Those parents can be “closeted” about their kids’ origins, much more than we can. What happens to the kids when parents can lie by default?

It reminds me of a straight couple I know who adopted a baby from China. They often get together with other families who did the same. The other parents are almost all white, but this couple is Asian-American, so the other kids in the group started teasing their daughter, because they didn’t believe she was adopted. The parents had to tell her, “It’s OK honey, you’re really adopted, we promise!”

My point is that this couple could have lied to their kid, but they chose not to, and now their daughter is proud of where she came from.

When we embarked on our route, we questioned very long whether and how this decision would affect our child.

But what pulled us through was a conversation we had with a random passer-by at a New England country store. The lady was originally Dutch, had moved to the US after WWII and had been raised in a very free-thinking environment. She was one of the first children in the US to go to a Waldorf/Steiner school. She raised her children in the same way. One of her children had since become a mormon and moved to Utah and broken all contact with her. I think the conclusion is clear: you can do everything in your power to make your child’s life a fantastic life. Ultimately, though, there are so many factors beyond your control. As a mother of a donor-conceived child, whose donor is and shall remain anonymous (information is destroyed after 5 years), I can only hope that our best effort is good enough.

And finally, when we had our first appointment at the hospital, we were not allowed to choose any criteria. We were told that homosexual couples could do this, so the child would resemble the parents as much as possible. The remark by the counselor was: in heterosexual couples, the father will often not to disclose the donor conception, not even to the child itself. I find that the press often focuses on LGBT couples, but tends to omit the fact that many straight couples are also using donor sperm and eggs to conceive…

i’m sure adopted kids wish they weren’t adopted. they’re thankful for their parents, but wish their birth story were different.

i also feel like a child born as a result of a rape doesn’t like that either… but hey- it’s just a guess.

The donor-conceived don’t like being donor-conceived and are saying so on thier sites.