12 Sperm Donor Kids On What It’s Like Growing Up Without Knowing Your Biological Father At All

1. “It’s a little weird because when you tell your middle school friends your dad was a sperm donor they all look at you like you were made in a lab.”

—Aria, 22

2. “My parents were married when they decided to consider using a sperm bank to conceive. I will say that while I love my Dad and consider him to be my ‘real’ Dad I do wish that I was also genetically his. It’s not the same as being adopted and it’s not the same as having a step-father where you know you have a real Dad somewhere who your Mother (hopefully) cared about at one point. It’s kind of this odd grey area where you’re both completely a part of the family and only partially part of the family.”

—Erin, 25

3. “Sperm donation is such a niche thing to do that I wonder what my biological Dad is really like. Sperm isn’t rare and difficult to extract like eggs so it makes me wonder why he thought he should donate sperm in the first place. Like, was he an egomaniac or was he broke or what?”

—David, 19

4. “I imagine that the struggles I experienced growing up were similar to those of adopted children in a lot of ways. I related strongly to my mother’s family and I looked like they looked. While I love my father’s family I can’t say that I feel a real connection with them now that I’ve grown up. It’s not something I can help even though I wish I felt differently.”

—James, 28

5. “Unlike with adoption where a family chooses a baby based more on feelings and connection, half of me was chosen based on the statistics of a donor who had to be within a certain statistic of acceptability on height, education, etc. There’s something inherently distasteful about that knowledge for me like my mother picked me off the shelf in this cold way. It’s not her fault, that’s how it’s done but it’s still an odd feeling.”

—Richard, 25

6. “It’s never bothered me or anything. My parents and I have a great relationship and I don’t feel like I’d really be any different if my Dad was my biological Dad. I don’t really share that I was a sperm donor baby though because kids in elementary school looked at me funny when I first found out and started telling people. It might be interesting to know about my biological Dad but I also feel like that would complicate my life in a useless way.”

—Grace, 32

7. The main thing I’ve wondered is how many half brothers and sisters I might have. As an only child I wondered this a lot when I was in middle school and I still wonder about it now. One? Twenty? More than the idea of meeting my biological father I’d love to meet any half siblings I might have. What has their life been like? Do they look like me? Would we recognize ourselves in one another? These are things I very much still think about.

—Mary, 35

8. “I’ve worked out my feelings about it now but my parents made the terrible decision to not tell me that I was the result of sperm donation until I was nearly 17. It really, really messed me up emotionally and I didn’t come to grips with it until I was nearly out of college. I spent several years truly resenting my dad who loves me and was a wonderful father to me.”

—Mark, 26

9. “One thing that bothered me growing up and I don’t think she did it on purpose was that my mother always referred to my biological father as a ‘donor’ rather than as a person. It was unconscious but that made me feel like half of me wasn’t real somehow and I think a lot of depression I had during my teen years was because of this feeling.”

—Cynthia, 24

10. “Most people just assume that all sperm donors are anonymous and most are but you can choose to be an open donor or a closed donor. My biological dad chose to be an open donor. It wasn’t until I was nearly thirty that I actually decided to try to contact him and I’m glad that I did. I waited until I was married and had a family of my own before I did it though because I didn’t want meeting him to destabilize me emotionally any more than it had too. Turns out that he’s a great guy. My parents were a little worried about me meeting him at first but now I feel like I just have more family and meeting him did explain some things about my own life that I’d previously struggled with.”

—Michael, 40

11. “It’s a different way to grow up but I’ve never wanted to meet my biological dad. I think that I’m just scared to find out he was some broke college student jacking off in a cup for pizza and beer money.”

—Jim, 31

12. “My mother waited until last year when my father died of a heart attack to tell me that my biological dad was a sperm donor. I’ve only spoken to her once since then it made me so mad. I know that I will at some point but I’m just not there yet.”

—Daria, 29