Defining 'dad' down: are sperm donors fathers?

For some time now, sperm banks have trolled college campuses looking for good-looking, athletic, high-IQ men over 5 feet 9 inches to sell their seed. For the guys who apply and qualify, it's an attractive no-strings-attached way to get some extra walking-around money: anonymity guaranteed; legal responsibility nil; and cash for doing something they would likely do anyway. As one sperm bank's slogan proclaims: "Why not get paid for it?"

No one would try to pass off a cash-for-sperm transaction as a high-minded act of altruism, much less as the achievement of fatherhood. At least not until this past Father's Day, when a spate of stories in the national press featured the anonymous sperm seller as the newest and proudest father on the block.

The Washington Post ran a long story in its magazine featuring Donor 929, a forty-five-year-old divorced California artist. He is tracked down by a Massachusetts single mother who has had two children conceived with his sperm and now wants to build a family relationship with him. A tender tale ensues. The kids even get a chance to tour the sperm bank where he made his deposit, peer into the tanks holding frozen semen, and get a souvenir sperm pin. The Rocky Mountain News carried a heartwarming column on a twenty-two-year-old donor-conceived man who wants to remember his sperm father as well as the father who raised him. Perhaps the most widely read tribute came from the advice columnist known as Abigail Van Buren, one of the nation's leading arbiters of social propriety. Her syndicated Father's Day column included a letter from "Thankful Mom in Michigan" expressing gratitude to all the "nameless, faceless men" who have provided sperm to help her and countless women like her "make their lives complete." Abby echoed the thankful mom's sentiment: "I'm sure that your letter will be appreciated not only by the donor who shared his own genetic material to help you become a mother, but by many others as well. It proves the truth of the saying, 'The most meaningful gift is the gift of self.'"

In all these stories, one common conceit emerges: a cold-cash transaction has been elevated into a gift relationship. And the guy who sells a vial of sperm to a cryobank for fifty dollars has been transformed into a guy who has thoughtfully chosen to give single women or lesbian couples (the majority of the sperm-bank customers) the gift of motherhood. He's even gained a warm and fuzzy new name: the "donor dad."

C'mon. The anonymous sperm donor hardly fits the definition of a donor. Unlike the volunteer donor, he doesn't "give" without expectation of monetary reward. He sells the stuff of life to a commercial vendor. And the commercial vendor--the sperm bank--isn't like a blood or organ bank where donations are given and received without regard to an individual's race, class, education, religion, physical appearance, or intellectual ability. Sperm banks select gametes from a select group of men who are college-educated, white, and tall, and have other highly desirable physical and mental characteristics.

Nor is the sperm seller a "dad" in any meaningful sense of that word. His paternal contribution is about as far removed as one could possibly get from the reality, not to mention the ideal, of paternal involvement. He's not present at the moment of conception, not around to sign the birth certificate, much less to pay the bills, help with the homework, or show up at graduation. Indeed, his sole contribution to fatherhood takes place in a small room in the company of soft-porn magazines.

The emergence of the "donor dad" is at odds with a larger social reality as well. For at least a decade, there has been growing national concern about the trend of "father absence." Men who abandon their biological children are now subject to DNA testing, child support orders, even jail time. They are stigmatized as "dead-beat dads." How then can we explain the glorification of the "donor dad"--the most absent of all absent fathers?

The most sympathetic explanation is that the society is responding to the yearning among donor-conceived children for their biological fathers. But I don't think that is what is driving the Father's Day tributes. More likely, these stories are a response to the changing market for sperm. In the past, infertile married couples were the principal users of sperm banks, and married couples had little interest in tracking down the source of the sperm. Today, though, single women make up a growing share of the market, and some are now seeking an emotional connection with the biofather. In pursuit of their goal, they are bent on endowing an unknown male with paternal virtues and altruistic intentions that go far beyond the terms of the transaction made by a college student for beer money many years ago. And the press, eager to find a fresh angle on the traditional Father's Day story, is happy to indulge their fantasy.