The Birds and the Bees (via the Fertility Clinic)
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: May 30, 2010
The New York Times
. . .what one grown-up donor baby quoted in the study describes . . . the feeling of existing entirely for “other people’s purposes, and not my own.”
Angst, Artistry, Apathy?
Get used to it kids.
That's what consumerism does to everyone in America: suck the
purpose out of your life and replace it with mindless shopping, from gizmos to universities; from goldfish to lifemates: shop your way even to the therapist's couch.
The larger concern I have is not simply with in-vitro-fertilization-children, but children of a single parent who consciously used another human being to get them pregnant or to carry a pregnancy and either never encountered that person because they were blocked by a confidential file or because they simply walked away : ALONE.
Disclaimer: The heartwarming photos above come from a Google search ("single parent") and do not necessarily fit my desciprtion in the previous sentence.
This procreation ritual happens among the rich as well as among the poor. We are now raising a generation of kids who will never know their second parent as anything more than a name on a birthday card, or a number on a sperm sample receipt, if that. (This population is not the children of deadbeat dads; it is the children of singles who wanted a child to love-----or perhaps, a child to love them.)
What will the result be: Angst , artistry, apathy?
No one knows.
We'll wait.
And we'll soon see -----as the kids move through schools either effortlessly or with great behavioral baggage.
One thing is for sure. They won't be closetted.
The single parent child will have hundreds of thousands of peers with whom to openly build support groups---if support is what they want.
Maybe, just maybe, what they'll want is this:
A mate------with whom to be monogamous, regardless of gender.
Stranger things have happened.
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