2008 Woodie Awards
New Motherhood
Defining "father" in a society where an increasing number of women rely on artificial insemination from sperm donors.
Karina Mc Cabe
Issue date: 4/14/06 Section: Life & Times
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Imagine a scene 30 years from now when the next generation of Americans is planning to marry and raise families. Quickly, though, the scene cuts to a more foreboding image of offices where couples nervously await DNA test results because, in their reality, their "father" could have produced 1,000s of children. If the test proves the couple to be half-siblings, they will have to try again to find another partner-a seemingly impossible task in a city riddled with children born from anonymous sperm donors.
This does not have to be the outcome of today's fertility situation. Yet, many women today face an equally daunting task: the reality that Mr. Right may not necessarily appear before their biological clocks stop ticking. Nevertheless, with an increasing presence in educational institutions and the workforce, these women are equipped with the personal and financial independence to care for a child on their own. This explains why so many are now opting to fulfill their maternal inclinations through in-vitro fertilization at sperm banks.
While sperm banks have been a viable option for quite a while, they have recently altered their course of anonymity to a point where women can now enter a family planning clinic and select a donor from a series of photographs and biographies. Furthermore, if the donor has given prior approval, many women can also select an option to have the donor play a father-figure role in her child's life.
"If I were a woman, I wouldn't want it," Hoyt Edge, assistant Dean of Student Affairs at Rollins College said, wrinkling his forehead in disdain. "I don't know that I would take a chance with a donor who wants to play a role…I mean, what kind of father is this? How much intervention would he have?" Indeed, Mr. Edge strikes the cord of dilemma in this proposal: what is a father?
With more children born into non-conventional relationships, in this case, a biological mother with a sperm-donor father figure, the standard definitions of parental roles are no longer valid. "A father is someone who takes care of you… a father is not someone to have a 50-percent relationship with a child," Sergio Abril, '09, explains, of the currently accepted definition. This, basically, breaks down into a relationship in which the paternal figure, who shares his child's genetic code, cares for both the financial and psychological welfare of his offspring. Increasingly, though, it is more acceptable for a non-biological paternal figure to assume the financial and psychological role of a father.
This does not have to be the outcome of today's fertility situation. Yet, many women today face an equally daunting task: the reality that Mr. Right may not necessarily appear before their biological clocks stop ticking. Nevertheless, with an increasing presence in educational institutions and the workforce, these women are equipped with the personal and financial independence to care for a child on their own. This explains why so many are now opting to fulfill their maternal inclinations through in-vitro fertilization at sperm banks.
While sperm banks have been a viable option for quite a while, they have recently altered their course of anonymity to a point where women can now enter a family planning clinic and select a donor from a series of photographs and biographies. Furthermore, if the donor has given prior approval, many women can also select an option to have the donor play a father-figure role in her child's life.
"If I were a woman, I wouldn't want it," Hoyt Edge, assistant Dean of Student Affairs at Rollins College said, wrinkling his forehead in disdain. "I don't know that I would take a chance with a donor who wants to play a role…I mean, what kind of father is this? How much intervention would he have?" Indeed, Mr. Edge strikes the cord of dilemma in this proposal: what is a father?
With more children born into non-conventional relationships, in this case, a biological mother with a sperm-donor father figure, the standard definitions of parental roles are no longer valid. "A father is someone who takes care of you… a father is not someone to have a 50-percent relationship with a child," Sergio Abril, '09, explains, of the currently accepted definition. This, basically, breaks down into a relationship in which the paternal figure, who shares his child's genetic code, cares for both the financial and psychological welfare of his offspring. Increasingly, though, it is more acceptable for a non-biological paternal figure to assume the financial and psychological role of a father.
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