
Sperm-Donor Siblings: A Family Portrait - agronaut
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/magazine/sperm-donor-siblings.html
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jawns
The essay's author talks a little bit about how he and some of his half-
siblings feel a sense of loss, or that something feels missing, or that they
wished they had a father.

But the essay never really touches on whether they _resent_ the fact that
their parent or parents made the choice to have them conceived through
artificial insemination from an anonymous donor. Obviously, if that hadn't
happened, they wouldn't be around to resent it -- but it's still possible to
feel conflicted about it.

I'm sure there are some people who do carry that resentment and some people
who don't, and we often hear stories about the latter, but I've heard fewer
stories about the former and would be interested to hear their voices and
perspectives.

~~~
earthscienceman
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 having learned
later in life. Instead of resentment I would probably describe a bubbling
dystopian feeling. For me, I often focus on the fact that my life, or at least
the genetic specifics of my being, is directly a result of technological
progress. The very core of who I am everyday in my life relies on the fact
that society enabled my mom to have children without her (ex)-husband. That's
pretty strange.

These feelings come up most strongly when I look in a mirror. The physical
features are the inescapable consequence, right? I think this is what made
this photo essay so impactful for me. That photos so strongly highlight what
is most stark about being the child of a sperm donor.

In the thesaurus, vex is listed alongside resent. That word seems to get at
the core of what I feel. When I think too long or hard it just feels vexing...
it's very "what the fuck"-ish.

~~~
thrw19
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 the more I read on the subject, the more I think this is
a mistake. The thing I fear the most is that my kid would grow to resent me no
matter what I do, because ...you know, I'd not be the 'real' father.

EDIT: This is a throwaway account.

~~~
komali2
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)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Have you considered using DNA testing to track down your father or related
family of theirs? I’m not suggesting it, but just trying to understand the
feelings that go along with possibly having the ability to have unanswered
questions answered.

~~~
komali2
I don't really care to track him down, but this article did convince me to
finally pull the trigger on 23andme, so I can at least see some of my genetic
health risks.

My biological father is nobody to me - he has no bearing on my identity and I
don't see the need to meet him (to answer your question).

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CommieBobDole
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.

~~~
crispyporkbites
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

~~~
UsefulAlt
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.

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xwdv
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.

~~~
wyldfire
> Not sure if that’s what the photographer was going for

Interesting that the photographer was the author here.

Some of these poses strike me as downright bizarre, but they also remind me of
the kind of thing you'd see in magazine shoot.

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ChuckMcM
Ok, that is an interesting diversion on a Friday. I too was struck by the odd
poses, some of them seem to me as if they are trying to evoke a sexual
response although given their consistency I attribute it primarily to the
style the photographer imputes on his work. Given all the internal dialog he
includes I'm pretty sure the similarity of emotions is intentional.

That said, the most interesting thing for me in the article was the chain of
events, same sex couples wishing to conceive, selecting a sperm donor with a
'good' track record, results in the same donor being preferentially selected.
Given that the children share common activities (the article mentions camp for
same sex families) and the kids socialization there, it would seem there is a
higher than otherwise risk of developing a relationship with a half sibling.
That has got to be emotionally challenging if you discover it later.
Understanding ones own genetic history is a thing in isolated populations like
Iceland but I can easily see it being overlooked in a larger more diverse
population. I have never considered that burden that would be imposed on
future children conceived in this way, but in hindsight it makes sense.
Somewhere there is the most "popular" donor of the most used donation service
who could have hundreds? thousands? of children out there.

~~~
fouc
Odd poses but without any sort of smouldering look on their face, it's more
plain/openness on their face. Really doesn't feel sexual at all. Not even the
open legged poses.

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ctrager
My father was a sperm donor, back in the mid-fifties. I didn't know until I
was in my thirties (in the eighties). In the past few years, via 23andMe, I've
discovered three living half-siblings. I think it's been totally mind-blowing
fun for all involved to discover each other. We all read the nyt article
today. My bio-sister commented, "Yuh think we’d all look better if we were in
the NYT?"

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dougmwne
If this writing is at all representative of Gen Z it's going to be a VERY
interesting cohort. I sense some extreme social alienation lurking.

~~~
faissaloo
Alienation doesn't even begin to describe it

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

~~~
ip26
Sort of, but from what I have heard, being a donor is also absurdly
competitive due to the low marginal cost to the donor. Every prospective
parent wants their child's donor-father to be a 4.0 GPA valedictorian ivy
league graduate, captain of the football team, leader of men, captain of
industry. Or maybe visionary researcher, famous scientist. Or perhaps top-
billing hollywood actor, or decorated military hero. And, behold, because the
parent can be choosy about the donor, they actually _can_ have that.

So in the end being a donor isn't really the key strategy here, it's just a
force multiplier for highly successful men who have _always_ had fantastic
odds for passing on their genes to multiple mothers (even in nominally
monogamous societies)

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

~~~
ip26
I don't live in Seattle- do big shot lawyers & doctors happen to ride the
light rail to work? :)

~~~
krapht
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_donation_laws_by_country#Limitations_on_number_of_donations)

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.

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pndy
Donor Unknown [1][2] is a documentary film about this topic; young woman,
daughter of two women tries to find her biological father and on the way, she
reaches and makes contact with her other 12 _siblings_.

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor_Unknown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor_Unknown)

[2] - [http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/donor-
unknown/](http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/donor-unknown/)

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CodeSheikh
Their nose tip is a common genetic trait.

~~~
mzs
I was struck by the the ears, of those visible, except for two, they were very
uniform.

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Tomminn
Is it just me, or do all the photos feel strangely sexualized?

~~~
snazz
I don't think it's just you, but I don't think it's intentional either. Other
comments (backed up by the article) have said that the goal might have been to
make the subjects look uncomfortable, which at a second look seems perfectly
plausible.

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spermboy
Is it possible to buy sperm on your own? Do you need the approval of a doctor
or some other third part entity to obtain sperm from a sperm bank?

~~~
silencio
yes. you just sign up with a sperm bank and cough up money.

for maximum protections (both directions) you will want to involve licensed
medical professionals on the usage end. so you should have a doctor looped in
for ICI/IUI/IVF etc.

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faissaloo
Is anyone else concerned about a reduction in genetic diversity?

~~~
shagie
The donor is nowhere close to the impact that Genghis Kahn had on the Y
chromosome.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1180246/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1180246/)
\- and that was in the 11th century with a total word population of about
400M.

A few dozen children from one father today, in a world with a population of
7.5B should not be any concern.

~~~
faissaloo
Yeah but that was also an anomaly, which isn't the same as repeatedly
decreasing genetic diversity over a number of generations.

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Someone1234
Sorry is this is off-topic, but given the context, why are so many of them
posed in seemingly erotic ways? It isn't just the women either look at Nik
Morgan, 21 near the bottom (no pun intended).

~~~
arkades
I think a lot of them aren’t really erotic, so much as there’s an overlap
between “erotic poses” and “vulnerable poses.” A lot seemed to be posed in a
manner that I would call, artificially, awkwardly, vulnerable.

Which might be the point, for all I know.

~~~
earthscienceman
It's definitely the point. Being the child of a sperm donor can be so
uncomfortable. It seems like an extremely appropriate way to pose someone who
is being confronted by such a deep part of themselves.

