Posted on 05/21/2006 11:55:33 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
(CBS) CHICAGO It's a trend that some fear may have long-term consequences. More unmarried women over the age of 25 are not waiting for Mr. Right.
As CBS 2's Alita Guillen reports, these ladies are having children on their own.
The fantasy father at their fingertips is a sperm donor with all the right stuff.
Katherine Gehl and April Lashbrook had successful careers and dated, but they didn't have husbands. They heard their biological clocks ticking loudly.
"It was like a time bomb," April said.
"I need to go and have a baby and be a mother, and so I did," Katherine said.
Women used to depend on chemistry in the bedroom to conceive a child. Now, more and more women are turning to the lab and depending more on science than sex.
This twist on the mating game begins at a sperm bank, where donors can earn up to $900 a month.
"These guys are college students. This is a form of income," said California Cryobank Medical Director Dr. Cappy Rothman.
The sperm undergoes testing for diseases, genetic defects and blood type.
"Donor sperm, in many ways, is guaranteed good sperm," said Dr. Lauren Streicher, a gynecologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
When April chose her donor in 2003, she got a long profile including a medical history and even written answers to questions.
"I knew immediately that was who I was going to choose," she said.
Now, many banks offer much more, including childhood photos and the donors' voices on CD.
Once chosen, the sperm remains frozen and stored until needed. Then it can be shipped anywhere.
While women can inseminate themselves at home, both April and Katherine used fertility specialists.
Many of these donors have already proven their fertility.
"It's an excellent way of getting pregnant because you usually have men who have confirmed pregnancy," said Dr. Brian Kaplan, a fertility specialist with Fertility Clinics of Illinois.
"We are creating a real potential disaster here," said Elizabeth Marquardt with New York City's Affiliate Scholar Institute for American Values.
Some critics are concerned that as this practice becomes more popular, and that with an unknown number of children from the same donor, that two of them might unknowingly hook up.
"In the future, we will have to have a DNA test with anyone we want to have sex with just to make sure we're not related to them," Marquardt said.
Many sperm banks say they try to limit pregnancies based on geographic area to reduce that risk. However, in a transient society, it may be hard to do.
Critics also worry how this might change the definition of family.
"As a society, we're saying fathers don't matter," Marquardt said.
Thirteen-year-old Liz Herzog, whose father is donor number 1002 from Virginia's Fairfax Cryobank, says she's happy with her life.
"I can't even say that once in a while I wish I had a father, because I don't," she said.
Through the Donor Sibling Registry Web site, she has discovered at least 10 half-sibling and has met seven, including Callie from Pennsylvania.
Liz's mother, Diana, thinks these newly forged relationships will last a lifetime.
"You can only hope that your child will be well-adjusted and happy enough when they grow up that they won't feel that they're missing too much," Diana Herzog said.
April's daughter, Julia, is now almost three years old.
"When she was born, it was just amazing," April said.
Katherine's daughter, Alexandra, is eight months old.
Both are enjoying every moment motherhood has to offer.
"It is so much greater than I had any idea," Katherine said.
April, Julia's mom, knows of six half-siblings so far.
All of the single moms we spoke with think the possibility of meeting and dating a half-sibling is very remote because they are very open or plan to be open with their children.
It is interesting to note that back when sperm banks first opened in the 1970s, it was all married couples seeking sperm donors. Doctors say those couples were more likely to keep it secret.
Good for you for realizing that. So many women feel like they need a man for their children, without realizing how tough it is on the kids to have another man around, when when they already have a Daddy. Probably wouldn't be the same with a woman who is a widow, because her kids likely wouldn't have the same animosity toward someone she's dating.
Still, kids need their Moms, if she is the only parent in the house, and the tension created for her by trying to please two different 'camps' is tough on everyone.
Do they expect Mr. Goodbar or Mr. Godot to come by earlier?
Oh, do you think the baby should be killed instead?
I've been reading this thread since it was posted, and have some issues with the entire idea and so decided to sit it out.......until now.
Marajade has taken quite a bit of abuse for her stance here and has held her own, but because of a situation in my life I have to chime in here.
My daughter is almost 8, her best friend just turned 8. Her best friend's mother has become a close friend of mine, even though she is close to half my age. My daughter's best friend was conceived of a rape. My friend chose to have and keep her baby even though she was only 16 at the time. I would nominate this young woman as mother of the year in a heartbeat.
She has since married and now also has a 19 month old and you would never know that the older girl is not Daddy's girl. and at the risk of the wrath of my own husband and father of my child, I would nominate him as father of the year for BOTH of those girls.
We do not live in a cookie cutter world and there are no absolutes.
And those of us who are able should be asking if she needs any help from us. I must applaud her greatly for the decision she had made.
There are many posters in this thread that through no mistake of her own, wouldn't even consider marriage material. How terribly sad of a tale of society of today is that.
They're will need to carry a DNA signature with them so they can compare and weed out half-siblings. New use for cell phones, I guess (you saw it here first - recorded for posterity).
Yep.
Beer goggles? ;o)
Who needs a husband when you've got a rich uncle [sam]
Yep.
What I meant to say is, what if they are hideously ugly? I mean really, scare-little-children-on-the-street, elephant man ugly? And fat? What if they were morbidly obsese? Eight or nine hundred pounds and going through seven or eight buckets of KFC a day, the grease dripping from their acne-scarred faces in great, slow globules and over fingers the size and general shape of enormous sausages...
p.s.
But they still had "nice personalities."
Even they swore they would'nt touch one that stank. I had my doubts.
I'm talking farther on down the line here. This has been going on for quite a while, but when women start selling their ovum, then it will get a little messy. You know it's not just single women who take advantage of sperm donors. Infertile couples utilize these "services". This occurance could certainly happen in the generations to follow.
If African Americans fear Sickle Cell in their offspring, they most certainly get tested for that genetic abnormality, and the same for Jewish couples for Tay Sachs.
As far as the old fashioned bumpin' bellies, there are a lot of jokes out there. "Daddy stop it, yer crushin' my Marlboros"! Maybe I'm being an alarmist, but people need to be prudent. What ever happened to adoption?
...and some on this thread are uncaring, cruel even, to the plight of these women.
I think you're imagining a problem which cannot follow from the practices of egg and sperm donation. First of all, the few bits of serious research on the subject have shown that the incidence of serious genetic problems in children whose parents are very closely related is quite miniscule. Full siblings have the highest incidence, but still very low. Half-siblings and first cousins have rates that are negligible. I don't think there's been any empricial research (probably for lack of a large enough verified sample pool) of the offspring of parent-child sets of parents.
On top of that, the only incidences of widespread genetic problems have been in very small populations which interbred almost exclusively for many, many generations. That's simply not what's going on with egg and sperm donation. These aren't members of insular groups like the Saudi or Russian royal families, or of insular cults like the Mormon polygamist groups. Nor are the same egg and sperm donors being used across generations -- there's a very narrow age range accepted for donation through any remotely reputable agency, and most individual donors donate for a much shorter segment of their lives than the official age limits (i.e. men usually just for a couple of years while in college or grad school, and most women donate only once and few donate more than a handful of times.
Furthermore, genetic testing is fast approaching the point where people can easily check for genetic problems before having children, and an increasing number undoubtedly will. I recently read an article about an ultra-orthodox Jewish community, in which the rabbi normally must approve all marriages before they happen. Due to the high incidence of serious genetic diseases in this population (e.g. Tay-Sachs in particular), which is due in large part to being a small, insular, multi-generational interbreeding group, there is an increasingly popular voluntary service in which young men and women of marrying age have themselves tested for the common diseases, with the results being held confidentially (even from the testees), and shared with the rabbi only when a couple is being proposed for marriage. The rabbi then nixes the marriage if both parties are carriers for the same disease -- still with nobody but the rabbi and the testing agency knowing what disease(s) the parties were carriers for, or even if that was definitely the reason the rabbi nixed the marriage.
Problems caused by technology are usually quickly solved by technology as well. One enterprising adolescent boy tracked recently tracked down his sperm donor father through a combination of his own DNA test results, and online genealogy oriented DNA databases, and the very skimpy personal info normally provided to purchasers of donated sperm (e.g. ethnic background, major physical characteristics, level of education and major, number of siblings, etc.). The kid actually only directly found a close relative who had registered on a DNA database for genealogy purposes, and contacted that person, who checked with the actual donor (maybe checking with a handful of relatives who might have been sperm donors), who then agreed to be identified and meet the kid (probably quite proud of what a smart kid his genes had turned out).
Your worry is no more statistically well-founded than a young adult who knows he/she is adopted being worried that his/her prospective spouse might be a sibling or half-sibling. Yes, it COULD happen, but it would be so rare, and the chances of any serious negative consequences so tiny even in the rare cases it does happen, that nobody should be losing any sleep over it.
"Daddy stop it, yer crushin' my Marlboros"!
Okay, that's one I haven't heard. Please enlighten me...
Where do you see a "plight?"
Now there's a novel concept . . . ./sarc
Where do you see a "plight?"
Hugely, fat ugly women unable to get some guy drunk to get pregnant. You don't call that a plight?
Again, Shrinks, the number of war dead from Iraq/Afghanishtan is 0.000000013% of the total male population in the US. And that assumes all war dead are fathers. And if "going off on an arithmetic spree" by citing simple statistics to expose your analysis is troubling, well, welcome to FR. Facts count.
Nope, there's not such thing...only hugely fat ugly women unable to get the guy they want drunk enough to get them pregnant ;o)
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