Parents

Are you considering using donated egg, sperm or embryo to create your family?

Do you already have donor children?

You will hopefully find information on this site that may help you on such subjects as making the decision to use donated gametes; talking to your children about their conception; accessing information about their donor.

I want to begin with telling you a story, an account of a couple in New Zealand. The wife got in touch with me a few years ago now as a result of reading an article in a women’s magazine. She indicated that she wanted to share with her daughter, the nature of her daughter’s conception, but the husband did not want to do this. They live 400kms away from the city I live in and we organized to meet and at that meeting the husband was very fearful, very anxious, very tense. His wife was also anxious and tense. Her reasons for being anxious and tense was that all of the family knew about the nature of the child’s conception and she was concerned that the child was going to find out from somebody else and perhaps in a way that they would not be able to control. We had a long and painful discussion, and the matter was left for them to think about some more. It was 18 months later that they got in touch with me again and we had a similar meeting. This time the husband had moved a little, but he was still extremely anxious. At the end of the session he agreed with his wife’s pleadings that they should tell their daughter who at that stage was aged 14.
I was able to see them a couple of months after they had shared the information. They told me that when the three of them were sitting there ….. the daughter heard the story, went over to her father, put her arms around his neck and said “I love you daddy”. And that man said, that at that time, it was as if a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders. The burden of 14 years of secrecy, of fear and of anxiety were suddenly gone. Professor Ken Daniels "Let the Offspring Speak" DCSG 1997

"In summary, the current results indicate that families who used identity-release donors were positive about their decision and that their child had the option of identifying and possibly meeting his or her donor when s/he reached age 18 years. All three types of families: those headed by single women,
lesbian couples, and heterosexual couples were quite open about the donor conception, including telling the child at an early age, and felt that disclosure had at least a neutral, if not positive, impact on the child and their relationship with him or her. With very few exceptions, parents reported that their child felt positively toward the donor and planned to obtain his identity. The children did not seem to be looking for a father in the donor, instead their interest stemmed more out of a strong curiosity about him, likely because they felt that learning more about him would help them learn more about themselves. Although further research is needed, the current study is important because it is one of the few about DI families 13±18 years after the child's conception and provides insight on the experience of having an open-identity sperm donor."

Choosing identity-release sperm donors: the parents' perspective 13±18 years later
J.E.Scheib M.Riordan and S.Rubin Human Reproduction Vol.18, No.5 pp. 1115-1127, 2003 For full paper click here

 

"How can parents have an honest and strong relationship with their children if they are keeping a vitally important secret from them? My brother and I were informed of our DI status prior to becoming teenagers and we have grown up normal, well adjusted adults. Our family is all the more closer due to my parents strength to be honest with us. When secrets are kept, the children often do grow up sensing that something is different within their family. This is not necessarily due to what their parents say but as a result of that their parents don’t say. For example that never say “You’ve got your father’s eyes and your grandmother’s personality.” In truth, this was the case for my brother who wondered if he was adopted until he was informed of his conception."  ‘L’ aged 18