My son was conceived with donor sperm – but I’m no less a ‘real man’ for that

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/02/donor-sperm-real-man-shortage

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This week Britain’s national sperm bank revealed that it currently has only nine registered donors. Laura Witjens, the chief executive of the bank, suggested that they will seek to boost numbers by urging potential donors to prove themselves to be a man. Apparently, this is how it’s done in Denmark. “If I advertised saying ‘Men, prove your worth, show me how good you are’, then I would get hundreds of donors,” said Witjens.

Related: UK sperm bank has just nine registered donors, boss reveals

Seventeen years ago I was unable to prove my manhood in this way, and so I became a father of a child through assisted conception with donor insemination. When I found out that my sperm wasn’t working, I didn’t feel that I’d come up short as a man. On a rational level I was accepting of the situation. But subconsciously I think I was bothered by the surprising news. Whenever odd jokes were made about firing blanks, the temptation to feel a bit emasculated was there. Comments like Witjens’ would not have helped with coming to terms with my unexpected piece of bad luck.

My son was conceived using donor sperm at an NHS assisted conception unit in central London. We waited until J was born before telling others. Some people were upset, felt bad for us, or specifically bad for me – my mum told me she cried. But they needn’t have felt this way.

When the time seemed right, we told our son and he appeared to take the news in his stride. Briefly, when he was about six, J’s origins flared up as a pressing concern for him – well, for one single night – when he tearfully suggested that actually I was only his “fake dad”. But the anxiety disappeared, apparently never to return – certainly nothing’s been vocalised to me or his mum since.

Occasionally I check in with him about it, trying to gauge how he feels about his unorthodox conception. I remind him that physically he probably won’t develop in similar ways to me – height, hair duration, etc – and he reassures me that he realises this, and the conversation always ends there. There’s no way I’m going to press J on the matter and turn it into an issue, when he plainly doesn’t wish to dwell on it.

Although I rarely give his donor much thought, on the night J was born I wondered fleetingly (and quite irrationally) did he somehow know? Did he stir in his sleep at 3.20am that morning? Is it possible that at some obscure level of comprehension he was aware that his seed made a boy? But of course he wasn’t and will never know. As J was conceived before 2005 (when the law changed removing the right to donor anonymity), he will not be able to enquire about the man who gave up his sperm when he turns 18. We can only hope that this will never be a problem for our son.

When J was little, I worried that eventually he’d grow into a moody, grumpy teen, and one day he would lose it and shout at me something like “and you’re not even my real dad”. But now he’s that moody and (sometimes) grumpy teen, we don’t actually argue much. And if we do, even at my most paranoid I could never imagine him saying anything like this to me. Because I am his dad – and this truth, like the fact that his mum gave birth to him, is the bedrock of his life story.

The thing about assisted conception is that it’s an elective, considered act of parenting. There’s nothing accidental about it: you get tested; you are evaluated and assessed with some rigour; you sign forms, you go back and forth, you jump through hoops – you actively make that child happen. The commitment to J started at the fertility clinic.

I’ve been a rubbish dad far too many times – so many mistakes and crap decisions; bad advice, useless advice, no advice; too many sweets; too many hours onscreen; two failed relationships he’s seen come and go. But if there’s been one thing I’ve got right, it is that I am always here for him. This is the real challenge: being there as a parent, day after day, is how you man up and prove yourself.

I understand sperm banks feel a need to be more bold to increase donations – without them I wouldn’t have a son. But it is odd for a medical organisation to associate manhood with sperm count. It might be good short-term PR, but there must be better ways to get more men to masturbate into a cup.

The truth is that sperm doesn’t always work. Do we really wish to pose this inevitable fact as a thing of shame? From shame can arise the urge to hide. If Dad has “failed” as a man, maybe it should be concealed, from friends and family, possibly even from the child.

While we need new donors to give more couples the chance to conceive, we must also make sure that the families already being created through assisted conception feel proud and good about this miracle of science. This should be a story about success, not failure.