of donor to be; other questions asked donors to comment about whether or not they saw themselves as a threat to parents of their offspring and whether they ever felt displaced by the parents of their offspring; and donors were also offered the opportunity, as were all respondents, to make a general statement about their experience at the end of the questionnaire.

Quite a few donors indicated adamantly that they did not have a choice about what kind of donor to be and they resented that fact: In addition, some indicated clearly that they felt coerced by the banks or the parents into being anonymous and that on reflection they would now have made a different choice:.

I didn't have a choice—anonymous was the only option. At the time that is what I wanted, but now I wish I had the option to know the recipient. I was sort of bullied into it, because the parents who chose me wanted [me] to be anonymous. One egg donor, who opposed anonymity and suggested that anonymity was imposed on donors, noted that she thought it was important to express one's own point of view and not be anonymous: Yet another egg donor indicated why she opposed anonymity: I'm glad I didn't do it anonymously.

A sperm donor made much the same point about the possibility of knowing how one's gametes were used: Almost half of all donors are neutral on this issue. Neutrality is framed by the beliefs that anonymity serves a purpose until a child turns 18 and that anonymity could be forsaken after that age. One sperm donor explicitly expressed these sentiments:. My feeling was and is still the same: In childhood and adolescence, the emotional maturity has not yet developed enough to fully understand the complex nature of their relationship to their donor-dad.

These children have families and that should be the focus while they are children. As the range of responses makes clear, some donors wanted to preserve anonymity 24 per cent. Some of these donors indicated that they saw anonymity as protecting intended parents. As one egg donor said: Another egg donor suggested that her attitudes about anonymity grew stronger the more she read from people opposed to anonymity: Still others indicated that they did not want to complicate a child's understanding of who were their parents: Several sperm donors, like the egg donors just quoted, commented that anonymity protected parents who might feel threatened by a gamete donor: One anonymous sperm donor was particularly respectful of what he believed were the cultural biases in the community to which he would be donating:.

Since I am Filipino, a lot of the parents who chose to work with me come from a cultural background where infertility is frowned upon. I respected their privacy and I was open to both being an anonymous or open donor. Almost all of them wanted me to be an anonymous donor. In addition, gamete donors of both kinds also, quite simply, wanted to protect themselves:. I did not know where I would be in twenty years, and did not consider it fair to me that this would come back to haunt me. For example, what if I were in politics?

I wanted to help make happy and healthy families, but I did not want any ties to the family or responsibility. In comparison with their children and even in comparison with donors, parents tend somewhat more toward an interest in preserving the right of donors to remain anonymous should they so choose. Many parents express gratitude toward rather than curiosity about the donor: Parents with the oldest children are most likely to agree that anonymity should not be allowed: Parents do not differ on this issue depending on whether or not they have had contact with their child's donor siblings or the parents of their child's donor siblings.

Those who came to the survey through the DSR are not significantly more inclined toward strong agreement than are those who came through some other means. This finding is surprising since the parents who have used the services of the DSR are the parents who are most interested in donor relatives.

Among parents where there are very few male respondents there appears to be no significant influence of gender.

Gamete donor anonymity and limits on numbers of offspring: the views of three stakeholders

Although gender appears to have no statistically significant relationship to attitudes toward anonymity among parents, sexual orientation does have a statistically significant relationship to attitudes among gamete recipients. Straight parents agree more strongly that anonymity should not be allowed than do those parents who are lesbian, gay, or bisexual. Moreover, those parents who are currently or formerly partnered with someone of the other sex believe more strongly that donors should not be anonymous than do those who are currently or formerly partnered with someone of the same sex.

Those who are single, never married fall somewhere between these two groups. This relationship between living arrangement and attitude toward anonymity is not sustained among those who have relied on egg donors or donated embryos. It is sustained among those who have relied on sperm donors. It thus appears that in situations where the absence of anonymity is most likely to challenge directly a male non-biological parent with the threat of displacement by a donor of the same sex, the parents express most agreement with a statement about anonymity.

In those families that have relied on sperm donation and there is a social father because the women are partnered to a man , the mothers appear to think that a distinction should be made between a social dad and a biological father. Lesbians whether currently single or partnered who have relied on sperm donors do not have social fathers in their children's lives although men may play important roles in those children's lives ; these women might be less concerned about who the biological father might be.

Those women who are partnered to a woman may also be unwilling to threaten the security of the non-genetic mother with knowledge of, or access to, their child's genetic father. Among the three groups, offspring are the respondents most likely to tend toward opposition to anonymity. That is, among the open-ended responses a number of offspring express indignation about a range of issues connected with their donor conception.

Some had been denied information about their conception earlier in their lives and they are angry about that. Some believe that anonymity itself is wrong. And others believe that reliance on donors makes a child the result of a legal arrangement rather than the result of some other kind of social interaction.

A woman in her thirties reflected all of these attitudes:. I had very conflictual feelings [about being donor conceived] during my teenage time and early adulthood. I didn't talk about it because I was afraid of hurting my parents and losing approval from my family and society. It was more or less a secret I was ashamed of. Now, I need to tell the world about how I disagree with a lot of aspects of donor conception. I think secrecy, anonymity and objectification of the child are really the worst aspects of it.

I feel deeply betrayed to have been lied to, and I am mad for being the object of a contract. In contrast to these responses, the wide variability indicates that some offspring believe that anonymity is just fine, as does this year-old woman:. I am and have always been in favor of anonymous donation, I feel happy in the family configuration I have and do not want to meet or know my donor. I understand that this is different for a number of other donor conceived kids, which has shown me how complex this topic really is.

Just because I do not have a problem with having an anonymous donor, does not mean others don't either. It's a hard decision to make, but I believe that it matters most how you are raised [whether or not] you feel unhappy about not knowing the donor, though this of course could be wrong. My own feelings haven't changed, but I do now understand more of the topic's complexity.

As for the donor himself, I am grateful he decided one day to donate, but that is all the thought I really give him. The question of what shapes offspring attitudes is an interesting one. One reason, suggested by some respondents, might be that women are more likely to view themselves as having a critical role in the reproduction of the next generation and they want to know about the genes that will be passed on to their children. This was the case for one woman in her thirties:.

Everyone talks about donor privacy and rights, but that usually leaves the offspring with the short end of the deal—we should have equal rights to know as much as the donor has rights to anonymity. I don't think I would have wanted to seek out my donor if I had not had my own children.

Having children makes me want to find out even more. Also, I believe that many of the donors that participate at a young age, cannot comprehend the future implications of having offspring. Again, offspring should have rights to information about their genetics. It's as if no one anticipated that these impersonal sperm would ever be living breathing human beings walking around that want to know who they are and where they come from a basic human right if you ask me.

Among offspring, age is also related to this issue. Older respondents are more likely than younger ones to agree with the statement that donors should not be anonymous. Clearly, for some respondents, a concern about roots is something that has grown with time, as indicated by a year-old man:.

I have definitely become more actively involved in the discourse as I have become older. When I was a teenager my parents did not talk to me about these issues and I never realized that I had been deprived of what I now consider to be fundamental rights. I believe that anonymous donations should be banned and that strict government regulations should be put in place to protect the rights of offspring. A year-old woman who had experienced anonymity as a parent and as a child wrote that she believed anonymity was wrong:. I started out as a donor parent when I became pregnant at At 53, I found out that I'm also a donor child.

I think anonymity should be banned. I'm glad that I did sleuthing so that I know who my children's donor is and they can choose to contact him when they reach Those donor-conceived offspring who were born into a heterosexual couple hold stronger attitudes about this issue than those who were born under some other arrangement: For many offspring born into a heterosexual, two-parent family, there is a sense of betrayal:.

Always tell the children who they are, where they come from and how they came to be. Learning about it when you're older feels like a massive betrayal. I figured it out myself as a teenager but wish I had been told from the beginning. Anonymity should be abolished. It can be a traumatic experience finding this news out when you are an adult. Single mothers and parents from gay and lesbian couples raise different issues for offspring. Respondents suggest that their concerns are more about the family form they are born into than the issue of anonymity, with more respondents from non-coupled and gay and lesbian families emphasizing that families can take all different forms and that love is not based on genes.

This quote from a woman born to a lesbian couple illustrates these points:. A family with children conceived with donated sperm is just as viable, loving, and connected as any other family. The most healthy conception of a donor for the children is for the donor to be very unimportant in their conception of their family. Finally, we note that those offspring who have not had contact with donor siblings are more opposed to anonymity than those who have had contact with donor siblings 2.

Having contact with donor siblings can be a stand-in for the donor and the donor becomes less important when donor siblings are located. Whereas offspring were most likely to strongly agree that anonymity should not be allowed, parents are the stakeholders who are most likely to strongly agree children should be unique and should not have a lot of donor siblings. Among donors, gender is not significantly related to attitudes about limits: Of course because men can produce so many more offspring than can women, the foundation for these attitudes is different among men than among women who have more natural limits.

One sperm donor wrote that he thought that he could have as many as 50 offspring and was comfortable with that as long as others were not producing children with genetic problems:. At the time I donated I was told that there was only about one live birth for each thirty IVF procedures.

Maybe that was true at the time but I'm not even sure about that. I thought that I could have at most about fifty offspring but now after talking to mothers on the DSR [I] suspect that number could be much higher. I don't think that is inherently a huge problem as the numbers are small enough and the distribution great enough that intermarriage would be unlikely but it could be an issue if a donor with a genetic condition somehow slipped through the genetic screening.

I had a positive experience overall [donating eggs]. I think if someone is led to do that, they should be encouraged to. I also think the questions [in the survey] —concerning limits to donations and laws about contact and communication — are alarming. The standards for donation are already far higher than for having children without donor services. Parents don't go through any fraction of the screening process that I went through, to become pregnant….

The process was highly invasive, and I think it's only fair that a donor should be able to have the same choices about involvement or the number of donations to make that others have, who decide to create children…. This is not something in need of more regulation. Donors who came to the survey through the DSR have essentially the same attitude toward limits as those who came through some other route. In addition, neither age nor sexual orientation is related significantly to these attitudes. However, type of donor is significant here.

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Those who have agreed to have their identity released when an offspring turns 18 and anonymous donors have similar attitudes; both of these are subject to the regulations in place at the egg or sperm bank and both of these are making money from donating. However, donors who are known to recipients from conception are more neutral: Parents address this issue quite frequently in their final comments.

Two issues emerge among those who have relied on sperm donors. One is that parents believe that they had been lied to by the sperm banks about how many offspring there might be from a single donor: One respondent, a woman aged 40, who also felt she had been lied to, indicated that she did not like the fact that there were so many donor offspring who might run into each other by accident:. The number of donor conceptions to our donor far exceeds what we were told was the limit. We were told they had to stop at 10 families. There are more than 10 families that we know of.

Many of these families live close to one another and have crossed paths in their lives. For some parents, the focus was on the health consequences of there being a number of donor siblings. One respondent pointed out that the lack of regulation on limits could have serious health consequences:. Be aware of the lack of laws surrounding the way cryogenics banks operate. I shared information about medical conditions O-AB syndrome that landed my newborn son in the NICU in the hopes that they would share it with other prospective parents. However, there are, as suggested, some parents who are not bothered by a plethora of donor siblings:.

The number of offspring of individual donors should not be limited by governmental regulation. It is better to have large numbers of healthy offspring than to have regulations that will increase the price of sperm. We know my daughter has 18 half siblings if we include the donor's children by marriage. We fully expect, however, that she has many more donor conceived siblings because to date there are no heterosexual couples that have reported using our donor's sperm.

The small number of men responding to the survey makes it difficult to explore gender here; the available evidence suggests that mothers are more likely to believe that there should be limits than are fathers. Parents who have relied on a sperm donor agree most strongly with the idea of limits followed by those who have relied on an embryo involving both sperm and egg donations.

Those who express the least agreement with the idea of limits are those who have only used an egg donation. Of course, for parents who have used an egg donor, limits are a less pressing issue because there are built in limits via egg donation itself. The age of one's oldest child is related significantly to these attitudes and those with the youngest children are most adamant about this issue. These are also the parents who are most likely to be newly confronting this issue as they find out just how many donor siblings there are.

In addition, those who have had contact with donor siblings are more insistent about limits than those who have not yet had any such contact. Sexual orientation is also related to attitudes toward limits among those who have relied on a sperm donor. Heterosexual respondents are more likely to agree that there should be limits than those who do not identify as straight. Living arrangements are related to attitudes toward limits as well with those who are single, never married agreeing more strongly that there should be limits in contrast with both those with same sex partners and those with partners of the other sex.

Gamete donor anonymity and limits on numbers of offspring: the views of three stakeholders

Interestingly, whereas the issue of anonymity produced strong attitudes among some offspring and was an item of discussion raised at the end of the survey with some frequency, these respondents did not raise the issue of limits. Moreover, attitudes toward limits do not depend on whether or not offspring have met donor siblings, which is counter to what was found about the issue of anonymity and counter to the finding among parents.

Both age and family structure, however, do shape attitudes among offspring. Those who are older agree more often that there should be limits than do those who are younger. However, it is clear that like older offspring, younger offspring can also feel strongly about limits.

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A woman who was 19 wrote,. When I was younger I thought it was weird especially the thought of having so many half siblings.