to be toying with the idea of having a baby alone with donated sperm?

[honeykitten]

Reasonably financially secure, no family whatsoever to help and no man on the horizon (mid 30s.)

I know I am a daft old woman

I can fully understand why someone does it- even after reading all the different views and posts. I can't understand why they wouldn't tell the child from the earliest possible age, but sadly there do seem to be those who keep them in ignorance. Being lied to is the inexcusable thing.

I'm not sure if OP is still around. But I'm a single parent through adoption to a now 8 year old boy. I would have had a child using donor sperm if it had worked.

The issue with looking at adults conceived through donor sperm similar to adult adoptees is that the practice of telling children is now so very different to what it used ot be. Openness is encouraged, children know and can ask questions very early on if they have any, there
is always now the possibility that they will get contact with their donor and certainly will get medical information and basic information.

Having a child is essentially a selfish act. You aren;t doing it for the child benefit but your own, unless you are genetically engineering a scientist to find a cure for cancer.

You just need to think through your own peculiar kind of selfishness and work out whether what you want to do is on the more reasonable end of selfish and whether you can rationalise that to a child.

Many people have babies with arses who don't stick around, after one night stands, when they have no money or no job or no family or health problems. My experience of single parents by choice is that they pretty much think things through better than the norm and tend to be older and more stable.

I as so selfish in so many ways and I (and more importantly my child) have to live with those decisions - I adopted a baby boy from another country as a single parent over 40. You could call me Ms Selfish McSelfish (Professor of Selfish at Oxford University) but I'm happy and for now at least so is my lovely boy.

Good luck whatever you decide.

Interesting point, Kewcumber, and converse is that most of the people who have abortions, do so out of maternal responsability as they feel that they cannot give a child the type of care they feel a child deserves.

I think most people who have abortions do so because they do not feel they want a child at that particular time.

nice post kewcumber

I was also going to say that the received wisdom around telling children their DC story has changed enormously over the years. I think it's very important and the adoption corollary is very relevant.

The woman at the DCN event I went to who felt she had been hoodwinked was the product of a very particular set of ideas about what children need and those ideas have all but died out. She actually barely spoke about the sense of loss of genetic heritage or being denied the right to know her biological father or anything like that - her anguish was associated with the feeling that her parents had lied to her. I can understand why they did what they did in the context of society at the time - they had the sense that the father figure was all-important and since there was a father present in her life (but not her biological father) it was deemed important to protect that. They did what they thought was right though I think today we know that it's not the right approach.

I think the sense of the father figure being sacred in that sense has waned so that today, in a similar situation, she would be brought up to understand that her father was the man who brought her up and loved her but that he was not her biological father - this being the donor - and then she would be helped to assimilate information about the donor over time.

It's also obviously a lot easier to hide a child's genetic origins if a heterosexual couple use donor material. There's a weird thing about men and fertility and 'manliness' too. Someone I used to know had IVF because her husband had sperm with low motility but they told most people it was her with the fertility issues on the basis it was less 'shameful'.

Reading this thread really highlights how our perspectives on DC are influenced by our own experiences. I hadn't fully realised the impact they have.

Yes I think that's very true oddfodd

We understand our own pain about certain things and that informs the decisions we make. I wasn't that upset that I ended up not being able to use a known donor because I was very conscious of the damage caused by a father who is there but not really.

I am much less familiar with the pain of not having a father at all and of not having any knowledge of him for 18 years. So perhaps I was too blasé about this and my children will grow up to tell me that it was the worst thing ever.

I remain positive though. What I do know is that I had a strong and stable mother. My DCs do too. I am hopeful that that strong centre will hold them while they explore their own feelings about this.

I am not in a good position to say one way or the other, but op I would bear in mind that you're asking the question on a parenting site, it shouldn't come as a surprise that people say 'just do it.' It is like going onto a Morris Minor owners club site and say 'should I buy a Morris Minor?'

I'm not saying do or don't go down this route, but I'd take wider soundings, speak with lone parents who have no support (financial or emotional) from the baby's father and see how they manage. If you can get the experience of providing care for a baby for the weekend all the better and remember the people who say 'just do it' (with the best of motivations) won't be the ones trying to do this on their own with no support from family, it will be you.

at Morris Minor owners club.

Mine are expensive to run and temperamental sometimes but with a certain appeal