Business of Life

My Daddy is a Donor

What does it feel like to know that you were created with donated sperm or a rented womb?

The Chicago Tribune today has a story about such donor-conceived children who suffer not knowing anything about their real fathers or mothers  even as they are protective of their nurturing , generally same-sex couples.    Their search to make sense of themselves and their origins is  painful when people tell them "it shouldn't matter."

...[D]onor-conceived children know that the parents raising them are also the ones who intentionally created them with a severed relationship to at least one of their biological parents. The pain they feel was caused not by some distant, shadowy person who gave them up, but by the parent who cares for them.

This knowledge brings the loyalty and love they naturally feel for the parents raising them in direct conflict with the identity quest we all must go through. When they ask, "Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here?" they confront a welter of painful uncertainties our culture hasn't begun to understand.

From Kids need a real past by Elizabeth Marquardt.