Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm not in the habit of asking the internet for advice but my wife and I have stumbled into something that has put us way out of our element and quite frankly the nature of the question severely limits even the number of people in our lives we can solicit advice from so You get to weigh in.
For whatever reason, my wife is a magnet for LGBTQ+ people. Roughly half of her friends fall into this category. I have theories as to why this is the case but they are unimportant. One such couple is a married lesbian/bisexual pair who we have been good friends with since college. There's a running joke about us having a threesome with the bisexual, who is really quite fetching. It works as a joke for us because my public stance on group sex is "Dear Lord spare me from that awful group sex. All that commotion."
Well it looks like the chickens have come home to roost. They invited us to dinner last night, which they hardly ever do, and asked us if we would be cool with me fathering a child with the bisexual. My wife choked on her drink and I made a joke that I'd only agree if we did it the old-fashioned way rather than IVF which didn't land because that was, in fact, their plan. My wife understandably rejected that idea outright and couldn't even be mollified by a promise that it only be missionary with the lights off and I'd try super-hard to think of her, so now the question is do I contribute genetic material into a plastic cup some time in the near future.
I'm willing (and kinda want) to do this. We have a gaggle of kids of our own so it's not like I'm going to run off to play dad. We also have come to the conclusion that lawyers are going to be heavily involved beforehand to keep us free of financial obligation and limit any parental rights my wife and I may have claim with the possible exception of the couples' untimely death.
But even so, this seems like a big ask from them, and kind of risky w/r/t our marriage. The couple is pretty enthusiastic about my involvement though, so my wife is quite concerned that a "no" from us will damage the friendship irreparably. Why me specifically? I'm well-liked, have a family history of longevity, I'm smart and conscientious enough to be a physician (at least by training), and (perhaps somewhat cynically) a 6'4" formerly muscle-bound football player. Like Sydney Sweeny I've got good genes even if I'm a 4/10 in the face with abnormally long alien limbs. Plus we live in the same area so we'd have the chance to be involved at least somewhat. We see these two semi-regularly. That may be a downside though! We do have a plausible out that could spare us in that I'm over the age of 40, which I think is when most sperm banks won't take donations.
Thoughts? It hasn't even been 24 hours since we've been thinking about potential problems so I'm sure you guys could come up with new ones to think about. We're kinda Christian but this kinda stretches the whole "love thy neighbor" thing a bit.
Legally you're probably in the clear, dependent on which state it is.
Pragmatically... if they're friends... you're going to see this kid regularly. Your kids will presumably also know of/find out of this kid's existence.
Your wife will eventually see, as the kid grows, a child that looks like you... but not like her.
From my perspective there's too many ways this spirals emotionally out of control over the next couple decades. This isn't a 'fire and forget' scenario where you don't have to know there's a kid out there.
And the fact that they were suggesting it be done via direct injection is bold to say the least.
And it may depend on how you philosophically/theologically conceive of your 'duties' to your children. Are they innate from nature? Prescribed by God? Or merely socially constructed and can be accepted, transferred, or cut off at will.
For example, what if the alternative was they paid you and your wife to bear another child and then allow them to adopt it at birth? Would you feel weird handing over a biological child of yours to a different couple?
Isn't this at least half as weird as that? If you learn that the kid has a genetic disease would you feel at all responsible? Or, if the kid gets seriously injured at some point, how emotionally distant do you think you'd be?
And here's a vanishingly unlikely 'worst case scenario': what if all of YOUR kids end up dead before you... would you feel compelled to make this kid your heir of all your assets (after your spouse, of course) on account of the genes?
Just trying to feel out the emotional boundaries and your overall openness.
From the 1000 foot view, its good that this will help with TFR, but that doesn't mean it has to be YOU.
I also had the absolutely horrible idea that the situation could be somewhat defused by playing 'semen roulette' where there's six prospective fathers she chooses and the genetic material that gets used is then picked at random. Obviously one can figure out the truth later. Would that make it MORE or LESS awkward?
There's some gay guys (and arguably the entire sperm donation industry) that work on paternity roulette logic. Even for gay guys where it's just so they don't really have to think about who's the 'real' dad, though, it's kinda messy, and not just literally. These days, you can figure out the answer for a couple hundred bucks, obviously, but even if everyone involved credibly commits to never doing that (and the alternatives aren't obvious), it's just denying the questions, rather than actually handling them.
These things all have answers. Especially for soccons who care the most about this stuff, there are sometimes even doctrinal answers, but even most gay guys who only truck with the church when nailing complaints to the door have pretty good ideas about what they wished their fathers had been like. Dropping the odds to 1/6th only really gives an excuse to forget about or delay obligations and responsibilities, rather than making them actually not exist.
From a purely 'scientific' perspective, I wonder what the odds have to rise to before a guy no longer feels interested in confirming or dis-confirming his paternity. 1/1000? 1/10,000? I feel like if there was a 1/1,000,000 chance of it being my kid, without some additional Bayesian observations, I'd not consider it worthwhile to check into it.
From the child's perspective, however, I'd guess that learning that there are 10,000 possible fathers out there only steepens their drive to identify the one. From their view its not a 10,000 to 1 shot of being related... its a 100% chance of being related to one of the 10,000.
Honestly that right there is the factor that makes this entire thing a boondoggle.
It doesn't matter HOW emotionally distant or HOW legally protected you are, no matter how they raise the child it is entirely possible and probably more likely than not that they'll decide to bring this issue up and confront you about it and thus force an emotional reckoning, no matter how you or the other couple wishes it to be handled.
You're placing bets on how this future human will behave, what they'll believe, and how they'll handle this piece of knowledge, and whether it will thus impact your own life many, many years after the decision is made.
You don't have a say about how socially acceptable this particular arrangement will end up being in the future, either. Granted, you can't be certain that heterosexual monogamous marriages will be looked well upon by then either but I think the precautionary principle still favors not getting so experimental with another person's wellbeing.
This argument can probably be extended to cover all surrogacy/sperm donor situations and a good portion of adoptions, I guess.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link