To be sad about reasons behind niece’s choice

[EWAB]

I know this has nothing to do with me before anyone has a go at me.

I have sadly never been close to my nieces and nephews which is a source of real sadness to me. My siblings and I are close but they haven’t been interested in bringing the children together.

My niece is 23 and has spent a long time in The States as sister’s husband often works over there. They have a very different life to us.

My niece is in London studying but is all but done bar her dissertation. She invited me and my sons out to lunch and obviously we asked her what she is doing next. She is going to pursue a doner conceived baby.

This has always been her intention as she wants her children to be only her children. She doesn’t want to share them and doesn’t want a potential stepmother in their life if a relationship broke up.

The fact that she has a fibroid has spurred her to do this about five years earlier than she planned. I am so sad about her reasons for doing this. If it was ONLY because of the fibroids I wouldn’t be that sad.

I know it’s not my business.

All those saying it’s a “wise” choice- are you aware that studies show boys do better with a father/strong male influence in their lives?

from her pov it may be a good choice, but what about the child?

if she has a boy, he will grow up and learn that his mum actively chose to not give him a paternal relationship, and basically that she thinks men are pointless, good for their sperm and that’s it.

i grew up without a father. Yes it does make an impact. Even if you know he had no choice not to be there you wonder what he was like, your genetics, what your life would be like. Every man you pass in the street you look at and wonder. You wonder if he knew would he want to be in your life.

increasingly as well medical info is based on familial history.

Same for this well educated woman here too. I think it's a shame that some people don't recognise the value of being a mother and the joy it can bring or just that human connections are worth so much more than a career.

I was busy raising children at that age who have been very well cared for and grown into fantastic young adults.

No, they really aren’t.

But I’ll ask you the same question I asked another poster.

Why do you think that a child having a father means that the child is guaranteed to have a dad?

There is no guarantee. However there is more than a 0% chance.

I think it’s an unusual choice for a such a young woman. I could understand if she’s got to mid/late 30s and always wanted a baby but she’s very young to write off meeting a good man and having a solid relationship. She also doesn’t know for certain what will happen- she may meet someone when she’s older and potentially end up in a blender family.

Is it really that different to a single person adopting ?

I always knew i wanted to be a Mummy, and if I hadn't met dh then I would have considered other ways of becoming one.

And you must be a lot closer than you think for her to tell you of her future hoped for plans.

A “doner” child? Are you sure she didn’t mean she fancied a kebab?

You know, the urge ran through me too like an express train but I resisted.

If only 'cos its still Lent.

Her body, her choice. And sorry, but most certainly not the business of an aunt she's not even particularly close to.

Certainly her reasons for pursuing this do seem a bit sad - to be motivated by a potential negative thing that might happen if there were a partner. And it does seem like not a very healthy attitude to parenting to want a child entirely to yourself and not 'share' them. Risks the child who experiencing too much pressure to be everything to their parent.

I know a few women who have successfully had kids on their own by donor, but in their cases it was because they hadn't met anyone by their mid 30s and really wanted kids.

I get her doing it with worries about fibroids, I suppose, and obviously, you can't say anything, but I would say that you and your sibling should keep an eye to make sure she has an emotionally healthy relationship with the child as he or she grows up.

Speaking as the former owner of a very large fibroid, I’m really glad we didn’t start properly trying before I had the fibroid out. We’d have liked faced a much higher miscarriage risk.

The assessment of the size from scans was underestimated.

Regardless of what method your niece wants to have her children, make sure she considers her options asap (incase she needs to get on an NHS waiting list) as getting them removed early will likely be a ‘minor’ op. Fibroids are a law unto themselves and can have sudden growth spurts, if it reaches a certain size it will be a much bigger operation with longer recovery.

Has she been accepted by a clinic for treatment yet? Because when I did donor conception as a single woman, admittedly 20 years ago, there were very strict rules. It wasn’t just a lifestyle choice. I had to demonstrate it was my only option, as well as proving I had men in my life who’d be role models. I also had to see a counsellor to assess if I was mentally robust enough to cope. Then my case went before a panel which took 6 months! This wasn’t NHS, it was all private. I was mid 30s at the time, with proven declining ovarian reserve. I doubt I’d have been accepted if I was in my early 20s.

I think that is a really sensible choice.

Yes, so were others but not by donar. You were presumably married and knew who fathered your children, you were not going it alone. I think she is far too young to decide to have a child fathered by a donar and, tbh, I don't have much respect for donars (not that that would bother them). It's a bizarre idea. I do get that has a fibroid but we don't know how big, it may be removable and, if not, small enough not to cause miscarriage. Women with fibroids, and other things, have children all the time.

It's the young woman's cynicism about a married relationship which is more concerning than her fibroid, or her age.

My best friend raised 3 alone with no man from when her kids were 2, 1 and a few weeks old. Their dad upped and moved to a different country and hasn’t been seen since. When he was around he was as much use as a chocolate teapot, and she has no family and I didn’t know her then. She was 21 when he left and she’s the best mother I’ve ever known.
having a family around or a partner doesn’t mean you aren’t doing it alone, sometimes it just means you have another adult sized child. Her cynicism of men is justified a lot of the time and she is making a considered choice. Seems very sensible and has her head screwed on to me.

"All those saying it’s a “wise” choice- are you aware that studies show boys do better with a father/strong male influence in their lives?"

I think the key here is a POSITIVE male role model. Unfortunately those are difficult to come by.

My ds won't have his father growing up (his father's decision which I imagine will be difficult for my son as he gets older). His father figures will be his two grandfathers, his uncle and other positive male role models I can place in his life like sports coaches etc.

I waited until I'd met someone who I really, really trusted to have a child and he let us both down completely unexpectedly. As you well know, just because you have a child in a relationship doesn't mean that child will grow up to have their father. Unfortunately a large portion of young men also grow up with horrendous father figures in their lives which creates a myriad of other issues stemming from inter-generational trauma. Ops neice hasn't suggested that all men are pointless. She's looked at the reality of 1 in 4 women being abused and over 50% of marriages ending in divorce and she's made a decision to be a constant in her child's life. There's also nothing to say that she won't go on to get married in future to someone who may step into that father figure role but she will always have full responsibility for her child. She has made a choice to have a child with a doner not to remain celibate for the rest of her life.

I do agree with you about the full access to medical information though.

This was my thought too!

No one knows the future, but deliberately giving a child only 1 parent is selfish.

Might be better off with a donor rather than a kebab.

I don’t think it’s fair to assume that her experience would be exactly the same as yours, I had my first child at 24 and found it nowhere near as bad as everyone around me wanted me to believe.

If I could turn the clocks back I’d do the same as your niece! My children’s Father left ALL parenting to me. When I divorced him, he refused to agree to a parenting plan. He then dragged us through the courts seeking sole custody of my DDs claiming he’d been alienated. It was so traumatic for them being interviewed by social workers and psychologists and being forced to spend time with a man who had never been their caregiver and was furiously angry at having been rejected. When he wasn’t awarded sole custody he stopped seeing them completely…six years now. It would have been a whole lot less stressful to simply have a donor.

I think it’s a great idea. No annoying in-laws either 🤣

It’s not like that now, thankfully.

I’m assuming she has a great job with flexible working and fantastic maternity provision? Or are her parents going to support her financially?

If her fibroids are significant enough to present an issue with future fertility I can kinda see her reasoning, and tbf I can also understand her on the point of not having a co-parent, considering how fucking useless so many men are as fathers. But I also agree with others that she probably has no real understanding of how much work a baby/child is.