Today I was thinking of donor issues for some reason, and went surfing through the net about it. I read through the net that 60 minutes was having a story on donor siblings tonight coincidentally, so I watched it. I think it was pretty well done. The only thing that made me cringe just a little was that one teenager who was born to parents with male factor infertility said that he put N/A on forms that asked about his father. I assume his mothers husband would have been on the forms, but then they reported that the couple divorced when the boy was one. So, I don't know the circumstances, of course, but it seems to me that the fact that the kid puts N/A on his forms has more to do with that husband leaving than the fact that he was a donor kid. It did not mention, but seemed to imply that the husband was not in the kid's life.
I have heard of husbands agreeing to, and then tripping out about a DI pregnancy. A very sad situation that hopefully doesn't happen that often. To me, it seems like it falls under a similar decision making process as adoption. If you are going to go ahead with having a child and caring for a child that is, for whatever reason, not biologically related to you, you've got to go all the way. It is not an optional thing that you can change your mind on later. I don't know, but it made me curious as to what the laws are as far as child support are in that situation. Did that guy get out of child support because he was not biologically related? Today, that totally wouldn't fly, at least in my state. But this was several years ago so who knows? Maybe then, he wasn't obligated, even though (we can assume) that he agreed to participate in the creation and parenting of that child? Hmmm.
As an aside, and this is for you, Twisty...you know why I think men are OK with adoption when there is female factor infertility but not okay with donor insemination when there is male factor? Because they think somewhere subconsciously that they own their wives reproductive systems and don't like the thought of another man being involved in their property, even though if they adopted, another man was involved in that child's creation as well, but that was some other man's woman. Yes, I blame the patriarchy! It is rather bazaar when this happens to women who did DI. I've read some tragic tales on some fertility message boards. But, I've said it before, D has had no stupid macho bullshit issues with the fact that the kids are from DI.
I also read some blogs from young adults that were the product of DI and were MAD about it, and lost, and depressed, and searching. Of course those types of things are nightmarish to read when you have two DI kids. But I noticed that all of them were not told that they were from DI until they were teenagers or adults. I completely don't understand why parents do this. It's only like one car accident or organ transplant keeping the kid from the truth of that secret. And keeping it a secret just gives the implication that there is something shameful about it. Then, these kids had to deal with the shock of being lied to for years, the whole self-image thing where who they thought they were was not as they thought, and also I think that these people were born in the 1980's, and things are much better now as far as acceptance and openness.
I had always planned to tell the kids from the beginning about how they were created. In this way, it isn't like that part of them that they thought was related to one family isn't ripped away from them with a big question mark to replace it with. My kids will have three family histories, not two or one. My history is their history. The donor's history is their history. And D's history is their history, too. Genealogy is as much about the fate of people's lives crossing as it is about DNA. The history that got D to be their father is also their history, DNA or no. When they have that project to make their family tree, it's just going to have three branches.
And to tell you the truth, I know more about their donor's family genealogy than I do about my own. I have a whole file folder of information and family history about him. I have a recording of his voice during the donor interview and I have a picture of him at about 3 years old. And, like the 60 Minutes story, we are also in contact with some of their donor siblings. I wrote about this a while back, and since then I have found two families that share their donor and we have exchanged several emails and pictures, and that is all going well. So really, they will have a lot of information and biological contacts with that 'third' side of the family.
I've always been a proponent of Chosen Families, even back when I never thought I would be in a situation where I'd be using a donor or thinking of adoption. It just made sense. I'm not quite sure what to do when people go off on DNA and genealogy. I don't get when men (mostly men) talk about it being the end of their line if their children are adopted or from DI. Their line is continuing. There might be a hiccup in the genetics of it all, but we are all genetically related somehow. I think genealogy is interesting in a novelty kind of way. I understand that there are important medical considerations with genetics. I understand that it is interesting to find out about your ancestors. I don't see any problem with that, but when people take on their ancestors accomplishments as their own, it is kind of funny. For every great-great-grandfather that was a hero, there was likely another one that was a crook, you know?
I know there is the whole nature vs. nurture thing. But I think what effects who you are the most is probably the main people in your lives that raised you. Whether its biological mom and dad or grandparents or adoptive parents or two moms or aunt and uncle or unrelated guardian or whoever. The people who were fundamentally committed and involved in raising you are probably the most important forces in your life in childhood, no matter where you came from.
A friend of mine is a bi-racial woman who was adopted by a white family. She eventually found her first mother. She said that it was interesting to see the similarities like the way she tilted her head to the side, things like that. I remember that she told me that the more her parents discounted her biological mother, the more she wanted to see her and made up a fantasy about her. She told me to just include the boys' donor as a normal part of their history and who they are. Don't make him out to be great, or a villain. Don't lie and say that someday they will meet him and he will want to be in their lives, and don't lie and say he never wants to see them ever and they should not ever think about him. Just accept that you don't and maybe won't ever know that much about them, and the only thing you do know is that he made their lives possible.
A lot of this business about genealogy and how if you don't know yours then part of your life is lost in a black hole seems a bit made up to me like a social construct that has developed because of a bias towards husband/wife/biological families. But I've not been in a position of looking for my biological parents, so I could not say for sure if I'm totally correct in this. My father's family history only goes back a few generations because his great-grandfather was picked up as a child at Ellis island with only his name pinned to his shirt. He was later sent on the orphan trains and adopted. This is interesting in that it shows how that side of the family ended up in the Midwest, but it doesn't give any indication as to ethnicity or anything else, and still the family managed to procreate (and adopt) even without the knowledge of where that part of the family came from. My mother's side of the family, I know next to nothing about. And frankly, I'm pretty sure I don't even want to know.
The kids will be told as naturally and age appropriately as possible, all the information that we know about all three of their families. And then I'm going to support them in whatever they decide to do with that information. Ethnically, they are half Jewish and Russian via the donor, so if they want to pursue that, they can. They are also part Arab and Irish (me) and part Slovak and English (D). Yes, I will repeat, they are part Slovak. Even though I know all those parts would add up to 150%, how can that be a bad thing? As much as this affects who D is and how he got here, it affects them. If they want to study Slovak history because it means something to them as it is a part of their father, then I'm all for that. If they want to pursue relationships with their donor siblings, I will support that. If they want to track down the donor when they are 18, I support that, too.
I learned this from one of my cousins, whose biological father was Jewish, then his stepfather who raised him was Korean, yet raised in Japan. He has a Japanese last name, and his (half) sister is biologically part Korean. So he is part Jewish, Irish, Japanese, and Korean. You can't have all these influences in your lives and have them not be part of who you are. You can't negate the part of you that just doesn't happen to be biological, nor can you negate the biological influences. So rather than looking upon those children from adoption, step families, DI or whatever kind of chosen family as having a deficit in some area or missing something, it seems to me that all of it can be embraced.
The mother of one of their donor siblings and I have talked a lot about these issues. And in the end, we can't decide beforehand for them what is going to be in their best interests on some of these issues. She said a great quote once: "Sometimes we can't cross a bridge for our children, sometimes we have to cross it with them, and sometimes they have to cross it alone."
I have a lot of respect for both your honesty and your ability to cut through subtle nuances of reality and get to the functional, pragmatic level. Eliminating non-biological influential factors in a childs background is bumper-sticker logic. I enjoy reading your bloc. Thanks.
Posted by: | March 21, 2006 at 05:43 AM
I like this post. Very cool. I agree with you about all of it I think. I have been reading about international adoption a bit, and sometimes it seems that people go overboard with the "what culture are you from" thing, and the "missing your early life". My background was swedish and german, but thank god my parents didn't decorate my room in swedish flags and little german girl outfits! We did have SOME as my parents were in a scandinavian club, but the german side, nil, really. My adopted brother went to scandinavian club stuff along with us, and really, when you think about it, as an adult, I have no idea what the hospital looks like where I was born, haven't been told about what my birth was like. There seems to be this real assumption that bio kids get all this family background, birth background, stuff from their early childhoods etc, and it isn't necessarily true. People don't talk about this stuff, normally. They talk about what tv show is on tonight, and did you do your homework. I can't say I have any medical info about my grandfathers who died before I was born, or know what they might have been like. I never knew them, never had a grandpa, and never missed having a grandpa. Anyways it is interesting, and I think all we can do is be honest with our kids and give them as much width in the world as possible and as much info as we have or don't.
Posted by: cluttergirl | March 21, 2006 at 08:45 PM
just looked at the recent pics. Those are happy kids I tellya! I loved the pic of them in the bath with blackkitty. I am assuming she still lives with you? And what is that carpeting stuff on their floor with the blocks? It looks like great for toddlers, very antiskid.
Posted by: cluttergirl | March 21, 2006 at 08:50 PM
The boy who wrote N/A regarding his dad was referring to his bio father who he knows little or nothing about. He was not referencing his mom's ex-husband who has been gone for many years as I understand it.
Posted by: Eric | March 25, 2006 at 09:50 PM
Eric: Yeah, and that was my point. If (and we can only make assumptions) wife and husband were married at the time of conception and did DI due to male factor infertility, then the husband would have served the role of father and the kid would have probably always put the husband’s name on forms (like my kids will and probably yours as well.) But since, for whatever reason, the husband split and seems not to be in the kid’s life, he doesn’t even recognize that guy as anybody.
So that is why I said putting N/A on forms has more to do with him being from a family where the husband, who should have served the father role for him, split than the fact that DI kids whose nonbiological father is in their lives would not put N/A on forms. Get it?
Anyway, just a nit. It’s just that I’ve known 3 women whose husbands agreed to DI and then split after or during the PG because they had some kind of trippy ego thing with it.
Posted by: Lisa | March 25, 2006 at 10:00 PM