Choosing donor sperm

[Anonymous]

I know a well educated man who is also very strange. One day at work, he showed coworkers a picture with his sons. We were confused as he is single and never mentioned family. He explained that he was a sperm donor in medical school and the boys reached out to him. I’m sure he was a popular donor based on paper, but yikes! This is when I realized how much knowing someone’s personality matters. I’d go known donor for this reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know a well educated man who is also very strange. One day at work, he showed coworkers a picture with his sons. We were confused as he is single and never mentioned family. He explained that he was a sperm donor in medical school and the boys reached out to him. I’m sure he was a popular donor based on paper, but yikes! This is when I realized how much knowing someone’s personality matters. I’d go known donor for this reason.

Are there any donor services which allow greater contact with the donor so you can get to know him? And if they exist, at that point you might as well just go the natural insemination route with him.

[Anonymous]

I'm single and I chose a donor who looked like a combo of the only two men I would have considered having children with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know a well educated man who is also very strange. One day at work, he showed coworkers a picture with his sons. We were confused as he is single and never mentioned family. He explained that he was a sperm donor in medical school and the boys reached out to him. I’m sure he was a popular donor based on paper, but yikes! This is when I realized how much knowing someone’s personality matters. I’d go known donor for this reason.

Are there any donor services which allow greater contact with the donor so you can get to know him? And if they exist, at that point you might as well just go the natural insemination route with him.

The challenge with knowing who the donor is is that he could legal sue the birth parents for parental rights/they could sue him for child support. Hence why many people avoid known donors; you need to have contract in place (which means lawyers aka $$$ and even then it’s not necessarily legally binding if one party takes another to court). Open ID donor programs allow donor conceived people to contact their donor via the bank after their 18th birthday, bypassing the legal issues above but allowing the kids and bio parent to connect if they both want to.

[Anonymous]

Known donor can be legally structured such that they do not have parental rights. You should still do the donation process through your clinic to ensure appropriate testing and evaluations.

To answer a previous poster, no you can’t find someone to get to know via a sperm bank. By known donor I mean a family member or friend.

Yes, there are complications, or at least potential complications with this arrangement. However, I think this is outweighed by knowing critical information like the personality of the donor.

Temperament traits are highly heritable. Just because a donor is attractive or intelligent doesn’t mean that they are neurotypical. You really can’t know from the material available.