SUMMER REPLAY: When your teenage son wants to follow in your footsteps as a sperm donor

An indie donor describes the many ways donation has affected his personal life and why he discourages his son from taking the same path.

This post was originally published in HeyReprotech on 23 May 2023.

Intended parents sometimes describe their donor as "a nice man who gave us a seed." Recruiters talk about "helping." Fertility doctors express their gratitude and use words suggestive of charitable giving. But in the world outside assisted reproduction, sperm donation is still more likely to elicit sniggers and taunts.

10 minute read

Recently, I spoke to a 38-year-old single Ontario dad, who I'll call TCB, who is an independent sperm donor. (He has three children of his own, but parentage arrangements are complicated.) He began donating sperm in 2021, and so far, four children have been born through his donations.

He told me about how his decision to be a donor has affected relationships in his workplace, his romantic life, his family, his church, his son's school and with people he encounters in wider society. He also described how he wrestled with his son's interest in donating too.

Workplace

TCB was surprised by how much time sperm donation takes. He assumed he would be able to help recipients entirely outside of work hours. But he discovered that that wasn't always possible.

Some people live a distance away. Some have work hours that conflict with his. And ovulation is surprisingly hard to predict in advance.

When he first started donating, he found he was regularly scheduling days off work, or asking to leave early at short notice. Sometimes he extended his lunch breaks. "It was very hard to juggle," he says.

He works in railway maintenance and track repair — a job that involves teamwork and deadlines. Even though he was not being paid for the hours he didn't work, he knew that his absences inconvenienced his co-workers and affected work timelines.

His boss called him aside one day and asked what was going on. TCB told him he was "donating." His boss understood that he was doing some kind of charity work and TCB didn't clarify: "I was trying not to get into an awkward conversation with him. And I said, 'Yeah, it's charity.' So we kind of left it at that."

But his co-workers looked him up on social media and discovered that his charity work was sperm donation. His boss called him in again. He told him he didn't appreciate that he hadn't been more candid.

"I think that was a polite way to tell someone they got caught lying," he says. "So I told him, 'I would consider it charity. I'm not trying to be smart, but, you know, I am doing it in good faith to help someone.' " His boss disagreed, wrote him up, and told him not to ask for any more time off.

He also gave him advice: stop donating sperm. It will only distract you. It will damage your career. And if you end up going to court, it could take you down.

Looking back, TCB admits that, when he first started, he was making promises to too many recipients. At his busiest, he was working with seven different people all at once. Now he has a limit of two per month.

I asked why he had prioritized donation over work. He said he knew from Facebook posts that one of the greatest frustrations for recipients was donors not showing up. "They do have a clock," he says, "and it really bothers them when they waste a month. I didn't want them to think that I was bailing."

Dating

TCB has been surprised by how women he dates view sperm donation. He used to mention it up front, but he now waits until after they know a bit more about him.

He has found women very curious about donation, but overall uncomfortable. They ask a lot of questions. Why does he do it? What's wrong that he feels a need to do it? What if the children come after him in future? What if the recipients come after him? Some call him immoral. Some worry what other people will think about it. Some girlfriends' families see donation as a red flag.

One date asked him if he had any kids, and he told her he had three. Later, when she learned about the children born through donation, she said she wished he'd been more forthcoming — in her view, he had more than three kids.

One woman said she was fine with the donating. He was dating her while he was helping out the second couple. But she was fixated, he says, on whether the recipient had feelings for him. She didn't like that they met in person. So TCB asked if she wanted to come along and meet the recipients, and she did. The recipients were intrigued, too, and asked her if she was okay with it, and she said yes.

But she continued to feel uneasiness. She wasn't convinced there were no feelings between them. To allay her concerns, he gave her the password to his phone and allowed her to inspect all the text messages that had passed between them. There was nothing untoward. But when he later added recipients as Facebook friends, his girlfriend felt threatened.

TCB always starts donations with AI ("artificial insemination," which typically involves masturbating into some kind of cup). But on two occasions, when that method had repeatedly failed, a recipient requested NI (for "natural insemination," which is sexual intercourse). Some of his dates, when he explained the process, found the idea of NI repugnant, and wondered out loud how he could have sex, make a child, and then leave.

The girlfriend who was struggling with his sperm donation wasn't specifically concerned about NI, he says — she was troubled by the relationships overall — but she did occasionally ask if he was thinking about the recipients when he was having sex with her.

He says it was never that way. In fact, he finds NI encounters to be mostly "awkward."

TCB is currently single, and although he hasn't given up on the idea of a permanent relationship, he is not entirely hopeful.

I asked him why he didn't just give up donating if his girlfriend was uncomfortable with it. He says he would have considered it if there had been a legitimate problem with a recipient — if she'd been calling him or had feelings for him. But nothing like that has ever happened, he says.

He says his girlfriend knew he was a donor when they started going out. "I wouldn't expect her to change who she is," he says. "If I met her, I met her for who she is."

Family

He told his mother that he was donating sperm. She was surprised but accepting. She mentioned it to his father and brothers, however, and they were opposed.

He's always had a difficult relationship with his father. He says his father had punished him severely as a child, strapping him with a belt, soaking him with the garden hose, locking him in the basement. TCB had run away from home many times and at one point was under the care of Children's Aid.

After learning about the sperm donation, his father called him and was angry. He felt that helping lesbians have families was part of an agenda to destroy the traditional family.

His father has now cut all ties. TCB is no longer invited to family gatherings. He has been removed from the will. Father and son no longer speak. His brothers no longer speak to him either. A cousin told him, "I can't get caught talking to you."

Even his mother (long separated from his father) was put under pressure. The family excluded her from some holidays too, and for a while prevented her from seeing her grandchildren. Although still in touch wth her son, she now refuses to talk about donation.

TCB admits that he underestimated the level of opposition he would face from his family.

Church

TCB was raised in a religious family and the church was part of his life. But the members of the congregation did not approve of donating sperm. "I was treated by the church as if I was doing the bidding of the devil," he says.

Church members said they worried about the future of the children. He pointed out he was donating to loving families who couldn't otherwise have children. He asked what the difference was between what he did and adoption — something the church had long been involved in.

Ultimately he was banned from the church. "I think it's because I was pretty harsh. I'm like, 'You guys are hypocrites.' "

School

TCB's oldest child is a son born when he was just 19 years old. The child's mother was a Cuban woman, a decade his senior, who he'd met at a resort. He'd gone back to visit her multiple times. But after the child's birth, TCB's father made him cut ties with his son and his son's mother, threatening to cut off his college fund if he didn't.

Later, through Facebook, the three reconnected, amicably, and a few years ago, as a teen, the boy came to live with TCB.

Recently, however, his son had become the subject of teasing and bullying at school, says TCB. The father of one of the boys at his high school had belonged to the church that had shunned him, and that father had spread the word about sperm donation to his son's peers. Other boys started picking on him.

During a school soccer game, the other father started talking loudly about it on the bleachers. The main objection seemed to be the fact that he was donating to same-sex couples. There was an altercation.

There were other physical fights as well. The school got involved. A teacher told TCB that his activities were distracting to his son. TCB said he felt it was more likely the bullying.

The teacher asked if he'd given any thought to how this may be affecting his son. She said he was only thinking about himself. She called him selfish. He was stunned. He felt he was helping people. "Yeah, I was totally surprised to hear that."

Society

Work, family, church, school... Everyone seemed to take a dim view of sperm donation, from what he could tell.

A social worker told him independent donation was illegal in Ontario. (It is not.) Even a judge didn't seem to understand it.

TCB is currently involved in a custody dispute over his 8-month-old daughter. During one session, the judge was shocked to learn he was a sperm donor and asked how many children he had "in total." TCB replied that the donor children were not his children. The judge then asked how many children he had "produced."

The interaction made TCB nervous. "My palms were sweaty when I was standing in that courtroom. I'm fighting to get access to my daughter, not just for me, but for my son. And I'm so scared that this whole donating thing is going to impede that," he told me. "I don't know what the judge's thinking is. It scared me. I didn't know if that would influence the judge's decision."

He still doesn't know.

Son

Recently, his son mentioned that he might like to become an independent sperm donor like his dad. "We were hanging out. And he just said, 'Yeah, I'm going to do the same thing. That'd be kind of interesting.' "

TCB thought at first he was joking, but he wasn't.

"That was difficult," he admits. "That was very difficult."

TCB says he had learned the hard way that sperm donation was not widely accepted. "There are consequences to this." He told his son that he was young and had his whole life ahead of him. Sperm donation might ruin his marriage prospects. It could hamper his career. What happens if he becomes an executive, he said, or a pop star?  Journalists would dig through his life, and expose that. " 'You've got to think about these things,' " he told him.

He felt he'd always been honest with his son about the mistakes he'd made in his own life. And he didn't want his son to repeat them. "And I told him, 'I don't know if this is a good idea.' "

He feels like there's a big "gotcha" with sperm donation as it is now. There is future legal risk, romantic risk, people judging you. Maybe his son's generation would be different — more understanding. But the way things are now, he knew, not too many people were supportive.

"You can only keep things secret for so long. And then, you know, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. If you keep secrets, people won't trust you — they're like, 'You're hiding something.' But if you're honest, people still won't trust you. So it's a no-win situation."

He thinks his son will probably go ahead anyway. But he wants him to make sure he's ready, and not go into it without a lot of thought.

Updates:

TCB tells me that, since we last spoke, there have been two new pregnancies as a result of his donations. One is six months along and the other, via IVF, is in its third month.

His son, now age 20, ended up not donating sperm. He is pursuing a career as an electrician.

His parental dispute has not been resolved, and so far he has not been able to see his daughter. He feels that being a sperm donor counts against him in family court.