Found out FIL donated sperm 30-40 times, feeling unsettled

[SleepBetter]

My OH recently found out that many decades ago, before he was born, his dad donated sperm... possible 30-40 times, and never told OH. He was young and it was a way of earning extra cash. We found out because someone has been in touch claiming to be one of the donor-conceived children.

This has really unsettled me. I think sperm donation is a very generous thing to do if you've thought it through carefully, but 30 times for cash is unethical. I can see current rules are that sperm from one person can't be donated to more than 10 families, but I don't know what the rules were back then.

I am currently pregnant with our first baby. I'm upset to think OH could be one of a large number of genetic siblings, and that our baby could have a large number of half-cousins. They will never know if someone they meet could be a genetic relative.

I'm just struggling to get my head around it all. How would you feel? Am I over-reacting? Conscious pregnancy hormones might also be playing a role.

I assumed one of the DNA testing sites. But interestingly op didn’t say.

Bit freaky. There's nothing you can do i don't suppose

Try not to think about it

All the ancestry type of tests?
Many people are doing them and finding about siblings they didn’t know they had, paternity that isn’t what they thought it was etc….

@SleepBetter my question to you is why do you find it unsettling to know your DH has some unknown half siblings somewhere?
How is that different from having a family he has lost touch from?
And do you think you’d have the same feelings if those children were the result of ONS and him refusing to have contact with said children?

Many were students studying away from their local areas. It was a very nice earner for impoverished students.

It’s not remotely “unethical”. What tosh. If I found out my FIL had done this my only thought would be that he’s probably helped many couples have a family. How lovely!
I think you’re being ridiculous

Peoples stupid prejudices always emerge on threads like this (not you, OP.)

Plenty of people don’t have access to their generic heritage and as such ‘could’ be having sex with someone related to them. There is far more chance of this happening when men have casual unprotected sex within a mile or so of where they live - the resulting children are much more likely to grow up alongside one another, attend the same schools, potentially start romantic relationships when old enough. We don’t get ‘ewwww’ at that but mention sperm donations and straightaway there we are

It is possible the OPs FIL was tracked down in a variety of ways, I don’t know what the law used to be only what it is now.

@BHRK actually I can see why the OP thinks that. There are clear limits as to how many times you can give sperm now.
And details of who the donor is are kept so the child can contact them if they wish too (once they are 18yo I think).

30~40 years ago things were very different and according to todays standards, it would be a No-No.

But that’s the thing to remember. You can’t judge people for behaving in a certain way because we NOW think it’s not an ok thing to do.

I wonder how many egg donors would care what their FILs think about egg donation, probably not many

I do understand and expect that half siblings unknowingly meeting is partly why the maximum donation rules have been introduced in more recent years. Distant cousins isn't the same though.

At the time he wasn't breaking any rules though and possibly thought he was helping people for a bit of cash so win win.

I can see why your DH is taken aback by all these half siblings if some are getting in touch as I think it was usually anonymous in those days but please don't worry about your children. Even if they do meet a child of one of the half siblings they will be a very distant (half if that's a thing) cousin and I wouldn't think a substantial genetic risk for any children of their own.

I think you're conflating your husband having surprise half siblings with a risk of consanguinuity to your baby hence the worry. Try and process the two separately.

@jessycake They just thought they were doing a good thing helping childless couples and got paid as well

Maybe someone out there thought that🤣. No one I knew. The singular thought was $$ for pizza night or drinks at the pub. We girls felt seriously ripped off as we did not have the ability to make such cash.

I honestly think most of it was likely thrown out. There seriously was buckets of the stuff as there was no limit on visits, and everyone I knew went prolifically. I doubt it could have all been used. It was all anonymous back then and to date I’ve only known one person whose (adult) child has been contacted by someone claiming to be genetically related after doing those ancestry tests. They just replied not interested as while they may have been genetically related, they were not ‘family’. It’s not that big of a deal.

I can see why the OP (though she has left the thread) is unsettled by this. People have very different feelings about the importance of genetic relationships and there are certainly lots of news stories about donor 'siblings' connecting and finding that meaningful (e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/10/i-discovered-i-have-dozens-probably-hundreds-of-siblings-chrysta-biltons-extraordinary-family-story or https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/magazine/sperm-donor-siblings.html?mtrref=undefined&assetType=PAYWALL&mtrref=www.nytimes.com&assetType=PAYWALL

Presumably this person does find the connection valuable and there might well be 10s of others who get in touch too. Even if the OH doesn't see the genetic connection as important himself (he might do, I don't think she has said) there'd be a difficult decision on whether to have any kind of contact and how to manage that given the emotions that might be involved. That's primarily about the OH but if he does get involved with new 'family' relationships then that affects the OP too.

Things were indeed very different in OP's FIL's day as others have mentioned. Some have suggested it was in the early days of IVF i.e. late 70s, but before IVF there was AID, Artificial Insemination by Donor when the donated sperm would be used to inseminate the prospective mother at a clinic. Semen donation was anonymous and there was no way of knowing that genetic parents would be traceable in the future. What the FIL did was totally ethical at the time.

Big shock for your dh - and I would imagine for FIL too. I suspect there are lots of young men today who are donating for a bit of extra money who haven't really thought through the implications of that decision. I once, in my early 20s, considered being an egg donor. At the time, it seemed like 'not a big deal' for what (via a private arrangement outside the UK, not sure how these things work here) would have been a life-changing amount of money for a 20-something. I'm grateful now that I didn't do it, as it's actually a very big deal.

But for you dc, it's not really a big deal at all. I have cousins out there that I don't know. I'm NC with my family and my parents were largely NC with their family. I don't even know my cousins names, certainly wouldn't know their children or grandchildren if my dc were to bring one home as a date. Never mind, I also have a half brother out there who I don't really know and I have no idea if he has children either. So there are oodles of potentially close family relations who I couldn't tell from the lady at the till in Tesco.

Hardly a ‘big shock’ for the Fil.

I don't think the prospect of your baby having unknown half cousins is an issue, my Dad's father was one of 13 and Dad is one of, 5 we have cousins all over them place and no one's kept in touch, I don't know my cousins.

The idea of having many half siblings I don't know would unsettle me though.

That makes sense. No one has as many unique ancestors as they “ought” to have, because if you go back 30-40 generations, your total number of ancestors would amount to more than the total number of people who have ever existed.

This article explains it better than I could and just taught me a new term, “pedigree collapse”.

https://whoareyoumadeof.com/blog/how-many-ancestors-do-you-have/

There’s one branch of my family tree that has been traced back to rural Devon in the 1600s. Some of their descendants still live in Devon. There are no recorded cases of incest in the family, but you can’t help notice three surnames recurring again and again, as three local families kept intermarrying.

My friend likes to claim that the invention of the bicycle increased the average distance between the birthplaces of spouses from one mile to thirty miles.

goes back two centuries has 193,000 living cousins who are sixth cousins or closer

That looks too high.
Are you assuming that all the ancestors alive 200 yrs ago have all their living descendants in UK? And that there were no cousin marriages in those 200 years?

I think the real number is more like 20-40k by 6th cousin generation. A lot of people did not end up with any living descendants after a few generations, it's shocking how many lines die out. And family size shrank by about 1900, as sanitation improved.

Not me, it's the Ancestry website. Take it up with them.

You're not overreacting at all.

This could have repercussions fprnyour OH and your children that might be serious.

There are several excellent reasons why the rules around sperm donation have changed. Your FIL's history is an example of one of them.

Having the same grandfather is hardly a distant cousin! Astounded at at the people on here that are ok with having sex or a baby with their close cousin. Says alot about British people 😳🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮

Agree! There's a very good reason this isn't legal anymore!

This isn't about you. It's your husbands journey.

How on earth did you learn this?

How utterly unseemly that he broadcast the information years later, to family. What a pig.

What a weird take.

Presumably he told his son because the approach from one donor child made him think about it after so many years and he thought that his son would want to know.

Would you not want to know if you had several genetic half-siblings out there? It's not impossible that they could have contacted the OP's DH directly.

Though many people wouldn’t do it (and it’s perfectly OK to have whatever feelings about that as you like), there is a reason it’s not illegal to marry your first cousin in the UK - it’s not genetically harmful.

The likelihood of inherited genetic disease in the offspring of first cousins is 4-7%. In the general population it’s 3-4%.

A half first cousin is nothing to get worked up about. It’s best (and safe) to forget about it. Everyone’s family tree will be teeming with cousin marriages - it was very widely considered beneficial to do so historical.

Ick factor aside, the risk of harm is minuscule.