A note on Wendy Wasserstein, motherhood at 48, and a feminist legacy

147 thoughts on “A note on Wendy Wasserstein, motherhood at 48, and a feminist legacy”

1. The saddest part of this has to be, whatever the ethics of her birth, the eight-year-old child that’s left behind. No one can guarantee they will live to see their children grow up, but it’s a horrible fear for a single parent.

2. “To put it in Christian terms, the agape love of parent for child need not be connected to the eros love of parent for parent.”

   But is it not better for the child to be grow in the presence of an agape love of parent for parent? You are moving in sociological circles, but the theologian in me balks at your assertion. There is a piece of the imago dei that is present in the man and the woman that is only made whole when the two are together. Removing that piece short-changes the child from seeing true love and fidelity lived out before them.

3. Hugo, as a 40+ female who is just back at work after giving birth to my third child, thank you for this post. Dan, on principle, I think it’s wrong to pit the better against the best. Unless you want to argue that the world, or Lucy herself, would be better had Lucy not been born, arguing about what constitutes the “ideal” family structure is not relevant. Women who are single parents rarely disdain marriage; instead they are frequently achievement oriented women who themselves feel disdained by men. Many wore themselves to the bone trying to pursue the traditional path to family and finally gave up. I am so happy that technology now allows them to fulfill their parental aspirations.

4. my friend accused her — and other older women like her, who conceive children artificially and while single — of profound selfishness.

   how funny. many people accuse me, a 25 year old woman in a committed relationship who says she doesn’t want to bear children, of profound selfishness.

   pardon the expression, but sometimes it really does feel like “damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” doesn’t it?

5. Right on, kate d! For women the only really “acceptable” choice in many people’s eyes is to have kids by 35 at the latest while married to a man and of course to become a full-time stay-at-home mom.

   Unfortunately, none of us can guarantee our children the perfect upbringing. While I think it is terribly sad that Wendy Wasserstein’s daughter is orphaned at such a young age, I am also guessing that she will count herself fortunate to have had such a loving mother.

6. I’m about 95% with you on this, but it seems to me the missing component here is a call to fight for a greater social acceptance/understanding of adoption as a “real” way to have children (and to increase access, and decrease costs, and so on, to adoption). The way you phrase this–all about science to correct injustice and nothing about adjusting the social understandings of adoption to correct injustice–seems a bit out of balance. This arguably perpetuates a sort of essentialist natalism about children that is hardly an unqualified good from a feminist perspective (which is not to say feminists shouldn’t fight for it as a choice).

7. in the interest of full disclosure, I am a white male who is also a Christian, and would be considered more conservative than Hugo on most (if not all?) issues. My frame of reference comes from that position.

   I am not about to say that Lucy shouldn’t have been born, and I certainly will not posit a full condemnation against women who choose to go a different path. However, I don’t find it helpful to build positions on each and every particular – there is always somebody who is an exception, and it ends up being a pointless argument. I have to come at it from the other perspective – is there a “best” position? And if so, how can I (and we all) strive to help as many as possible in our world live into that position? As a follower of Christ and a person of the Word, I can’t get away from the fact that there is a strong biblical argument for Divine Order, and that order includes both men and women in a committed relationship (please note: space and time don’t allow for much nuance at the moment, but at least know that I am not arguing the Focus on the Family Position here).

   In a nutshell what I’m trying to say is this: I agree that pointing fingers and saying “you were wrong to do what you did!” isn’t helpful; in fact, it’s unhealthy and morally wrong. But I have a problem with going completely the other way and saying “Hey! Ra Ra for you for bucking tradition! Since you wanted to do it, it must be okay!”

8. Since you wanted to do it, it must be okay!

   C’mon. No one’s suggesting this as a general principle. Hugo (and Wendy Wasserstein, more importantly) gave plenty of specific reasons why, in fact, this particular desire fulfillment effort was OK, not *simply* because it was desired.

9. Dan, thanks for your clarification. There is much that is winsome and compelling about the notion that “God’s best” is one man, one woman, in an permanently committed monogamous relationship. That has been the position of Judeo-Christian orthodoxy for a long time.

   But even if we accept the premise that this is the “best”, do we not do a tremendous disservice to people by suggesting that any alternative is woefully inadequate? Is it possible that God’s grace and love are so abundant that many different notions of what constitutes “family” might also be “best”?

   I tend to think of the term “best” the way I think of the word “favorite.” My pastor, Ed Bacon, often says “I’m God’s favorite. You’re God’s favorite. We are each God’s favorite.” It’s a lovely contradiction, the notion that we are each the favorite of the Lord — and yet it’s based on a sound understanding of Scripture and tradition. I think “best” works the same way. A married couple, living together in faithfulness, can look at each other and say “We are living out our call to holiness together”. Wendy Wasserstein, with a different understanding of “the best”, came to a different conclusion. The end result — new life, longed-for life, cherished life.

10. The problem with arguing ideals is that the world never lives up to them. Even in a two-parent, stay-at-home-mome household, there are always problems. Some little, some big. After all, nobody is born a natural perfect parent, and infants don’t come with an owner’s manual.

    We can argue all day about this hypothetical pie-in-the-sky “perfect home” but I think it’s worth keeping in mind that it will never exist.

    Maybe instead of demonizing single parents, older parents and other non-traditional families, communities should look for more ways to help support them. Oh I know, nobody wants to waste time and money on “someone else’s kid” but that’s half the problem in our society these days. A lot of people like to stand on their soapboxes and condemn, but few like to actually help out.

    Personally, I think the kid in the single-older-parent home who is nurtured is far better off than the kid in the “traditional” home who is overlooked, dismissed or abused.

    As for women over 55 or so having kids, well there’s always the issue of the fact that mom may or may not survive to see junior graduate from high school, but I don’t really have an answer for you. Some people die at 56, others live to be 96 or 106. Some people get smashed to bits in a car wreck at 26. You can never honestly guarantee to your child that you will always be there, no matter how much you love them. That’s true for all parents, no matter what age they are.

11. As a 48-year-old who desperately wants to get pregnant and for whom fertility drugs haven’t worked, I admit to being selfish but I can’t help but identify with Wasserstein’s situation.

12. I have heard the argument before that it’s not fair for an older woman to have a child because she might not live as long as a younger woman. Of course, you never hear that when an older man has a child– presumably I suppose because the older man is not bucking biology and because there is of necessity a younger woman still in the picture. Still, one would think, that if the ideal situation really is a two-parent household, people would also worry about an older man becoming father and possibly dying when the child is still young. Yet we never hear any kind of griping about older dads.

13. I don’t know why Wasserstein chose to have a child in such a way that guaranteed that the child would never have a relationship with her father, so I’m not qualified to dissect her motives. However, I do wish to point out general similarities between prostitution, pornography, and artificial insemination in cases like Wasserstein, inasmuch as these practices degrade human relationships by reducing one partner to an object. Granted, the outcomes and intentions differ. However, all these practices use human beings instrumentally. This aspect of artificial insemination disturbs me far than the contemplation of my own superfluity.

14. Did Hugo grow up with a dad around?

15. I am not sure I understand where you are coming from Charming Billy. IF someone donates an organ, isn’t he or she “being used instrumentally?” What’s wrong with that?

    And as someone who did grow up with a dad around, I can assure you that a two parent home is not always the ideal situation either. I would have given anything when I was growing up for my mother to divorce my father and raise me as a single parent! I prayed daily for her to do so. (And I’m not just picking on dads. It can work the other way as well.)

    So I am absolutely with Hugo– I don’t think it is fair to measure someone’s desire to give life or nurture a child as a single parent against some ideal. Most families DON’T live up to the ideal. Even if you could convince me that a two-parent home is generally preferable, I think that a single parent can say, well, I have so much to give in so many areas that I think I would be as worthy a parent as anyone around even if I can’t provide that “ideal” two-parent environment.

16. My concern is that as a society we’re so pronatalist that we’re willing to sacrifice women’s health so that they can give birth. Is there a link between Wasserstein’s years of fertility treatments and her cancer? Do fertility treatments raise a woman’s risk of getting cancer? We don’t have good answers to these questions – why not? I do know that in my own experience, the correlation between fertility treatments and cancer seems high.

17. Cleis, there’s no good data analyzing the link between fertility treatments and cancer. The studies that have examined the subject tend to look at correlations between fertility drugs and breast, uterine, and ovarian cancer, not lymphoma (which is what Wasserstein died of).

    Hugo, the part of you post which I find most striking is this: my buddy saw her actions as evidence of narcissism and upper-middle class privilege.

    I’m not on board with the narcissim argument, but fertility treatments really are the province of the upper middle class. They’re far too expensive to be widely available. (Insurance almost never covers such treatments.) The older a woman is, the less likely fertility treatments are to be successful, meaning (potentially) more rounds of drugs, etc. Given that a round of IVF costs approximately $15,000, there’s no way the average person is going to be able to pay.

    As someone who’s lived for the past 5 years in bioethics land, I can tell you that the subject is in no way settled, and a large part of it has to do with the lack of regulation of fertility clinics. (Arceli Keh is the oldest woman to give birth in the U.S., at age 63, and I can assure you, she caused, and continues to cause, a lot of controversy.

18. Aldahlia: My parents divorced when I was small, but I saw my father regularly.

19. While I can see reasons to have reservations about some varieties of fertility treatment, I have difficulty seeing the age of 48 as a sufficient moral barrier in itself. The average woman reaches menopause at about 50; though the odds are small, a woman could have a child at 48 without any fertility treatment at all. Either Elayne Riggs or I could, in principle, become a mother in the usual way, even if it’s unlikely that either of us will. And either of us, if we do get pregnant, is a good deal more likely to survive till the child grows up than not. In fact, given my family history, I’d actually have a darn good chance of still being alive when the kid is 40.

20. Hmmm….I’ve seen this attitude displayed towards “older” women who had their children without fertility treatments, too. Hell, I’ve heard this same thing myself when I had my daughter at the extraordinarily advanced age of 32 (hey, in central Illinois, it makes you the oldest mom at drop-in by a long shot!). Yes, even down to the “aren’t you worried you won’t live long enough to see her grow up?” (a worry that has no age, I’m afraid). I think it’s the barrier-breaking that is assumed that gets folks’ shorts in a twist. That, and short memories (both of my grandmothers had children in their mid-forties, back when it was considered perfectly appropriate to continue one’s childbearing into those years).

    Thing is though, just about all of the older women who undergo fertility treatments in their forties is because they spent their twenties and thirties trying to do it the “traditional” way, and it didn’t happen. This isn’t “brave, pioneering women forging new paths” or any other sterotypical “selfish career-bitch” veneer—it’s women who simply want a slice of life most of us get to take for granted.

21. For women the only really “acceptable” choice in many people’s eyes is to have kids by 35 at the latest while married to a man and of course to become a full-time stay-at-home mom.

    Heh. I’m exactly that. It’s not all that acceptable in my community. It’s seen as incredibly selfish! I am, however, EXTREMELY urban.

    When it comes to family and childbearing, everyone’s got an opinion. Which, of course, they’re happy to share.

    ((Anyone want my opinions???? PLLLEAAASEEE???))

    I realized, after the first two years of parenting, that people invest a lot into their kids but it’s an extremely limited career in time. So they’re wandering about, hoping to bump into someone they can “teach”.

22. You’re right . . . some segment or another is going to see every woman’s choice as “selfish.” Whether we have kids, don’t have kids, stay home with the kids, don’t stay home with the kids. I think this is related in part to the notion that women are supposed to be living “for” others. To the extent our choices can be linked to our own needs or preferences, we are violating that cultural mandate.

23. Happy Feminist,

    You wrote:

    “I am not sure I understand where you are coming from Charming Billy. IF someone donates an organ, isn’t he or she “being used instrumentally?” What’s wrong with that?”

    The difference between organ donation and artificial insemination is that in the latter case an invaluable and essential human relationship is whittled down to a bare minimum.

    What I’m arguing here is not that having a dad around is always better than being raised by a single parent. For the record, after my father left when I was 8, my mom went back to college, got a full time job, and raised four kids on her own. I’m now happily married and have 2 kids of my own. So I have a pretty good idea of what a single parent can and can’t do.

    So “where I’m coming from” isn’t a blanket condemnation of single parenthood. And I certainly don’t wish to condemn anyone’s desire to have children. Wanting children is like wanting to breathe; it’s not morally culpable per se. In fact it’s praiseworthy.

    However, I do think that when women choose to forego not only marriage, but also any possibility that they or their children will ever have a relationship with the father, this decision is morally questionable. Firstly, because all things being equal, a child benefits from a father’s presence. Yes, you and I both seem to know something about less than ideal fathers. However, everyone seems to agree that having an adequate father around is better than not father at all. Sorry, I won’t accept your challenge to convince you of that fact since I regard it as established.

    Secondly, to me, at least, it’s clear this choice displays a profound indifference, or blindness, to the emotional, social, and moral richness of fatherhood. In spite of Hugo’s emotional resilience in the face of artificial insemination, this choice does indeed say that the invaluable and essential relationship of father and child is largely expendable. When parents think it’s ok to deprive a child of this good, I have to wonder what other goods they might consider expendable. It makes me doubt judgment of anyone who would seriously make the argument you formulated thus:

    “I think that a single parent can say, well, I have so much to give in so many areas that I think I would be as worthy a parent as anyone around even if I can’t provide that “ideal” two-parent environment.”

    I’m not questioning your judgment personally. However, this argument is fails to convince. It concedes, rather than questions, the desirability of two parent family. In other words, it argues that while one understands what’s best for one’s child (the two parent family) one would be such a good parent that one doesn’t in fact need to provide what one has just conceded is best for one’s child.

24. this choice does indeed say that the invaluable and essential relationship of father and child is largely expendable

    It’s not all about you.

25. it’s important that individuals garner a viewpoint and belief system that ‘makes sense’ to them, however, it is entirely offensive to implicate / project this personal viewpoint unto others.

    myself and countless others were raised in households where women refused to leave abusive relationships because “the best” for their children required they stay. i myself have experienced this i can say very confidently that those people should never have married – it would have spared the many of us the scars that burden us to this day. much of this burden would never have evolved, had they divorced sooner.

    and then i have also watched as non-abusive, unhappy couples walk miserably through the steps of parenting while their children pray for divorce or a fast track to independance.

    what defenders of gods holy union appear to forget, is that this is an ‘ideal’ and not necessarily a reality. few can contest to experiencing this ideal.

    i chose to have a child on my own. i did so after a long and extremely hard journey of self-reflection, contemplation upon the relationship i had with the father, and all the while with an entire universe of challenging assumptions to combat: continuing my pregnancy alone will “flush my life down the toilet”, “will be unfair to my child” et al. these assumptions are rampid and exist as if by osmosis in our society like looming black curtains. the degeneration of our characters and self-esteem onsets the moment we consider parenting alone – whether by leaving a spouse or continuing a pregnancy.

    i took up that journey and i very thoroughly considered, wieghed in and deliberated. i am quite certain that no woman could escape this experience when seeing themselves as having to make that choice. and i made the choice. and it was the right choice for myself and for my son and this has shown itself to be true through the ten years that have now passed.

    i will enjoy a meaningful and ‘blessed’ relationship, when it occurs. not because of my age or a pressing desire to have children, or because someone/anyone else expects it of me. allowing that relationship to occur in ones life is quite different than endeavoring to manifesting it from thin air. this indeed is not within the control of any one woman or man. to attempt to “make” this of less suitable relationships in order to procreate – that, is more in tune with crafting a “sperm donor” situation. not the opposite.

26. The Happy Feminist wrote: “I have heard the argument before that it’s not fair for an older woman to have a child because she might not live as long as a younger woman. Of course, you never hear that when an older man has a child– presumably I suppose because the older man is not bucking biology and because there is of necessity a younger woman still in the picture. Still, one would think, that if the ideal situation really is a two-parent household, people would also worry about an older man becoming father and possibly dying when the child is still young. Yet we never hear any kind of griping about older dads.”

    Perhpas you never hear these arguments about older dads because dads in general – older or not – are considered superfluous by feminists; for them, if the woman wishes to have a ‘father figure’ for their child, any surrogate male figure will do. Thus, arguments about the relative value of having fathers around, older or not, are moot because feminists see little value in fathers (other than the slave labor and paycheck they can provide for the mother) in the first place.

27. Charming Billy, the alternative faced by Wasserstein, I would be willing to bet a lot of money, is (a) never have children or (b) have children as a single mother. Single women who decide to accept the responsibility of parenthood are not “whittling away” a child’s relationship with a father when they procreate any more than when they adopt (which many single women do, probably more than those who elect the fertility treatment route). Parenthood is or should be about children, not parents, and if a woman (or man) can give a child a good and loving home, then the fact that the home isn’t “ideal” by some cultural ideal that is often less than ideal and very often less than well documented, just doesn’t matter. Please keep in mind: most single women find themselves in this situation, they didn’t seek it out, and they are far more likely to have been rejected by than to reject men.

28. mr bad

    with all due respect, you don’t hear about this contraversy with older men because becoming a widow is the only ‘acceptable’ circumstances in which a single mother is produced. this indeed is a more common occurrance then women pursuing scientific measures in order to become single parents. then there is the case of male officers leaving widowed spouses in numbers, or young men simply walking out when they discover they aren’t ready for parenthood. these things also happen more frequently (according to stats) than there are ‘feminists’ ousting the father figure before taking on childrearing.

    but in all cases, women take the brunt of fault for raising children in ‘unstable homes’. oh – except in the case that your husband dies, here the woman is then pitied, as opposed to scorned.

    you make too broad generalizations, i’m afraid.

29. Right. What Barbara said. I think the problem is that people tend to see single motherhood as a choice women make just to spite men or because they don’t value men. But as mythago said, it’s not about you.

    These women for whatever reason find themselves single and wanting a child and able to provide a lot for that child. I don’t think they’re saying, “mwahahaha, I shall have a child and deprive the father and that child of their bond with each other as part of my evil male-hating plan, mwahahaha.” I say go for it. I also say people should focus on what these mothers are giving their children as opposed to what their children may (or may not) be missing out on.

30. Mr. Bad, I don’t only talk to or read things by feminists. I talk to plenty of other people. It’s the NON-feminists who snipe at older women who become parents but who never mention the Tony Randalls of the world. (I believe he had his first child at 78 or so, and died when that child was about 6 or 7.)

    I don’t believe that feminist devalue the father-child bond. I would feel the same way about a man who was trying to become a single father.

31. Ricia,

    The view I’m presenting isn’t addressed to women who are single parents because they continue a pregnancy (I applaud this decision) or divorce. It’s addressed specifically to those who use artificial insemination. I think you’re right that those who choose a less than suitable arrangement in order to procreate are choosing something comparable to artificial insemination. That’s my point: both arrangements forego the full benefits of a valuable and important human relationship.

    Barbara, I agree with you:

    ” Please keep in mind: most single women find themselves in this situation, they didn’t seek it out, and they are far more likely to have been rejected by than to reject men.”

    However, I think it’s still the case that women in this situation who choose anonymous artificial insemination are deliberately forgoing the benefits of a relationship with the child’s father. These are simply the facts of the matter – that’s how the procedure works. Furthermore, how can anyone say that even if the woman in question is a wonderful single parent, that this choice (a choice that doesn’t arise if she chooses to adopt) does not make a profound difference in the life of her child?

    On the other hand, saying that parenthood should be about children, not parents, seems to me like saying that marriage should be about the husband, not the wife, or vice versa.

    People speak of the “ideal” two parent family as if this means either scarce or unattainable or some kind of Platonic ideal. On my view, it’s neither; it’s a reality. I’m simply saying that it’s an established fact that, all things being equal, children do better when both parents are involved and stay involved in their children’s upbringing. That’s all. It’s not meant to be used a stick to beat single parents with. My “ideal” admits of and expects all sorts of irregularities and inadequacies provided that both parents are merely present and give a damn. It’s an “all things being equal” definition that takes into account both the reality of difficult relationships as well as the reality that children tend to do better when parents stay to together. This situation is attainable, though admittedly becoming scarcer.

    Mythago,

    Like you, I find anonymous artificial insemination troubling. I believe this choice is morally questionable; although I’m open to the possibility that it’s not blameworthy in every case. However, I find your dismissive characterization of women who chose this option unhelpful.

32. Charming Billy, single mothers who are mothers via DS (donor sperm) aren’t “choosing to forego” a relationship with father; they are choosing to become a parent by the means that is open to them. I guess they could trick a male friend into doing the insemination, but that doesn’t seem quite fair. All of our choices have consequences, never more so than when they involve creating new members of the human race. If I chose to have 14 children it would have an impact on each and every one of them and many people would find it quite blameworthy of me. (I know inhabitants of such families who felt more like workers in a factory, remote from their parents, than members of a happy boisterous family.) Many people could take the same view you do towards fathers (or mothers, I presume) apply it to money and wonder why the heck poor people have children, and even if they have one or two, why should they have more than that when their resources are so inadequate.

    Questioning the childbearing practices of other people always risks being fraught with arrogance and cultural blindness. The only arrangements I condemn are those in which parents abandon their parental responsibility. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a single parent, my husband is a great dad, and I am awfully glad I don’t have to go it alone, that my children have a great role model, and so on. But that doesn’t translate into me wishing the whole world would be just like me. And I can’t overlook, again, that most single women I know just felt too strong of a desire to have a child, and too sure that a suitable mate wouldn’t come along on a timely basis. Indeed, by waiting so long, many of these women actually show that they likely agree with your premise — they were waiting for the right man, but he didn’t show up. I don’t think this is a problem for the ages, in other words, if it’s a problem at all.

33. ricia pd said: “with all due respect, you don’t hear about this contraversy with older men because becoming a widow is the only ‘acceptable’ circumstances in which a single mother is produced. this indeed is a more common occurrance then women pursuing scientific measures in order to become single parents. then there is the case of male officers leaving widowed spouses in numbers, or young men simply walking out when they discover they aren’t ready for parenthood. these things also happen more frequently (according to stats) than there are ‘feminists’ ousting the father figure before taking on childrearing.”

    Really? And what would those “stats” be? Got a citation?

    Serial anecdote does not equal proof.

34. THF, I’m sorry, but whether you believe it or not is irrelevant, the fact remains that feminists have indeed been devaluing the father-child bond for decades now. It is only recently that some (few) feminists have been backtracking on this. So as I said, perhaps this is why discussions of the type we’re talking about don’t occur.

35. Well, even if you’re right Mr. Bad, I think it’s an unrelated issue to the question of why old (and I mean really old fathers) aren’t usually castigated for became very old fathers, whereas old mothers are blamed for waiting too long to have kids.

36. Happy Feminist, don’t get defensive because of Mr. Bad. He’s done nothing more than make bald assertions and gross generalizations about an entire class of women who hasn’t even (conveniently) defined. I’ll take serial anecdotes as proof any day over Mr. Bad’s alternative logic.

37. Charming Billy, Now I don’t get your distinction between adoption and anonymous artificial insemination.

    In the latter situation , it is not just the woman choosing to forego a relationship with the father. Presumably, the father chose to forego a relationship with the child and the mother when he donated his sperm.

38. Not defensive! Just talking! But thanks . . .

39. Barbara,

    Since anonymous DS rules out having a relationship with the father, women who choose this procedure are, by definition, choosing to forego such a relationship. Even if they would have preferred a different arrangement, they chose this one.

    A teenage father abandoning his infant child and a wealthy older woman choosing anonymous DS to have her child are both deciding, albeit influenced by significantly different circumstances and motivations, to deny their child a paternal relationship beyond the bare biological minimum. I think the motivations and the circumstances matter, but in neither case do they render the decision to forego a meaningful paternal relationship trivial or insignificant. I think it’s fair to discuss and evaluate these decisions. Doing so is far from “wishing the whole world would be just like me.” Indeed, an honest discussion of these matters might just as well can into question one’s own choices.

40. Happy Feminist,

    It’s this: a single parent choosing adoption and a single parent choosing anonymous artifical insemination both choose to raise a child alone. However, a woman who’s chosen the latter has by definition ruled out any relationship with the child’s father. (Or vice versa; but unless you’re Michael Jackson and pay someone to bear your child — anyone got a problem with that? — it’s almost always a woman.) When you adopt, you don’t make the decision to deprive the child of a parental relationship. The child already has no, or is considered to have no, meaningful parental relationships at all. So you’re providing the child with a relationship, not ruling one out. The key difference is that with artificial insemination, you’re responsible for the fact that the child will never know the father. Adoption doesn’t bring this responsibility.

41. OK – but I guess I come to my original point. I think that even if a two-parent household is generally preferable to a single-parenth household (and I concede that you are probably right on that score), I don’t think it’s the be-all and end-all.

    It is also true that a higher-income home is probably preferable for a child than a lower-income home. But that doesn’t mean poorer people shouldn’t have children or that poorer people are morally wrong for having children or that it’s morally wrong for a parent to work at a non-profit when he or she could make more money for the child at another job. What I am saying is that parents who can’t provide the ideal, or who don’t want to provide the ideal, still have a lot to offer as parents and I don’t think that it’s wrong for them to become parents.

42. istm as I read through these posts that the “pro-” side all seem to be focusing in on the mother, her desires, her wishes, her fulfillment, while the “anti-” side seem to be thinking more of the child. I realize that’s a false dichotomy we’ve set up, but I still find it troubling that those who rush to support the single mother’s choice to bear a child don’t seem to have the child’s interest in mind. The child is the truly innocent player who will have to live with the mother’s choice the rest of their life. Perhaps someone who has been through this experience could share why they truly felt that raising a child alone would be in the child’s best interest? I’d be glad to listen.

43. No, Charming Billy, I don’t quite get the point of why it’s useful to “discuss” whether a household headed by a single woman who has chosen to have a child is not an “ideal” arrangement. It wasn’t ideal from my father’s perspective to have 4 instead of 3 children; to start having them after being married less than a year, or to have them so close together. It wasn’t ideal, from my perspective, that someone as angry, anxious, paranoid, and insecure as my father should have children at all. You should meet my brother, after half a lifetime of being called inadequate for not being just like my dad but better, he has chosen, quite properly in my view, never to have children. And you know, even though my childhood was, to be nice about it, emotionally unsatisfying, on balance, I’m glad I was born and I’m sure my younger sister (the unexpected fourth) is glad she was born. I even think my brother is glad he was born. Certainly my children are glad I was born.

    There’s no reproductive adequacy court in session, yet, and it’s a good thing. I don’t see the point of using Platonic reasoning to judge, above all, the choices of a small minority of affluent single women who’ve met just about every other challenge life has thrown at them without the support of a husband or boyfriend. I really don’t.

44. Dan, the best interests of children gets thrown around a lot, but it’s a standard that only applies in custody determinations. I don’t see how you can ever say that it’s in the best interest of a child not to have been born. (Well, not unless someone had a child in order to groom them for a life of sexual slavery or something like that.) People have children for all kinds of reasons, sane and otherwise, and, often, for no reason at all, or certainly no reason other than, “I’d like to be a parent.” Why they did it is often mysterious and even more often banal; we should judge parents by their devotion to parental duty. Anything else strikes me as unfair and probably hypocritical. You just can’t generalize too much about this.

    In my estimation, as La Lubu said rather eloquently, these women want what almost all other women and men take for granted as a normal slice of life, frequently after having tried to get there the old fashioned way. They aren’t being selfish, certainly no more selfish than I was when I decided to have children with my husband.

45. Hrm. I think I’m the only self-described feminist here that thinks Wasserstein was wrong to do what she did. I have to agree with Dan. Kids aren’t all about “What I want.” What she did wasn’t fair to her (now orphaned) daughter. I totally agree that single mothers can parent adequately (I come from a single-parent situation), and I don’t see anyone arguing for “staying in a bad marriage for the kids” here, because that’s honestly not the issue. There wasn’t a marriage for her to stay in.

46. aldahlia, I guess from my perspective most people having children do so for a mix of selfish and other, usually inscrutable, reasons, but in all cases, the “reasons” are simply gloss to what is a strong biological imperative. I wouldn’t have done what WW did, I don’t think I would have had the chutzpah. But you also don’t know what arrangements she has made for her daughter, and she is hardly without resources or, from what I undersand, extended family.

47. What she did wasn’t fair to her (now orphaned) daughter

    That rather depends on what she did, doesn’t it? The affluent, older single mothers I know (well, I know one of them) planned from the day of conception or even earlier to have a number of secure, stable, loving adults of both sexes in her child’s life, to serve as alternate role models and to help out with childcare, of course, but also to stand by in case of tragedy. If Wasserstein officially designated the person or people who were to adopt her child in the event of her death (as any responsible parent does) and made sure that her child had a close, loving relationship with them when she was alive (likewise), then no, she didn’t do too badly.

    I think that fifty is a reasonable upper limit of procreating-age for decent people of both sexes to adhere to, but Wasserstein had her child before passing that limit. (Men who have children well after fifty are, of course, the ones who despise and devalue fatherhood: they’re demonstrating by their actions that a senile father or a mentally present one, a dead father or a live one, it’s all the same to them.) The unfairness of having a child after that age is the unfairness of expecting a twenty year old to spend her time with her parents at a nursing home, or to take on the heavy burdens of care for the elderly with no time to prepare or choice in the matter. That’s an awful thing to do to somebody.

    But it’s not what Wasserstein did; had she lived, she’d have been 68 when her daughter was a self-reliant adult. Not senile, not helpless, not too old. It is reasonable to expect to be unable to parent a child by 75; it is not reasonable to expect to be dead by 55.

48. Barbara,

    You took the words right out of my mouth. I noted earlier that I’m not trying to apply a platonic ideal to this situation. However, when you’re discussing general cases it’s helpful to use “all things being equal” (or Ceteribus paribus, if you want to be fancy about it) reasoning. That means you consciously confine your discussion to what generally holds true while prescinding from particular exceptions. Particulars may be admitted as shedding light on the general conclusion, but are not seen as rendering the conclusion false. True, there’s always the danger that this sort of discussion can become meaninglessly abstract. But so far that hasn’t been one of your objections.

    I no more than you wish for a reproductive adequacy court. That is precisely why it is not only “useful”, but important, to discuss these matters. Society has too great a stake in the reproductive behavior of its members to license just any old thing without evaluating it beforehand in some fashion or another. That’s why I prefer a society that evaluates novel social arrangements through informal discussion before one that adjudicates them formally.

    Happy Feminist,

    I agree with your point: “What I am saying is that parents who can’t provide the ideal, or who don’t want to provide the ideal, still have a lot to offer as parents and I don’t think that it’s wrong for them to become parents.” But I have to confine my agreement only if I can exclude “don’t want to provide the ideal.” I mean, if you have a notion of what the ideal is – and I mean ideal in the sense that it’s something you know that you and everyone else is morally obligated to do – then of course you should do it. But I think you meant, “don’t want to provide an ideal that they regard as mistaken.”

    I’m not arguing that there’s an “ideal” family in the sense that one size fits all. Even less was my intention in making my original objection to anonymous DS, namely that it trivializes parental relationships, to beat to anyone up. If I object to theft, it’s because I think there’s something wrong with it, not because I want work a hardship on thieves.

49. I realize that’s a false dichotomy we’ve set up

    Yes, it is. Why, then, go on to argue from it?

50. THF said: “Well, even if you’re right Mr. Bad, I think it’s an unrelated issue to the question of why old (and I mean really old fathers) aren’t usually castigated for became very old fathers, whereas old mothers are blamed for waiting too long to have kids.”

    THF, I dispute your assertion that old fathers aren’t usually castigated about having children with younger, many times much younger, women (and will cut you slack on your original allegation that we “never” hear this). Hugo has had several scathing criticisms of older men who pair with younger women, and he’s not alone by any means. Such men are usually portrayed as pervs, pedophiles, exploiters, etc. What I was trying to point out is that you feminists yourselves practice double standards in this regard, however, predictably feminists dump on the male of the pair and not the female.

    Barbara, I was and am only speculating in response to THF’s original query as to why we usually don’t, “never,” etc., hear about older men with younger women, as should have been clear from the fact that the very first word I used in my original replay was “perhaps.” Then again, maybe feminist logic and reason is different than that used by us normal people, so I’ll cut you some slack this time for not ‘getting it’ even though it should have been obvious.

51. Mr. Bad and others: to be clear, I’ve never suggested that older men who date and marry younger women are “pervs”. I’ve merely pointed out a number of problematic aspects of such relationships.

    I’ve known some wonderful men in my own family who became fathers in their fifties (Moms were in their late thirties/early forties). They did die before becoming grandpas, but they also gave their children gifts of wisdom and patience that younger men might not have been able to give. Let me go on record as firmly opposing any notion of an upper-age limit to parenthood.

52. “Since anonymous DS rules out having a relationship with the father, women who choose this procedure are, by definition, choosing to forego such a relationship. Even if they would have preferred a different arrangement, they chose this one.”

    What about the men that chose to be donors? Why place the blame on just the woman, and not on the man that chose to be an anonymous parent? Personally, I don’t agree with infertility/IVF/surrogate motherhood, etc- but that’s my personal opinion and I fel that others have the right to those options.

    As for Mr. Bad, I don’t think women denigrate the father-child bond. Europe in many ways is a lot more of a “feminist” place than the US in *some* respects- and they have much more liberal policies regarding maternity leave for birth/adoption of a new family member for both the men and women. I’ve rarely heard women complain about pushing for longer leaves for fathers to take care of their family- in fact, most feminists I know have welcomed such ideas.

    As for Wendy, RIP. I have admired her writings. As for her decision to have a child- that is her decision and frankly none of our business, especially if the care of the child was carefully planned and provided for in case of her death. When it comes down to it- the choice for men or women to have kids at any age, young or old- should be focused on whether the child is adequately cared for and loved, not any other factor.

53. Let me go on record as firmly opposing any notion of an upper-age limit to parenthood.

    I was speaking of a voluntary limit for people who care about their potential children, not any kind of external control.

    You don’t find anything immoral – anything whatever – in the notion of a person choosing to procreate in the full knowledge that there is a better-than-average chance that they will be dead before the child reaches adolescence?

    This is not what Wendy Wasserstein did, and I am not criticizing her. But it is what people twenty years older than her are doing when they choose to have children. Nobody wants to think about their own impending death in terms of statistical realities, I understand that. But pretending away those realities is not ok. You don’t get angry about this, fine. People who were privileged to go through elementary school, high school, and college with live parents don’t, usually.

54. I don’t think one can ever be certain of being in an ideal circumstance to procreate. Marriages break up, people become (mentally or physically) ill, people die, jobs get lost, brains get damaged, etc etc.

    To be honest, I don’t really understand how anybody has the guts to procreate at all. It’s a big act of faith no matter what, and kudos to everybody who does it with love and commitment.

55. the assumption that one can define adequate parameters for the level of “selfishness” that is acceptable in deciding to have children can only be based on never having to raise them.

    i already alluded to my own childhood above, add to it that i’ve have indeed seen the results of thoughtless, self absorbed trecks into parenthood – those results are unacceptable parenting methods. i experienced this in a married couple.

    how is it that anyone here proposes we establish a hardcopy forsight on whose having children “selfishly”? how could this ever be prevented?

    in fact parenting is an extremely large, extraordinarily challenging endeavor. for many, many, many reasons. those whom take up issue with a woman or man deciding to do so on their own may take comfort in knowing that it’s plight for which they will pour all their enegies into. because. just like any individual whom decides to have a child (married or not or single), they too want and work for the very best for their children. which also usually includes an effort to nurture and sustain adult male presence in their lives. i have in fact witnessed these efforts (very successfully, in fact) by a lesbian couple raising children.

    most all parents, regardless of marital status, seek balance, security and opportunity for their children.

    those whom decide to go it alone, have obviously committed themselves to this plight with more than enough awareness (given cultural attitudes) that it will not be easiest journey. now when we add in the concept that most individuals prefer to take the path of least resistance… we might attribute a little humanity to our debate subjects.. and consider for a moment that seeking artificial insemination in order to be a single parent (an expensive and exhaustive method) – then we can (in most cases) assume that this individual has far more complex motivations than simply to “exclude a man” or to diminish men in general or to rob men of their importance.

    we all agree that children need emotional, mental and physical well being. that is what any parent sets out to provide. if their is more than one of you, and you are both content in this plight, count your blessings and don’t take it for granted. furthermore, don’t assume it is due to some fault of others that they should happen to walk upon some other path.

    reality isn’t this black and white.

56. You don’t find anything immoral – anything whatever – in the notion of a person choosing to procreate in the full knowledge that there is a better-than-average chance that they will be dead before the child reaches adolescence?

    Is your criterion really “your odds of dying before your child is a teenager are above the average”?

57. My mom was and is a great parent, but until recently, was horribly bad at picking partners who weren’t abusive, crazy, or insane. If she’d realized that about herself earlier, she may have had kids who were less vulnerable to her partner choices. I think someone like my mom – who Really Wanted Kids and had a number of reasons to want to have them – might well have been making a very considered, fair, and healthy choice: given her track record of partner picking.

    Everyone has a pretty unique set of cards, psychologically and economically. People generally try to do what is best for themselves and their kids (if they’re not abusive, crazy, or insane). Sometimes they fail.

    I advocate everyone getting their noses out of everyone else’s underpants.

    I guess, the thing is this: feel morally outraged about whatever family structures people create, if you want to – but do you want legislation forbidding the Wassermans of the world? If yes, it’s an issue for debate and social policy. If no, then really? It’s just your feelings about someone else’s underpants.

58. Sorry:
    might well have been making a very considered, fair, and healthy choice IF SHE’D USED A DONOR instead…
    ahem.

59. Kids aren’t all about “What I want.” What she did wasn’t fair to her (now orphaned) daughter.

    You know, you’re right—-kids aren’t all about “what I want.” But that is a big part of parenting, whether we want to admit it or not. Parenting requires a lot of patience, maturity, and sacrifice. If you don’t really, really, really want children, you’re better off not taking that dive. A part of it is definitely, “what I want”.

    With that said, I’m having a hard time understanding this point of view. Is it “selfish” to die before your children do? And if so, how do you prevent this “selfishness” from taking place? Is it “selfish” for Wasserstein to die at 55, but not “selfish” for a mother to die at 32 of cancer, or a car accident, or any number of other unpredictable ways of dying? Is it only “selfish” for the unmarried to die? Are soldiers, police officers, firefighters, construction workers, miners, etc. “selfish” for getting killed on the job, if they have children? Where is the “selfishness” line drawn—or is it only drawn for those who used fertility treatments? Or are young women who use fertility treatments exempt? What??

    Know what I noticed here in this thread? The verbal dance of motherhood—you know, the one where you have to declare your motherhood status, and the reasons for that status. Single mothers are expected to trot out some story justifying (our) single motherhood. Something that is supposed to mark us as “good” single moms, not “bad” single moms. Go to any blog, any board, any thread about motherhood, and you’ll see what I mean. Hell, I do it too. I did it at my daughter’s school, so she could be recognized as a “good” kid, from a “good” home, instead of some reprobate future criminal. And I hate it. Sometimes….sometimes I hate it enough not to do it, and get labelled as the “mom with a ‘tude”. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what I do, ‘cuz I’m walking away with a label one way or another, and that label will say far more about the person placing it than it ever will about me or my child.

    Anyway…..more to the point….if it isn’t wrong for single women to be mothers, then why the special (negative) treatment of Wasserstein and those women like her, who chose artificial insemination and a family rather than childlessness? Because frankly, there isn’t any appreciable difference in the logistics of single-parent-by-way-of-insemination and single-parent-by-way-of-abandonment, or single-parent-by-way-of-prison, or…pick your poison.

60. “feel morally outraged about whatever family structures people create, if you want to – but do you want legislation forbidding the Wassermans of the world? If yes, it’s an issue for debate and social policy. If no, then really? It’s just your feelings about someone else’s underpants.”

    Personally, the last thing I want is Congress passing laws about who can and can’t have children. I would never advocate for legislation in this area. But, I agree (obviously) with those above who say it’s wise to at least have the discussion.

    Look – I have had girls in my youth group who have come from pretty rough situations. A couple come to mind who have fathers who are abusive, alcoholic, emotionally withdrawn, and more likely than not, the signs were there back when their mothers chose to marry them. Would I ever want to say to these girls “It would have been better if you hadn’t been born”? No way. I love these girls, have used them as leaders in our group, and am continually amazed at how they have flourished and grown in very trying situations.

    But I’m still going to say “It’s generally better if women don’t marry abusive, alcoholic, emotionally-withdrawn men and make babies with them.”

61. Is your criterion really “your odds of dying before your child is a teenager are above the average”?

    No. Way above the average, yes. Which, if you are a Hugh Hefner or a Tony Randall, they are. This is why I distinguish between a 48yearold and a 70-year-old.

    Is it “selfish” to die before your children do?

    No, and no one has said so. Dying before your children do is natural and expected. It is selfish to plan to die before your children are anywhere close to adulthood. See Saul Bellow, for example, who had a child at 84 and died at 89. Likewise, it is not “selfish” to have a child and then get hit by a car – or even to forget to plan for the possibility – but it is wrong to have a child and then deliberately throw yourself in front of a car.

    And no, this is not about shaming single mothers, because this is not something that women are generally physically able to do, whether they want to or not, even with fertility treatments.

62. And there’s a hell of a lot more to this than just chance of death, too, La Lubu. If you’re 40 when your parents become unable to live alone and care for themselves, you’re likely to have a house to welcome them into, money to feed them with, a spouse to help care for them and keep them company. If you really can’t handle it, maybe you can pay for a live-in aide or a nursing home.

    If you’re 20 and in college? Not so much.

    And watching senility or Alzheimers slowly erode your parents’ minds is no fun for anybody, but again, it’s a lot harder for a 20 year old than a 40 year old. And it’s not something you can help out with from a dorm room.

    “Oh well, we all die sometime” is not an adequate response to these very real issues.

63. looks like my last post didn’t make it

    this is for mr bad
    i’ve easy access to Canadian and UK doc’s, but I did pull out some US data for you
    i imagine you can do the math and draw your own conclusions

    Canadian Family, stats
    http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/971014/d971014.htm
    http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/analytic/companion/fam/canada.cfm

    Demographic Trends in the UK
    First report for the project
    WELFARE POLICY AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF FAMILY CHANGE.
    Naomi Finch

    “The vast majority of fathers are married and living with all of their dependent biological children changes in family life mean that some fathers may be never married, no longer married or re-married. With the rising divorce rate and the increasing number of lone-parent households, absent fathers have been increasing. The term absent fathers refers to fathers who, as a result of separation or divorce either have only infrequent contact with their children or lose touch with them all together. While absent mothers also exist, they are not as widespread because they are most likely to care for children after divorce and separation.”

    “It is apparent, however, that most lone parents re-partner and are no longer lone parents. Bradshaw and Millar (1991) found that about 7 per cent of lone parents had had at least one child by a second child-bearing relationship and 1 per cent had a child from a third child-bearing relationship.”

    “22 per cent of fathers had lived with their youngest or only non-resident child for less than a year, although 23 per cent had lived with them for at least 5 years.”

    “Bradshaw ’s study demonstrated that over half of non-resident fathers saw his children less than once a week and 21 per cent had not seen their child in the last year.”

    “over the last 15 years single never married mothers as a proportion of all family types with dependent children have dramatically increased form 3 per cent to 9 per cent”

    “However, the largest proportion of lone mothers have been previously married; that is they are divorced, separated or widowed.”

    Major trends affecting families in the new millennium Western Europe and North America
    Robert Cliquet

    “In the United States, births to unmarried women accounted for one third of all births in 2001″ (this includes common law couples)

    “The first in-vitro fertilization in the United States was performed in 1983. By 1998, 0.7 percent of 3.9 million were the result of assisted reproductive technology (Schieve et al., 2002)”

    http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3634/is_200005/ai_n8898131#continue

    “Earlier analyses of NSFG data have documented that among all individuals with self-reported fertility problems, those who pursue medical help for fertility problems are a highly selected groups Given the high costs of infertility services (which mostly remain uncovered by private health insurance or publicly funded assistance), service-seeking has become more common among women of higher socioeconomic status. That is, serviceseeking is more prevalent among married, older, more highly educated and more affluent women than in the general population of women with impaired fertility.”

    Assisted Reproductive Technology and Pregnancy Outcome
    http://www.acog.org/from_home/publications/green_journal/2005/v106n5p1039.pdf.

    “Those patients undergoing ART were significantly older, were more likely to be married, and had more years of education.”

64. you’re likely to have a house to welcome them into, money to feed them with, a spouse to help care for them and keep them company

    …children of your own to care for, the health problems of middle age starting for you AND your spouse, the demands of a career (which are quite a bit different than those of college)…

    But I’m still going to say “It’s generally better if women don’t marry abusive, alcoholic, emotionally-withdrawn men and make babies with them.”

    It’s even better if abusive, alcoholic, emotionally-withdrawn men get help for their problems before they start marrying and making babies.

65. Well, sophonisba, perhaps we’re just coming at this from different perspectives; I’m coming from a perspective where I still don’t earn enough money to hire live-in help in the event that my parents would need that (not exactly an abstract question for me either, as my mother is has terminal cancer, my father will be unable to deal with any future medical aspect of home care such as injections, feeding tubes, oxygen, or even lifting her around as he has a bad back….and my folks don’t live within driving distance, nor do they live in an area where I could find employment….but I digress). I operate on the assumption that nothing is ever going to go the way you plan it (have several contingency plans—you will need them), nor are you ever going to have what you need (so enjoy what you have—others have even less).

    No one knows when their time is going to be up. No one. My mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer when I was nineteen. Granted, I was already out of the house, but still. My personal finances are better now than then, but not anywhere near affording personal care, or buying what insurance doesn’t pay for. Where I come from, it’s reasonable to assume that the only aspect of care you’ll be able to provide for your parents is providing your own physical assistance after work—you know, come home from work, and start the second shift for your parents, the same way you do for your children. And so it goes.

    I’ve been on threads where people like me were called “selfish” for having children period, because we can’t afford big houses out in the suburbs, or the “best” schools. And yes, I’ve been called “too old” for having my child at 32. I’ve had people (who know nothing about my mother’s age of diagnosis) tell me I should be worried about being physically able to raise my daughter into adulthood, or surviving even. That I’ll be “in my fifties”, which is supposed to translate into “death warmed over”. Criminy. I’m a non-smoking gym rat. What do these people tell the couch potatoes?

    My grandmothers both kept on having children into their mid-forties. Guess who has been the most assistance to them during times of physical illness or disability? The older children (like my mother) they first had? No, the youngest children—the ones of my generation. The older children had already grown old enough to have difficulties of their own.

    Yeah, I think people ought to try to lead as healthy a life as they can. But illness, accidents and death happen to all of us, despite our best efforts to avoid them. You can only hedge your bets so much. Yeah, I think you should be somewhat prepared for children before you have them. But again, there’s only so much “preparing” you can do. There isn’t any amount of insurance, or preparation, or detailed planning that can protect you from having to deal with the Crises of Life. Crises will happen. And then you go from there. Life is a crapshoot….or it is from my perspective.

    I’m sure there’s folks out there reading this and wondering how I could have possibly wanted a child, knowing that maybe I could be diagnosed with breast cancer just like my mom. My perspective is that I could die at any time, from any thing. I try to live my life in a way that will lower my risk….but I only have so much control.

    And isn’t that the real issue here, control? Isn’t that what upsets the naysayers of Wasserstein’s motherhood—the fact that she had some control over her becoming a parent—-and why women like me are generally given somewhat of a “pass”, because our circumstances of motherhood indictated some lack of control?

    See, I’m coming from a background where one has a limited amount of control over the circumstances of one’s life. Some, yes….but not a whole helluva lot. A background where you learn to roll with the punches, go with the flow. Folks who have a little more control, a few more options, learn different lessons in life. And that’s ok. I’m not judging that. It’s just not a perspective that I can reasonably fit into my decision-making. To do so…to some of the extents I’ve seen it carried to in other Internet venues….would be to come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t do anything, because I couldn’t plan or control all the contingencies. And that’s not the way I want to live my life; nor could I wish that kind of stunted, limited life on anyone else.

66. Personally, the last thing I want is Congress passing laws about who can and can’t have children. I would never advocate for legislation in this area. But, I agree (obviously) with those above who say it’s wise to at least have the discussion.

    Urm. I agree about discussion to an extent; and that these sorts of things challenge us to determine why (for example) we value our own underpants. What’s lovely about our particular style. What we might recommend to others as worth a try.

    My real issue is judgement. Now, granted, I know that you personally have said you’re not wishing to be judgemental. However, we’re pretty darn focussed on Wasserstein’s choices, rather than the statement that some guy felt that men were being seen as expendable. These are different *issues*. One is personal to somebody who we don’t know, and whose sins as laid out here are no bigger than any one else’s. Beams in eyes, and all that jazz.

    In this particular issue, various people have suggested that sperm donation to make babies actively cuts the father out of the picture.

    I’d argue this: that the guy who’s jizzed into a cup for the purpose of making a woman pregnant and then walked away, $50.00 richer, has already made a pretty clear statement about what he’d like his parental involvement to be. Think of Wasserstein as “adopting” sperm, if you’d like, but really – the dad’s already entered into a parental contract. Was HE devaluing his sperm? I don’t know. I’d say that there was a male in the picture who made a pretty definitive statement.

    Should that guy care more about his DNA? Should sperm not be commodified? Should Wasserstein care that the men in her life, if any, have a DNA connection to her child?

    I’m saying the “shoulds” are contextual and largely irrelevant.

    If there are men saying they’re uncomfortable with their semen being seen as a commodity, well. Hey. That’s a different discussion. Ditto the roles of fathers in society: there’s an interesting discussion. Is there a crisis of fatherhood? Are the roles changing too quickly for people to catch up? Are men trying to figure out where they fit? Interesting questions worth discussion.

    That’s not what is being discussed, overall. What is being discussed is whether women *should* buy semen for the purposes of pregnancy. It’s judgemental to a particular sub-set of women who go this route.

67. ( I just pulled the $50 for sperm out of a hat, btw. I don’t know the going rate for sperm, or if the guy donated it out of a sense of genetic pride, or if he donated it because he has a kink about sperm banks.)

68. the guy who’s jizzed into a cup for the purpose of making a woman pregnant and then walked away, $50.00 richer, has already made a pretty clear statement about what he’d like his parental involvement to be.

    Word. Funny how we only wag fingers at the buyers, but the sellers? Do we really have such low expectations of men that one can’t possibly expect them to do better?

69. ^^ I mentioned that in my post earlier. It’s okay for a guy to donate sperm and relinquish responsibility but it’s selfish and commodifying if a woman uses the sperm.
    It seems as women, we’re screwed if we do and screwed if we don’t. As a woman that does not want children, I’ve been called selish, cold, inhuman, etc, etc. A friend of mine is a single mother and it’s amazing how she get s the “you’re so involved …for a single mother” “you’re so good …for a single mother” comments as well as condescending remarks (IMHO, they’re all condescending). She’s a doctor, and she chose to adopt before getting married. OTOH, there is a male doctor at her hospital. The male doc’s ex is a stewardess and gone frequently, so he has full custody of the kids. Instead of getting condescending remarkes, he’s showered with praise. My friend and I agree that it’s great that he gets praise- he’s a really great father and my friend is proud to have him as a collegue as he’s a wonderful doctor. However, he never gets the condescending remarks… he’s admitted that people would say negative things about single mothers in one breath and then praise him with another…

70. ricia pd, thanks for the effort, but your citations do not support your allegations re. widows and single parenthood, i.e., that being a widow is the only ‘acceptable’ form of single motherhood. In fact, as far as I can tell, there’s no info in there at all about widows.

71. Catty, comparing a male sperm donor to a woman who choses to undergo artificial insemination is ludicrous. Men are simply supplying the potential to create human life while women are actively chosing to do so. As should be clear to all but the most naive, it is women – and only women – who have this kind of reproductive choice. And notably, it is women – and only women – who can abort these embryos (or “products of conception” as abortion proponents lovingly choose to call them) if they so choose.

72. Question: what are the practical, on-the-ground differences, between older parents….and say, older grandparents raising their children’s children (a fairly common sight where I’m from, due mostly to the ravages of drug and/or alcohol addiction and/or incarceration)?

    Should we be discouraging these arrangements? Perhaps it would be better for social workers and school personnel to gently, periodically remind Grandma and Grandpa that they aren’t doing these grandchildren any favors, because their grandchildren will be heartbroken if anything “happens” to them? That it would be better for these children to enter the foster care system, so they wouldn’t develop these pesky bonds?

    Or is this ok, because it is unplanned? Seriously. I’m wondering where the line is drawn. Because I know I wouldn’t want to be the one dragging Jr. off to the group home, away from Grandma and Grandpa and the only home s/he’s ever known. And if I wouldn’t be willing to be a part of that, what right do I have in frowning on older parenting in general, considering that the logistics are the same?

    That—and have any statistics been complied on how adults of various ages cope with the crises of life? I’m not at all sure that dealing with Alzheimer’s or terminal illness of one’s parents is any easier on a forty-year-old than a twenty-year-old. I’m not sure that twenty-year-olds are having more nervous breakdowns or “self-medicating” than forty-year-olds in these situations. Age tends to weather you somewhat, true. But the typical emotional changes of age—like having greater patience, not being so quick on the trigger—how does that really translate into being more able to bear the slow (or rapid) decline and physical suffering of one’s parents? The visceral impact of my mother telling me the time-frame of her disease felt the same to me as I approach forty, that it did when I was nineteen, and the prognosis wasn’t all that hot (there have been significant advances in breast cancer treatment since the mid-eighties; my mother was one of the lucky ones).

    What I’m saying is, I don’t think there’s a way to quantify, or qualify, the emotional pain of seeing someone you love suffer. It doesn’t really have an age. And resiliency in these scenarios can’t really be predicted on any basis other than “have you gone through this before?” Even then, y’know?

73. mr bad

    the stats back up the ‘point’ of my post, but next time you’ll have to do your own research…

    you’ve also missed the point of another post or two, re: artiificial insemination and your contention that the process is intended to deminish/belittle the quality and necessity of a man’s involvement. men give their sperm willingly and sign off on their participation from thereon – and get paid. the women (usually married and experiencing fertility issues, in fact) pay over and over and over to sums far into the thousands, in order to undergo the process. the accusation that women / being “feminists” in particular intend to demean men’s role to merely that of a sperm donor cannot be supported when it is the men instead whom first must have volunteered to donate (and walk away) in order for the women to have received that particular service at all.

74. Men are simply supplying the potential to create human life while women are actively chosing to do so.

    Let’s back up here for a second. Women only have this “choice” because men agree to participate in the process. Sperm donors know exactly what they’re doing and their participation is no less active because it involved Playboy and a plastic cup rather than a pregnancy. Bottom line: men and women are both actively choosing to participate in the fertility business, and the conduct of both makes their interests pretty clear.

75. La Lubu,

    I think age does play a very important role but maybe not as important as family connections and social support.

    I was 23 when my co-mother was diagnosed with a rare form of dementia that strikes younger people. My brother and I lost our mother three years before that and our father wasn’t interested in being involved. It’s been hell, but more for me than for my brother, even though he’s younger, I think in part because I feel more responsibility for her and moved my life to be near by, and in part because he is already married and has a strong source of material and emotional support close to home.

    I don’t know that I’ll be married when I’m forty, but I can imagine a lot of ways in which this would have been more manageable. I also can’t help thinking that no matter how relatively traumatic it would have been to lose my mother at 40 instead of 20, those extra 20 years with her would have been priceless.

    But to me this doesn’t take away from your point. None of my parents were older than 32 when their oldest child (me) was born, and there were four of them, so you’d think there would be pretty good odds for at least some of them surviving, but through bad luck, here we are. Because you can’t know and you can’t plan. And imagine how much worse things would be if either my brother and I had special needs or serious disabilities to the extent of not being able to live independently, either from birth or an accident afterwards?

    Anybody who thinks they can plan ideal circumstances for their children is suffering from hubris, which is not an ideal circumstance in which to raise children.

76. I think Catty’s right about sperm donors. Like prostitution, anonymous artificial insemination degrades both parties.

    I’m not just pulling this out of a hat because I’m insecure about being replaced by a turkey baster. Yes, the whole thing bothers me at an emotional level. But there’s more to it than that.

    My objection starts with the fact that every child has a father and a mother, even if that child is born with nothing else. Anonymous sperm donation reduces one half of that heritage to a bare minimum. It robs the child of something it already has; something that’s a gift of nature. Sadly many men also rob their children of this gift by abandoning or abusing their children, but their actions don’t make the gift itself less valuable.

    Rereading my posts, I can see why some readers might find them overly concerned with responsibility and culpability. I think these issues naturally and properly arise when discussing the decision to have children, although I agree with Barbara that generalizing about this topic is difficult and that all sorts of harmful prejudices can come into play. Furthermore, I agree with her that the best way to judge a parent is by devotion to parental duty. However, it’s neither an inaccurate generalization or an unfair condemnation to note that something is being lost when a parent is missing from a child’s life, regardless of the circumstances of this loss.

77. I think Catty’s right about sperm donors. Like prostitution, anonymous artificial insemination degrades both parties.

    I’m not just pulling this out of a hat because I’m insecure about being replaced by a turkey baster. Yes, the whole thing bothers me at an emotional level. But there’s more to it than that.

    My objection starts with the fact that every child has a father and a mother, even if that child is born with nothing else. Anonymous sperm donation reduces one half of that heritage to a bare minimum. It robs the child of something it already has; something that’s a gift of nature. Sadly many men also rob their children of this gift by abandoning or abusing their children, but their actions don’t make the gift itself less valuable.

    Rereading my posts, I can see why some readers might find them overly concerned with responsibility and culpability. I think these issues naturally and properly arise when discussing the decision to have children, although I agree with Barbara that generalizing about this topic is difficult and that all sorts of harmful prejudices can come into play. Furthermore, I agree with her that the best way to judge a parent is by devotion to parental duty. However, it’s neither an inaccurate generalization or an unfair condemnation to note that something important is lost when a parent is missing from a child’s life, regardless of the circumstances of this loss.

78. Men are simply supplying the potential to create human life while women are actively chosing to do so.

    I’m not buying this argument. If creating a child by artificial insemination is wrong (and a broad, general moral objection to artificial insemination is a position I respect, though I’m not prepared to go there myself), then it’s wrong for everyone who participated in creating that child. That includes the mother, obviously, but also the guy who supplied the sperm, the clinic that supplied the procedure, and, frankly, regular old married couples who provide much more of a market for AI than single mothers do. I don’t believe in immoral acts that are immoral for only one of the participants (assuming all participants are consenting adults).

    As should be clear to all but the most naive, it is women – and only women – who have this kind of reproductive choice.

    On the contrary, men can arrange to have a surrogate mother give birth for them, and some have. If artificial insemination is wrong, then egg donation and surrogate parenting are also wrong.

79. The guys that are supplying the sperm may think that it is going to help a couple that are unable to have children, not to a woman that just decideds she wants one and does not want the hassel of dealing with those icky men.

80. Ooh, Wookie thinks men are icky! Do men have cooties Wookie??

81. evil fizz said: “Let’s back up here for a second. Women only have this “choice” because men agree to participate in the process. Sperm donors know exactly what they’re doing and their participation is no less active because it involved Playboy and a plastic cup rather than a pregnancy. Bottom line: men and women are both actively choosing to participate in the fertility business, and the conduct of both makes their interests pretty clear.”

    You may believe this, but it’s an absurd and ludicrous stance to take. It’s like saying that ammunition manufacturers are somehow responsible for the choices that people who shoot guns make. Those men are simply supplying the potential for a woman to create human life; they have absolutley no say whether or not their sperm goes to a responsible woman who will raise the kid right, a selfish narcissist who will abuse the kid, etc.

    I’m not buying the suggestion that sperm donors are as responsible as men who actively participate with a woman if their choice to create a human life. That stance is one of the more blatanly ridiculous POVs I’ve ever heard.

82. Charming Billy:

    However, it’s neither an inaccurate generalization or an unfair condemnation to note that something important is lost when a parent is missing from a child’s life, regardless of the circumstances of this loss.

    I believe I understand you. In some ways, I wish to agree. My husband is one half of the universe to our boys. He helps them construct their idea of self. My husband’s dad wasn’t around, and the lack deeply affected his idea of self. I have a spotty history filled with a cast of characters which deeply affected me. I really understand the mourning of familial lack, and share it with you.

    I guess that I don’t see the genetic gift and the “parental” gift as being intrinsic to one another. I may view them differently because of all the adoptees and birth-mothers I know: there’s a very specific language that honours the adoptive family as the ‘real’ family. So, although I would agree that *family* is extremely important, and in our family my husband is extremely important, and I am also extremely important – I think that what makes the substance of that importance is the fact that we are dedicated to our kids and are invested in helping them move into the world.

    I really don’t feel that’s particularly genetic – in part because the genetic donation I did fairly easily, and before I had any clue about the work and dedication of parenting. As a *parent*, I would question that my DNA contribution has much to do with the daily choices that my husband and I make to raise these guys: to me, that’s the *work* of it. The good nutrition, the parenting decisions sometimes not popular, the reading, the worry, all the little choices we make that construct the “playpen” world our kids can learn themselves on.

    The idea of kids growing up *without* that love and support is hard. To me the way to *maximize* kids getting the good stuff is to allow different models of family. To me, a choice made after much thought is more likely to lead to a good family than an “oops! @!*()” moment. There are lots of people who are creating family in various creative ways; we don’t know that that nuclear family down the block has love and commitment and the sense of parental involvement, or that the single mom in the townhouse the other way has no deep parental involvement.

    So I ask (and utterly non-fatously; I’m serious and interested because I think there are two very different ideas in play here) why or what is the DNA/parent connection for you? What is the link? Is someone more truly or deeply a parent because they share DNA? Is the bigger issue the lack of a two parent heterosexual family, or is it a biologically related father? If there were married people using donated sperm because of male fertility issues, would that bother you as much? Or does that cover the issue?

83. Mr. Bad: We’re discussing the idea that “women” are actively cutting “the dad” out of their child’s life. The argument is not that sperm donors are as deeply committed to their kids as fathers who stick around. I would argue they’re not fathers the way adoptive dads are. To me, fatherhood and motherhood are badges earned in dirty diapers, sleepless nights, and scraped knees.

    The point is that some person made semen available for purchase, and HE doesn’t care that it’s making someone pregnant. So there is a guy in the scenario who made a choice. He was aware that that’s what his semen might be used for: not a big market for semen otherwise. You know, human semen’s not a great engine lube or wall decoration; pretty much it’s good for the fertilizing of human eggs. A sperm donor said to his semen: “go, fertilize eggs without me controlling the situation in which that’s done.” And he was okay with that.

    Calling other people’s viewpoint “ridiculous” isn’t particularly effective rhetorical technique, especially if you’re not actually hearing what they’re saying.

84. Those men are simply supplying the potential for a woman to create human life; they have absolutley no say whether or not their sperm goes to a responsible woman who will raise the kid right, a selfish narcissist who will abuse the kid, etc.

    That’s begging the question. If you don’t want someone whom you don’t approve of using your sperm, what the hell are you doing donating it anonymously to whomever will pay for it?

    Also, your ammunition analogy is completely flawed. There is no other purpose for sperm in a cup other than pregnancy (barring those who donate for research). Everyone knows what donated sperm is for. Bullets are a little more multipurpose.

85. evil fizz, point taken re. the analogy of bullet manufacturers to sperm donors. Frankly, I wouldn’t have a problem at all with criminalizing sperm donation, but frankly, I don’t think that this will be much of an issue if the practice of holding sperm donors as responsible for the children produced from their semen as active participating fathers is instituted as it is in Scandanavia. There, the men who donate sperm to AI firms are being hunted down in order to collect child support for the kids created, resulting in a crash in the amount of donated sperm. I’m completely fine with that. I hope sperm donation dries up (pun intended) across the globe. People who have the nerve to pull that kind of stunt deserve to suffer the negative consequences.

    Arwen, I know the guy makes the choice to donate his sperm for a woman to use to inseminate herself, but you keep missing the point that the final, ultimate choice to create a life rests solely with the woman who chooses insemination. (An aside: Since you seem inclined to hold sperm donors responsible for pregnancy in this scenario, would you also then be amenable to giving men decision-making choice re. abortion of embryos conceived from their sperm?) The guy makes the choice and gets paid regardless of whether or not the juice sits on the shelf until after the expiration date. None of this I’m objecting to.

    What I am objecting to is the ridiculous assertion that a sperm donor’s “participation is no less active because it involved Playboy and a plastic cup rather than a pregnancy.” That to me is ridiculous; whether or not you feel that calling a spade a spade is a particularly effective rhetorical technique is irrelevant to me.

86. Well, how else do you characterize it? It’s a conscious, active decision on the part of the donor. He knows full well what sperm donation is and what sperm’s used for. Said donor cannot be characterized as passive, and he’s definitely a part of the process. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree about relative “responsibility”.

87. Mr. Bad – Women donate eggs, too. If I donated my eggs, I wouldn’t have the right to abort ask a woman carrying those eggs to abort or sustain a pregnancy using those eggs. Nor would I be the mother of that child. I would be the egg donor. I would have given my DNA up for use in pregnancy for whatever reason (money, sense of genetic pride), and the fact that it was my DNA wouldn’t create in me any rights or privileges or responsibilites: I would have signed off, explicitly, to the fact that I was allowing other people to use my DNA for their reproductive purposes.

    You’re thinking in absolutes. I’m not saying (and nor is anyone else) that a man donating sperm (or a woman donating eggs) is solely responsible for pregnancies that then occur. Obviously, someone else has decided to use those bits of produced DNA.

    If you think *sperm and egg donation* should be made illegal, then that’s also a different discussion. Now you’re talking about social policy and how you wish families to be constructed – on a legislative level for the creation of culture. That’s fine: I disagree, but it’s a coherent argument. It makes culpable both members of the contract. The problem I had with the judgement against Wasserstein as disregarding men as irrelevent is that it ignored there was a man also involved who had signed off on the use of his genetic material but didn’t particularly want fatherhood.

    So what is it? Same questions to you as to Charming Billy – what do you see as the relationship between DNA and parenthood? Is someone more truly or deeply a parent because they share DNA? Is the bigger issue the lack of a two parent heterosexual family, or is it a biologically related father? If there were married people using donated sperm because of male fertility issues, would that bother you?

88. Arwen, I don’t particularly have a problem with what Wasserstein did – I don’t believe that I was arguing that point. What I was disagreeing with is the relavtive responsibility that evil fizz was assigning to a sperm donor. That’s IMO patently unfair, especially since men have no say whatsoever in ending pregnancies whether or not they are more involved in the process than as a sperm donor. IMO you shouldn’t be able to have your cake and eat it too, but unfortunately in the world evil fizz would like to see women would have even more privilege than they enjoy now.

    You asked: “So what is it? Same questions to you as to Charming Billy – what do you see as the relationship between DNA and parenthood? Is someone more truly or deeply a parent because they share DNA?”

    IMO, biologically speaking, yes – parentage is most closely related to DNA. However, from a social perspective, I don’t believe that DNA defines a de facto parent. Nurturing, responsibility, etc. – or the lack thereof – are IMO more important. And BTW, this recognizes that there are many single custodial mothers (perhaps like Wallerstein? I don’t know enough about her to say) who IMO fail the test vis-a-vis being a parent. I certainly wouldn’t call a mother who drops off her kid every day at childcare or who has a full time nanny a ‘parent.’ In those situations, the nanny or the childcare worker is the true ‘parent’ from a social/nurturing POV.

89. Since you seem inclined to hold sperm donors responsible for pregnancy in this scenario, would you also then be amenable to giving men decision-making choice re. abortion of embryos conceived from their sperm?

    Isn’t that sort of like saying that someone should be able to sell you a car, and then take the car away later? Except more intrusive? The whole point of sperm donation is to get someone pregnant, so why would anyone want a sperm donation contract that allowed that hardwon pregnancy (hardwon because most couples seeking sperm donation had to spend at least a year proving themselves infertile first) to be aborted at someone else’s will? Better to cleanly ban sperm donation up front, if it’s a bad idea.

    Incidentally, on the single parenthood question, I think it should be legal for people to seek single parenthood through fertility treatment, and also legal for clinics to choose to restrict their services to couples.

90. What I was disagreeing with is the relavtive responsibility that evil fizz was assigning to a sperm donor.

    I think you need to distinguish between equal responsibility for the welfare of a child (which a sperm donor by legal contract doesn’t have), and equal responsibility for an inherently immoral act. If artificial insemination is an intrinsically immoral act, then the sperm donor and the woman getting impregnated bear equal moral responsibility for that intrinsic wrong, because the only reason for donating sperm is to get someone pregnant. The fact that the woman was legally entitled to get an abortion later is irrelevant; both parties knew that she was going to extra lengths to get pregnant and, barring a major fetal deformity or life-threatening pregnancy, wasn’t going to abort. Besides, I’m having trouble coming up with any plausible moral system in which abortion at will is fine and dandy, while artificial insemination is a grave sin.

91. I certainly wouldn’t call a mother who drops off her kid every day at childcare or who has a full time nanny a ‘parent.’ In those situations, the nanny or the childcare worker is the true ‘parent’ from a social/nurturing POV.

    What about a Dad who works? My husband is certainly a good parent, IMO.

    I think there’s been a miscommunication. I can’t see where evil_fizz was putting all the responsibility on the sperm donor – I’ve said similar things, and I think what’s being said is only that we cannot condemn Wasserstein alone for her choices. That she was part of a larger transaction that did indeed contain a man and a woman. In Hugo’s post, he says he heard the complaint: “Women like Wasserstein think men are expendable. We’re more than sperm donors, you know.” However, Wasserstein’s *contract* was with a man who chose to be simply a sperm donor. In fact, we have no idea what brought her to sperm donation or her take on men in her life based on this info: we do know, however, that the sperm donor was categorically agreeing to be a sperm donor and not “something more”.

    As for abortion… Most pro-choice arguments I know tends to define abortion in terms of *pregnancy* and not *parenthood*. If fetuses appeared spontaneously in decanting tubes if birth control failed, I’d say no one has the right to terminate. Adoption is available for those who don’t wish to parent. Abortion, in my mind, is very much about the risks, work, body and life changing experience of *pregnancy*. In Canada, we define that as “security of person”.

    In terms of men’s rights – where, right now, there may be an imbalance; I don’t know all the ins and outs of family law – I would propose a different plan. See if you like it:

    No man should be on the hook for child support IF he, during the pregnancy, signs a legal document giving up the child for adoption. However, in this case, should the woman decide to keep the child, the man can have no contact with either the woman or her kid. Similar deal for women with bio-dads. The bio-parents each get the chance to give the child up, and the chance to stay in the child’s life.
    If the kid is born and said contract has not been signed, it can’t be done years hence, leaving financial and parental responsibility to the other parent. If adoption should happen after the fact, both parents must sign off to the new adoptive family.

92. ( Both parents must sign off on adoption after the fact unless, of course, one of the bio-parents is dead, disappeared, or judged by the courts to be unfit. )

93. Vis a vis insemination, Lynn makes the point I was reaching more cleanly.

94. I think Mr Bad unwittingly illustrated the difference between the cultural meaning of motherhood and fatherhood. A mother who is not present with her child for the majority of hours every day is not a mother-parent. But a father who is not present with his child the majority of hours every day is still a father-parent.

    So who is devaluing fatherhood here?

95. I think Mr Bad unwittingly illustrated the difference between the cultural meaning of motherhood and fatherhood. A mother who is not present with her child for the majority of hours every day is not a mother-parent. But a father who is not present with his child the majority of hours every day is still a father-parent. We ask so much more from mothers than from fathers,

    so who is devaluing fatherhood here?

    What if the only men who got to be counted as fathers for the purposes of making decisions about their childrens’ futures or custody stuff were the ones who personally cared for their children outside of the kids school hours? Is that what mras want?

96. Arwen, I agree with you on the issue of “paper abortions” for fathers.

    Lynn, I was thinking about male input re. abortion in non-AI situations, which is much more common. In AI situations the woman and man have a clear contract; not nearly so much so with ‘traditional’ pregnancies, especially those due to “one night stands,” etc.

    Tara, society already considers fathers who work all day to be less a ‘parent’ than mothers who work all day, as is shown by the family court record. Thus, your thesis collapses in the face of current reality and I therefore reject it. Finally, the hypothetical scenario you propose (i.e., “the only men who got to be counted as fathers for the purposes of making decisions about their childrens’ futures or custody stuff (are) the ones who personally cared for their children outside of the kids school hours”) is de rigeur in our society, and indeed, this is what MRAs are fighting.

97. Mr. Bad: I would suggest not calling them “paper abortions”. Why? Because then the woman has these choices: abortion, paper abortion, adoption. You’ve just framed it again in terms of female biology! I feel that if the female parent wanted to give the child up and the male parent didn’t, the same terms should apply – she signs off, and doesn’t see the dad or the kid. She hasn’t aborted – she’s done the hard work of gestating a fetus. She’s simply chosen not to parent.

    I know there are some who are creeped out by the idea of single dads. But I’d be willing to extend the same trust to Hugo as I did to myself, ditto my husband, ditto lots of the men (some stay-at-home) who lovingly sculpt their dadding blogs.

98. Mr. Bad –

    “Choose your enemies well, for one day you will resemble them.”

99. Mr Bad,

    If you “certainly wouldn’t call a mother who drops off her kid every day at childcare or who has a full time nanny a ‘parent.’”, then how can you argue that a father who drops his kid off at child care or with a nanny or with the mother a ‘parent?’

100. What I was disagreeing with is the relavtive responsibility that evil fizz was assigning to a sperm donor. That’s IMO patently unfair, especially since men have no say whatsoever in ending pregnancies whether or not they are more involved in the process than as a sperm donor.

     I think Lynn has adequately explained what I was getting at here. I was talking merely about contractual sperm donation.

     IMO you shouldn’t be able to have your cake and eat it too, but unfortunately in the world evil fizz would like to see women would have even more privilege than they enjoy now.

     Well, excellent job at imputing motive after fundamentally misunderstanding my original point. I’ve made no argument about expanding female privilege and coming from you, that comment is an insult, and I know you mean it as such. Knock it off, alright?

101. Tara asked: “If you “certainly wouldn’t call a mother who drops off her kid every day at childcare or who has a full time nanny a ‘parent.’”, then how can you argue that a father who drops his kid off at child care or with a nanny or with the mother a ‘parent?’”

     For good or not, this is the role society has evolved for men, i.e., his role is provider for the family. Thus, he is conscientiously participating in the role that has been established for him.

     We can argue about whether or not the various gender roles are “fair,” etc., ’til the cows come home, but the fact is that the father is living up to his role in society, and in that sense is fulfilling his obligation as a productive member of society. You may not agree with or like the gender roles that have evolved over the millenia, but they seem to have worked quite well for a long time. Women nurture the next generation, men provide resources for the women and children. That’s just how it works.

102. Lynn said: “If artificial insemination is an intrinsically immoral act, then the sperm donor and the woman getting impregnated bear equal moral responsibility for that intrinsic wrong, because the only reason for donating sperm is to get someone pregnant.”

     Not true. From a man’s perspective, the only reason to donate sperm is to get paid for it. IMO the donor couldn’t care less whether the sperm is used or sits on the shelf; as long as he gets paid for it, he’s satisfied with the transaction. It’s really that simple.

     That’s why I object to holding the man equally responsible for the “intrinisic wrong” as you and evil fizz put it; he’s not going into the transaction with anything near the same perspective as the woman. From a woman’s perspective it’s all about impregnation, however, from a man’s it’s all about getting paid. Thus, the only “intrinsic wrong” relevant to the man would be taking his sperm without paying for it.

103. Except approaching sperm donation only thinking about money makes the donor willfully ignorant. There’s more to it, acknowledged or not, than just camping out in a room for ten minutes and then walking away with your $100. Whether a donor thinks about pregnancy or other people having his children or not, his culpability for participating in a moral wrong (if that is what sperm donation actually is) isn’t diminished.

104. So it’s quite alright if the man is motivated by greed and doesn’t give a toss what happens to the child concieved with his sperm if one is? So is it okay if we start selling children for money too, without caring what happens to them? What if we sell a child to someone who decides to beat the kid? Of course, we just wanted money, so it’s not our fault, it’s only the fault of the person we sold the stupid brat too!

     Am I understanding this correctly?

     I’m sorry, but something just seriously does not compute here.

     If you really want somebody to blame, blame the health industry. They’re the ones who’ve turned human life into a commodity in the first place.

     But as for individual blame, it’s both the sperm donor and reciever who participated in creating a child. If either one made the decision not participate, there would be no child born. Wanting money is not an excuse.

105. That’s why I object to holding the man equally responsible

     The Werner von Braun approach to sperm donation doesn’t hold water. Unless you’re saying men are stupid indeed, sperm donors are perfectly aware that the reason the sperm bank is paying them is with the intent of selling it to a woman who will use it to get pregnant.

     I know you know this and just get a kick out of baiting people, but you can’t really be THAT clueless.

106. evil fizz said: “Except approaching sperm donation only thinking about money makes the donor willfully ignorant.”

     How so? IMO he knows darn well what his sperm will be used for if it’s sold to and used by a woman. He just doesn’t care. And you know what? He has the right not to care.
     Continuing: “There’s more to it, acknowledged or not, than just camping out in a room for ten minutes and then walking away with your $100. Whether a donor thinks about pregnancy or other people having his children or not, his culpability for participating in a moral wrong (if that is what sperm donation actually is) isn’t diminished.”

     In your mind there may be more to it, but who are you to preach to a man what he does with his sperm? His body, his choice – or do only women get to enjoy that privilege too? The sperm donation transaction is between the man and a sperm bank, while the fertilization transaction is between the woman and a sperm bank. The “moral wrong” (if there is one) is when the woman acts to use the sperm to conceive, not when the man sells his sperm to a sperm bank. Question: Do you consider it a “moral wrong” when women sell their eggs to be used in, e.g., IVF, stem cell research, etc.? Do you consider it a “moral wrong” when a woman gets an abortion? Her body, her choice, right? So why won’t you allow men this right of control of their own bodies?

     Breadfish wrote: “So it’s quite alright if the man is motivated by greed and doesn’t give a toss what happens to the child concieved with his sperm if one is? So is it okay if we start selling children for money too, without caring what happens to them?”

     Ah, so it’s “greed” now. What about the woman who choses to concieve without a father figure for the child? We know that children are best off when they have real fathers, so is the woman purchasing sperm to conceive a child also “greedy?” “Selfish?” Or is she blameless?

     As for equating a man selling his sperm with “selling children,” that’s quite a stretch (and IMO ridiculous). If you are seriously equating sperm with a post-partum child, then surely you equate an unborn fetus with a child, right? So that makes abortion murder, right? Yeah, I know, I know – ‘that’s different.’

     Uh huh.

     I don’t care about blaming anybody – like I said way up the thread, I don’t object to what Wasserstein did. What I do object to is holding the sperm donor responsible for what the woman chooses to do with his sperm. You’re just pulling the hackneyed ‘blame the man’ routine, and that’s bullshit.

107. I’m actually quite against abortion in most circumstances, mr bad. Don’t make assumptions about what views other people do and don’t have. Or go ahead and keep projecting your irrational anger at facelss strangers. Makes no difference to me.

     Also, I’m not pulling “a hackneyed blame the man routine” either. I think if you’re going to call artificial insemination wrong, both parties are equally culpable.

     As it stands, I really don’t give a toss if people concieve by AI as long as they take proper care of the resulting child, but if you’re going to condemn the action, give credit where credit is due, that is all I’m saying. Of course, if you want to continue with your “hackneyed Blame the Woman routine” go ahead and do so, but don’t bother denying your own hypocrisy.

     As for accusing me of bullshit, you’re just as full of it as anybody else in this thread, so you can forget about playing that hackneyed routine as well.

108. Mr. Bad said:
     From a man’s perspective, the only reason to donate sperm is to get paid for it. IMO the donor couldn’t care less whether the sperm is used or sits on the shelf; as long as he gets paid for it, he’s satisfied with the transaction. It’s really that simple.”

     Let’s change man to…

     From a weapon’s dealer’s perspective, the only reason to sell bombs is to get paid for it. IMO, the dealer couldn’t care whether the bomb is used or sits on the shelf; as long as the dealer’s paid for it, he’s satisfied with the transaction. It’s really that simple.”

     Yes, guys sell sperm mainly to get paid. That does *not* mean that there’s not aware for what it’s used for- but that lack of concern or ignorance does not mean that he has no moral culpability.

     Personally, I don’t think sperm or egg donors should be held liable for the child in any way, sense, shape or form. I’m also personally not fond of infertility treatments but I’m not against banning them.

109. His body, his choice – or do only women get to enjoy that privilege too?

     We’ve already established that this argument is about what would be a consistent application of the moral premises implicit in a moral system in which artificial insemination is an intrinsic moral wrong, no? Obviously, in such a system, “my body, my choice” isn’t an absolute moral principle. If it were, why on earth would anyone involved in the artificial insemination transaction be guilty of any wrong whatsoever?

     Do you consider it a “moral wrong” when women sell their eggs to be used in, e.g., IVF, stem cell research, etc.? Do you consider it a “moral wrong” when a woman gets an abortion?

     Is there anyone at all who considers artificial insemination intrinsically wrong and who doesn’t consider these other things to also be wrong? Does it even make the slightest bit of moral sense to have a system of ethics in which egg selling, IVF, stem cell research, and abortion are all morally acceptable, and only artificial insemination is wrong?

110. Breadfish, your comparing sperm with a post-partum child in order to try to make the case for equal culpability for men in AI is bullshit, plain and simple. Further, even though you stated you aren’t in favor of abortion, you didn’t answer my question re. whether or not you think that abortion is murder if indeed sperm is comparable to a post-partum child. The question makes no assumptions about whether or not you are for or against abortion, it just asks you to think about the comparison you’re making in a different light.

     Catty, your comparison of a sperm donor to a weapons dealer is weak. Read my similar exchange above with, I think, mythago. She pointed out that weapons can be used for many things, while sperm has only one use (if it is used at all). I accepted that argument, therefore, I reject your comparison. However, if you wish we can still use your comparison to address the issue of acting out: It is not illegal, nor I believe even immoral, to sell or own a weapon. Morality only enters into the picture when the weapon is used – if it’s used for an immoral purpose, then the act is immoral, and it is not the weapons dealer who is acting immorally, it is the user of the weapon. So to complete the comparison, it is not the sperm donor who acts morally (or not), it is the person who acts out when using the sperm who acts morally (or not).

111. therefore, I reject your comparison

     Oh I get it. It’s one of those “I reject your reality and substitute my own” sort of things.

     Well if that’s the case, I’m finished with you. It’s funny how you angry harry types think you’re superior to the “bitchy feminazis” when you’re really just the exact mirror image of them.

     It’s all fine and well to say something’s bullshit but if you can’t clearly articulate why it is (which you have failed to do so), you’re wasting your breath.

112. Breadfish, I gave you my reasons for rejecting the comparison between selling sperm and selling weapons, and even gave credit to one of your peers where it was due. If you want to stomp off in a huff, that’s fine with me, but at least be honest about why and don’t try to blame me for something I didn’t do.

     And you still wonder why comparing a viable, post-partum child with sperm is bullshit? Well, let’s see if make it clear enough for you to begin to understand: For starters, I think that most reasonable people would agree that sperm is not a human life…

113. Lynn, my questions aren’t aimed towards you, who I don’t think I have any disagreement with. To me this really doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not AI is intrisic moral wrong or not. The problem I’m having is that some here seem to want to hold a man equally responsible for participating in AI by donating sperm when he is not the one who is making the choice to create a life. Indeed, has doesn’t have the ability to make that choice even if he wanted to. Thus, IMO it’s not fair to hold him responsible for the choices made by others.

     Perhaps I’m not understanding your arguments, or perhaps we’re debating two different topics?

114. Okay, I’m baffled. First, I’m not telling any guy what to do with his sperm. Selling it to a fertility clinic is his perogative within the bounds of law. Second, I think everyone agrees that sperm has but one purpose: to make a baby. (I had this exchange with you, Mr. Bad, not mythago.) Surely, every sperm donor *knows* this, even if his primary motivation is money.

     I think we’re having two different arguments here. First, *if* sperm donation is a moral wrong, both those who donate and those who utilize such services are in the wrong. Second, if sperm donation is perfectly acceptable, do recipients bear more responsibility for the resulting children than the donors? One debate is based on the assumption that sperm donation is a moral wrong. The other is about the consequences if sperm donation is *not* a moral wrong? Does that clarify?

115. Mr. Bad: I think you’re not understanding the argument.

     IF we decide AI is morally wrong. (And most of us don’t think it is).
     THEN both man and woman involved in the process are culpable to that wrong.
     EVEN THOUGH they are coming from different motivations.

     That’s why the weapon’s dealer analogy; go nuts, make up your own. It’s a simple enough formula. Get-away car driver. Person who witnesses murder and does nothing about it. What you’ll need here is a little imagination.

     IF we decide that X is wrong.
     AND two persons, A and B, both are necessary to make X happen.
     THEN both are culpable of that wrong.

     You are arguing a point that’s so far afield of what’s being talked about that no one is getting it. Because it’s a “well, duh”.

     Yes, if a man donates sperm, he’s agreeing to the possibility, but not the inevitability, of pregnancy using his DNA: whereas a woman using his sperm is actively SEEKING a pregnancy using his DNA. What your reason for articulating this is, I’m afraid is beyond me. You’re arguing from an entirely different set of first premises – which seem to be “Women are scum” or “Women have more privileges”. If that’s not your point, fine: but your point is unclear. If it is your point, what you’re saying and/or the way you’re saying it doesn’t actually help you establish your case. Mainly, you’re rejecting arguments that you seem to have missed the point on.

     Now, granted, you’ve said you don’t care if your rhetoric is effective. OTOH, you must be back here, on a largely disagreeable board, because you want us to understand something, right? What, exactly, do you want us to understand? Elucidate your first premises, please.

     And know that there’s no argument that will convince us that “women are scum”; and few that will convince us that “women have more privileges”; although a goodly number of us would agree that there are places where women have positive prejudice working for us. For example, stay-at-home parenting.

     The problem is, you seem to on one hand say that woman have these privileges going for them, and on the other (at least regarding gender roles and parenting), seem to be happy with the status quo. That “men provide and women nurture”.

     So? You want the gender roles as they are but think that women’s gender roles lead to more privilege? Why wouldn’t you want gender role equalization, then? (Which is, at least, what I’m looking for.)

     Or you want to return to the age where women obeyed and got their asses whupped for steppin’ outta line? Because that’s the only first premise I can see that provides a coherent framework for your arguments.

     What, exactly, is your wish, here? Elucidate it in the main, and we’ll all be clearer.

116. I want to correct myself.

     I’m personally not fond of infertility treatments, BUT I would never support banning them.

117. What Arwen said.

118. evil fizz, Arwen and Breadfish: What I’m trying to point out is the double-standard you all appear to likely be embracing.

     In the case of AI you appear to be willing to hold the man responsible (and to me it’s not clear that you’re not holding him equally responsible) for the pregnancy resulting from the woman’s choice to use his sperm to become pregnant. On the other hand, when it comes to abortion I have yet to hear anyone other than Arwen concede that the man should have post-conception rights along with his responsibility vis-a-vis pregnancy, abortion, etc.

     To me, as a man, it appears extremely hypocrtical to be told that I’m culpable for AI (if we deem it to be morally wrong) but at the same time not being allowed to exercise equal – or even meaningful – responsibility vis-a-vis reproductive choice when pregnancy result fromm traditional methods. And what about the case where AI is not immoral? Do you concede that the man is equally responsible and therefore should be able to excerise post-partum rights, e.g., to be a father to the resultant child? Or does this sharing of responsibility kick-in only when it’s time to divert (at least some of) the negative social ramifications to the man?

     And no, I’m not arguing that “all women are scum.” That’s a strawman argument that my mother, wife and other female relatives would take great umbrage with were they to hear you utter such slanderous drivel.

119. Except that we’re not embracing a double standard, Mr. Bad. We’re merely saying that if AI’s a sin, there’s two at the dance. We have not resolved whether or not AI’s a sin. Evil fizz and Breadfish and I were reacting to judgement on Wasserstein alone. You say you have no judgement against Wasserstein. So what the heck are you fighting? You’re not arguing things we’ve said, you’re arguing things you believe we mean. And that way lies madness.

     If you’ll go back and read carefully, Mr. Bad, you’ll also see that I’m not slandering you: I’m not saying that you’re arguing that women are scum. Nor is it a strawman. You’ve misused both of those terms.

     You’ll see that I’m admitting confusion as to your first premises, but that you’re giving us very little to work with here in terms of what it is you’re trying to get across. That from your tone, and arguments, those are the only conclusions that I can draw: that or the idea that women have scads of privilege that you’re also not elucidating.

     I don’t see any coherence to your arguments. I don’t know what society you envision. I don’t know what you think is proper/right/useful in terms of gender, especially as it pertains to pregnancy, parenting, etc. You’ve mentioned, on some level, that women should “nurture” to be “mothers” whereas “DNA” and “provision” is part? all? of the definition of “fathers”. You don’t present much for me to extrapolate from besides attacks on the other people here: sometimes, the attacks seem to simply be contrarian.

     I have said, and will say, that there are stereotypes of men and male nurturance that mean that dads get short shrift in custody battles and not considered for stay at home parenting roles and other places where female positive privilege hurts men. *HOWEVER*. You seem to RE-ENFORCE those stereotypes. In the world where women nurture and men provide, then I’d argue that kids should be with the mother.

     So you don’t make sense to me. You seem to see attacks where there aren’t any. You suggest things that seem utterly contradictory. You’re angry, I get that. But at what, exactly?

120. Personally, I’m not venturing into the realm of abortion and men’s rights because I think it’s immaterial to the AI discussion. People using ARTs clearly want to have children and are doing everything in their power to have a baby. Abortion doesn’t really enter into unless one wants to take the argument down a totally different path. I think it’s a topic for another time, that’s all.

121. The one preaching a double standard here is you, mr bad. The creation of an embryo, regardless of the method used, requires genetic input from two people, one male and one female. Ergo, both are equally culpable, equally at “fault” if you want to call the conception of a child a moral wrong in any circumstance. You want to say that men have no responsiblity whatsoever in artificial insemination, despite the fact that if no men chose to participate, the industry wouldn’t exist in the first place.

     Here’s an example that might make sense to you: the meat industry. Factory farming practices are unhealthy and inhumane. The people buying the meat are the ones who keep the industry in business. Farmers are more than happy to have the cattle, pigs and fowl packed into dense feedlots or cramped cages, injected with hormones and antibiotics and otherwise treated like crap in order to meet demand and make a good profit. The consumer, however, well, they just want the damn meat, right? Most people do not stop to think about the source of their steak, and rarely bother to ponder the fact that it was once part of a living, breathing animal capable of perceiving pain. Most certainly don’t think about the fact that the animal probably experienced quite a bit of pain in its short life. Now, I’m no vegitarian, but I for one will fully admit my part in this moral wrong. I buy the meat and help support the industry. As such, I too am responsible for the animals’ mistreatment and the abuse of antibiotics that’s breeding bacteria of god-knows-what type in these factory farms. I don’t like the fact that the animals are abused, but I like meat and milk and I don’t have the patience or money to put a balanced vegan diet together, so I eat meat and milk. That doesn’t absolve me of my responsibility.

     Similarly, the providers of semen for artificial insemenation might just want the money, but they’re still supplying the “meat” so to speak. Like the farmers, they control the commidity. They’re the head of the supply chain and ultimately have a large measure of control in the continuation of the industry. But like any dubious business, the fault lies both with the supplier and consumer. If either party simply pulled out and stopped supporting the industry, it wouldn’t exist. Both parties support the business, both parties are responsible.

     Of course, you’ll probably find some other completely irrational reason to poo-poo the example, but whatever. In line with what Arwen said, I still recommend you take hard look at your own prejudices, because you really do sound like a negative exposure of the classic “feminazi.” If what you really believe in is a world where men control women, well that’s fine too, but be honest about it and stop insulting everyone’s intelligence. Most people have far more respect for those who have honest beliefs, even if they don’t agree with them, than those who aren’t even honest with themselves.

122. “Catty, your comparison of a sperm donor to a weapons dealer is weak. Read my similar exchange above with, I think, mythago. She pointed out that weapons can be used for many things, while sperm has only one use (if it is used at all). I accepted that argument, therefore, I reject your comparison.”

     all right, so what about a weapons dealer that sells bombs to a known, violent, terrorist group? You think the weapons’ dealer has no moral culpability?

     It’s one thing if the guy has been mislead into thinking he’s wanking off the help with the research of the human genome mapping project- but most men waking off to sell their SPERM KNOW what the sppoge is going to be used, just as the weapons dealer selling bombs to a known terrorist organization probably has an idea about how the bomb is used for.

123. I will have to have a post about sperm donation, that much is clear! I’ve got a story to tell from my college days, but it will have to wait for next week.

124. “We can argue about whether or not the various gender roles are “fair,” etc., ’til the cows come home, but the fact is that the father is living up to his role in society, and in that sense is fulfilling his obligation as a productive member of society. You may not agree with or like the gender roles that have evolved over the millenia, but they seem to have worked quite well for a long time. Women nurture the next generation, men provide resources for the women and children. That’s just how it works.”

     Mr. Bad,

     You are a mischievious man. But you are most certainly entitled to your opinion as are the rest of us.

     The above “roles” that have evolved, according to you, are indeed based soley on opinion. What evolved, many, many moons ago, equated as much that women were providers as men – with some specific (and minority) cultures dictating otherwise for a relatively short term of time (in the context of history). As it remains today. Taboot, it is YOU who argue the unfairness of juristiction. All the while you deem the “provider” as duly fulfilling ‘his’ role outside the domain of invested parenting – you simultaeniously assert that women are both rightly and wrongly ‘in charge’ of reproductive issues, including that of childrearing. If a “womans place” is in concieving and nurturing children – and this is not the man’s domain – then the courts favouring women in child custody cases are (for example) upholding your viewpoint and not injust to men (whom are but to pay support in order to fullfill their rightful role). And following this logic, the only role men should have in ART is to follow up the birth with child support payments – again fullfilling their role as providers.

     Again with this strain of logic, the only ‘missing’ and demeaning attribute in ART situations is indeed that men are not required to pay for that child’s existance. One would think you are advocating, in some ’round about way, that in fact it is the lack of fiscal involvement/supremacy that betrays men and that this (rather than feminists) is to blame for the ills “of the family”.

     In fact (and you can do the research this time) women throughout history and in the world today are observed in overwhelming numbers as working more frequently and for more hours in order to sustain their families. Especially in countries where unemployment numbers are highest. Which would infer that, by and large, the men are not working. So where this evolution of gender roles comes from, well, is imaginary and or/ideologically based at best.

     Your logic has many a contradiction laiden within it.

125. Arwen said: “Except that we’re not embracing a double standard, Mr. Bad. We’re merely saying that if AI’s a sin, there’s two at the dance.”

     I still disagree. I think that we can all agree that using a bomb to kill people is a sin (keeping with the single-use nature of bombs and sperm), however, I hold the person who uses the bomb to be responsible, not the maker of the bomb, because even though bombs kill people, some bombs can be used for a greater good (e.g., the one that killed Hitler). On the other hand, you seem to hold anyone involved in making the bomb – or components of conception – responsible for immorality, whether or not they were involved in the decision-making re. the actions directly involved with killing or conceiving.

     I don’t know if you was you who said that because I’m simply arguing my points that I think that “all women are scum,” but somebody accused me of that and that was an uncalled for ad hominem; you’re correct, that wasn’t a strawman. Sometimes we all make errors.

     Continuing: “I don’t see any coherence to your arguments.”

     That’s because you’re not reading them carefully, which is not my fault.

     “I don’t know what society you envision. I don’t know what you think is proper/right/useful in terms of gender, especially as it pertains to pregnancy, parenting, etc. You’ve mentioned, on some level, that women should “nurture” to be “mothers” whereas “DNA” and “provision” is part? all? of the definition of “fathers”. You don’t present much for me to extrapolate from besides attacks on the other people here: sometimes, the attacks seem to simply be contrarian.”

     If you go back and actually read what I wrote you’ll see that I argue both the strict biological as well as the social aspects of fatherhood. I don’t have the time to repeat myself, so read for yourself if you’re interested.

     Breadfish said: “The one preaching a double standard here is you, mr bad. The creation of an embryo, regardless of the method used, requires genetic input from two people, one male and one female. Ergo, both are equally culpable, equally at “fault” if you want to call the conception of a child a moral wrong in any circumstance. You want to say that men have no responsiblity whatsoever in artificial insemination, despite the fact that if no men chose to participate, the industry wouldn’t exist in the first place.”

     Breadfish, I don’t think that you’re paying attention. What I’ve been repeatedly trying to point out vis-a-vis the double-standard is that while most women (you included I assume) are perfectly happy to hold men equally responsible for moral and other aspects of conception and pregnancy, yet at the same time with respect to decision-making re. abortion will feverishly beat the drum of “my body, my choice” as if men have no right to have any say in the matter. That to me is blatantly double-standard. In the case of AI, women alone make the choice to conceive, and I would bet dollars to dimes that those women would demand that the choice to abort the resultant fetus be theirs and theirs alone. Yet you would still hold men responsible at least at somme level, and I’m not sure that you wouldn’t hold them equally responsible. That’s a double-standard, plain and simple. Responsibilities with no rights. Bah.

     IMO your factory farming analogy is invalid because the moral wrong is done by the provider not the consumer; if we assume that eating meat is not morally wrong in and of itself and factory farming is morally wrong then one who obtains meat from ethical ranchers who raise cattle, pigs, etc., under humane conditions is not participating in a morally wrong act. In contrast, with AI all sperm is created the same, under morally ‘humane’ conditions – it is the use of that sperm that may or may not be morally wrong.

     ricia pd said: “And following this logic, the only role men should have in ART is to follow up the birth with child support payments – again fullfilling their role as providers.”

     Fathers provide a heck of a lot more than just money and other resources for the family. The provide moral guidance, discipline, etc., and removing them from all roles in the family other than provider of a paycheck for mom has proven disastrous. Thus, the term “provider” encompasses a lot more than just providing a paycheck, however, unfortunately our so-called “family” court system – and much of our society in general – seems to have lost sight of this fact.

126. And I know you aren’t paying attention, mr bad.

     I told you several posts back, mr bad, specifically that I don’t beat the “my body, my choice” drum, that I don’t believe abortion should be performed except in extenuating circumstances, so you can just toss that tired old argument out the door. Guess you conveniently forgot that and again choose to put your own bullshit words into my mouth (which I do not appreciate in the slightest). Bah yourself. I don’t know if some woman aborted a child you didn’t want aborted, but I am not that woman, so don’t project your prejudices on me. I won’t stand for it. Continue to assume all you want about complete strangers based on presumed gender, but you’re just making an “ass” out of yourself and no one else.

     Also, you didn’t get the analogy I made in the tiniest fraction. At all. Full stop. I’m not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse at this point or if you’re really that dense, but I’m hoping for your sake it’s the former. I said specifically that people buying meat fron INHUMANE producers are supporting the ongoing abuse and ergo are culpable. I never said anything about the morality of eating meat in general, only the morality of doing business with farmers who abuse their animals. As for sperm donation, whereas animals can be treated in many different ways, the only use that sperm has at all is to produce pregnancies. There’s no other use for it whatsoever at all. In the analogy I made, artificial insemination is the animal abuse, the men are the farmers and the women are the people who buy the meat. Do I have to spell it out for you any more clearly for you to understand?

127. Breadfish, talk about being obtuse.

     I’m referring to the general support of abortion, “my body, my choice,” etc. in the feminist and women’s community in general and the double standard in those same circles re. holding men equally responsible for sperm donation for AI. Your continued refusal to ‘get it’ is simply not my problem. This isn’t about you (or me); you’re just one person in a much wider community that does indeed endorse those double-standards, and so I’m asking you to try and justify the double-standards embraced by the wider community and likely society as a whole.

     As for your analogy, I did indeed get it and it doesn’t wash. As I said before, in your analogy the farmer (i.e., the producer) is the one who is choosing to commit an immoral act while in AI the man is simply exercising control over his own body products, which I think we both agree the majority of society believes is his right (unless you disagree that women should be able to exercise control over their bodies in the context of abortion, that men should be held responsible for rinsing their sperm down the drain after masturbating, etc). You don’t have to agree with abortion (or male masturbation) to agree that people should have this choice. In fact, since there’s only one way to create sperm, comparisons with farming methods and value judgements about those comparisons are absurd. Thus, your analogy breaks down before it ever starts. On the other hand, women do have many choices re. conception, abortion, adoption, etc., so IMO any case for immorality related to these activities falls on them. When you have the privilege to make such choices you are also (or should be) responsible for making wise choices and are (or should) be held responsible for the negative ramifications of them.

     If you want to draw an analogy, perhaps the coca trade would be better: Coca is used almost exclusively for two things, as a cultural element of the indigenous Andean people and to make cocaine. Now, in the coca industry there are farmers, middle men/women, dealers and users. IMO the people who are committing the proportionately immoral act are the middle men/women, because they are the ones who are corrupting the natural uses of coca for their own profits, and to a lesser degree the users who are consuming the corrupted product. The Andean farmers IMO are the least culpable vis-a-vis immorality re. coca. Similar thing with sperm and AI: IMO if AI is deemed immoral, the sperm banks are the primary players responsible for corrupting the natural use of sperm, followed by the consumers (i.e., women) who use the corrupted product. The least responsible people are the men who supply the sperm because, like the coca farmers, many of those men are low income/SES and participate in the trade in order to make money (I very much doubt that the typical sperm donor is someone who enjoys a comfortable income). The traditonal cultural use of sperm is create life in the context of an established household of a monagamous man and woman who are committed to their family, and the sperm trade in the context of AI corrupts this traditional cultural use of sperm by exploiting financially-vulnerable men. Therefore, IMO this situation is similar to the perversion by the organized drug trade of the traditional cultural use of coca leaves.

128. Interesting article on the sperm donation experience, from both sides, here: http://www.bethel.edu/~johgre/ges321k/HuGenGam.Bankart.(00).html (scroll down past all the worried articles about surrogate mothers to the article from The Atlantic Monthly, March 1995 v275 n3 p28(4)). It’s about a sperm bank which caters to lesbians and single heterosexual women (as opposed to the other traditional source of artificial insemination clientele, couples with an infertile husband), and includes a program where donors can agree to be contacted later by the children.

     On the mothers’ side: sperm donation is darned expensive:

     And the integrity of the product and its purveyor are crucial to these women, most of whom require three to twelve attempts, at a cost of $800 to $3,000 or more, to conceive (20 percent don’t conceive at all).

     And a major reason for going the sperm donation route, for the single heterosexual women, is the disease screening the sperm bank provides (“The sperm bank screens its donors better than I screen my boyfriends.”).

     On the donor’s side: The process is harder and more time consuming than just showing up and masturbating. Traditionally, cash-strapped college students and medical students have been a prime source of sperm (which makes for, yes, a significant income difference between donor and recipient, but one that relates more to age than to class differences). But the article reports, as of 1987, an increase in older, unemployed donors.

129. Lynn wrote: “On the donor’s side: The process is harder and more time consuming than just showing up and masturbating. Traditionally, cash-strapped college students and medical students have been a prime source of sperm (which makes for, yes, a significant income difference between donor and recipient, but one that relates more to age than to class differences). But the article reports, as of 1987, an increase in older, unemployed donors.”

     Which supports my thesis that the AI industry is one of exploitation of financially vulnerable men by sperm banks and well-to-do women. Not unlike to coca industry.

     Interesting.

130. I cannot and I will not speak for an entire community of people, particularly one I do not really participate in, mr bad. I’m sorry if I somehow misled you into thinking that I was trying to be a spokesperson for half the entire human race, but I never claimed to be this. In fact, tried on several occasions to make it clear that I am not. You’re arguing with somebody who doesn’t exist if you think you’re arguing with an agent for the entire female population, which is probably why you continually fail to understand anything I post.

     And as for my analogy, you’re still completely arse-backwards on it. I’ve explained it three ways to sunday, but you either can’t or won’t understand it so I’m not going to repeat it again for a third, fourth or whatever number we’re up to time.

     The fact of the matter remains, the argument is thus:

     Assume: Artificial Insemintion (hereafter refered to as “AI”) is morally wrong.

     Condition 1: For AI to occur, an egg cell must be present. Without an egg cell, AI cannot occur.
     Condition 2: An egg cell can only be obtained with the consent of an adult female.
     Condition 3: For AI to occur, sperm cells must be present. Without sperm cells, AI cannot occur.
     Condition 4: Sperm cells can only be obtained with the consent of an adult male

     Conclusion 1: Without both egg and sperm, AI cannot occur. Ergo, both male sperm donor and female egg donor are at fault for the “moral wrong” of concieving a child through artificial insemination.

     It’s very simple. What you fail to understand about that I do not know.

     “while in AI the man is simply exercising control over his own body products.”

     And in AI, a woman is simply exercising control over *her* body products: an egg cell and her uterus.

     There. Is. No. Difference. Both parties choose to participate in an activity which has the possibility of the conception of an embryo. A man can just as easily wank at home and leave the spooge in a tissue in the garbage can as sell it. A woman can just as easily not go to the clinic and let the egg cell end up in a tampon or the toilet during her next period. Pregnancy, no matter how it occurs, is always the result of the choices two people make except in the case of actual rape.

     Nobody is asking for a double standard but you, mr bad. You’re the one who wants women to take responsibility for participating in what you see as a moral wrong but you do not want to hold the man responsible for his action, without which the entire process could not occur. If men chose not to sell their “body products” no woman could ever concieve by means of anonymous sperm donation. AI might cut the father relationship out of the equation, but if a man didn’t want children he’d never see, he wouldn’t sell his sperm in the first place. It’s part and parcel of the whole contract: sell us your sperm, we’ll give it to some woman you’ll never meet, and we’ll give you money. It’s not like they’re being cheated out of a relationship they actually wanted. They signed away their rights to any child concieved with the the second they came in a cup and voluntarily handed it to the nurse in exchange for a check. You can moan and cry about the injustice of daddy not seeing the kid he didn’t want to see all you care to, but keep in mind that all parties involved in this are getting exactly what they asked for: The guys wanted the money and no responsibilities regarding the children walking around with half their DNA, and the gals got their kid with nobody else hanging around. Everyone goes home happy, except possibly for Junior who will never know who biological daddy is because neither parent thought it important enough to not participate in AI.

     Honestly, think about it: if a guy wanted a relationship with the children conceived with his sperm, wouldn’t he be leaving his “body products” directly inside the woman in question, instead of a plastic cup in exchange for money? He’s not being cheated, no matter what you think. Maybe the child is being cheated, but I guess he should have thought of that before he chose to sell off his semen if it’s something that bothered him.

     If you want to go on continuing to scream “the men are all innocent! it’s all the woman’s fault for everything!” by all means, do so, but you’re deluding yourself. It’s everybody’s fault, from the donating man to the receving woman, to the bloody doctors doing the procedure. They’re all choosing facilitate the process.

     “Nobody is right when everybody is wrong”

131. Breadfish wrote: “It’s very simple. What you fail to understand about that I do not know.

     (quoting Mr. Bad) “while in AI the man is simply exercising control over his own body products.”

     And in AI, a woman is simply exercising control over *her* body products: an egg cell and her uterus.

     No. She is exercising control over the sperm as well; the man relinguished control of his sperm to the sperm bank when he sold it. He doesn’t give a shit whether or not it’s used or spoils on the shelf – for him the deal is done when the check clears.

     Breadfish continues: “There. Is. No. Difference.”

     There. Is. A. Big. Difference. Which you refuse to ‘get.’

     Continuing: “Both parties choose to participate in an activity which has the possibility of the conception of an embryo. A man can just as easily wank at home and leave the spooge in a tissue in the garbage can as sell it.”

     Invalid comparison. Men masturbate in the privacy of their home all the time when the want sexual gratification, however, they don’t get paid for it (ah, if we only did!). On the other hand, men ‘wank at the sperm bank and leave their spooze’ in a cup for the sperm bank people and the women who patronize the business for money. In the first case, the man wanks for pleasure, in the second case he wanks to create a commodity that he can sell to sperm banks.

     Big difference.

     More: “A woman can just as easily not go to the clinic and let the egg cell end up in a tampon or the toilet during her next period.”

     Not if she wants to get pregnant, which is after the all the whole point of AI.

     Breadfish continues: “Pregnancy, no matter how it occurs, is always the result of the choices two people make except in the case of actual rape.”

     That is a very debatable topic, especially when you consider the many, many more choices that women have re. pregnancy, childbirth, etc. relative to men.

     Now it starts to get heated: “You’re the one who wants women to take responsibility for participating in what you see as a moral wrong but you do not want to hold the man responsible for his action, without which the entire process could not occur.”

     I have stated that the man has some limited responsibility for providing the raw materials for the process, but the sperm banks and the women who use them bear (or at least should) the brunt of the responsibility for the lives created. Also, you’ve not been reading carefully: I don’t personally consider AI an immoral act, I’m arguing that if others see it this way then blame the people who are primarily responsible for it – sperm banks and the women who use them – and not the people who are exploited in the process, i.e., the financially vulnerable men who need to sell sperm to make ends meet.

     More: “If men chose not to sell their “body products” no woman could ever concieve by means of anonymous sperm donation. AI might cut the father relationship out of the equation, but if a man didn’t want children he’d never see, he wouldn’t sell his sperm in the first place.”

     Are you being intentionally dense? Men don’t sell their sperm to create children, they sell sperm for money. Period. As I’ve repeatedly said, men don’t give a shit whether or not a woman uses the sperm or it rots in the refrigerator; to them it’s all about getting paid.

     In the following you seem to have a flicker of understanding and then once again completely lose it: “It’s part and parcel of the whole contract: sell us your sperm, we’ll give it to some woman you’ll never meet, and we’ll give you money. It’s not like they’re being cheated out of a relationship they actually wanted. They signed away their rights to any child concieved with the the second they came in a cup and voluntarily handed it to the nurse in exchange for a check.”

     Heh, were it that simple. What about the men who are hunted down and slapped with CS for children conceived from sperm sold to sperm banks? This happens right now in Scandanavia and if history is any indicator it won’t be long before feminist zealots and their fellow travelers here in the U.S. jump on that bandwagon. Or the men who are hunted down by the kids who share their DNA, whether or not those men wish it? And what about the kids who want to try and make ‘dad’ pay them CS? Follow the money in all this and it becomes pretty clear what this is all about.

     Now you start projecting: “You can moan and cry about the injustice of daddy not seeing the kid he didn’t want to see all you care to, but keep in mind that all parties involved in this are getting exactly what they asked for: The guys wanted the money and no responsibilities regarding the children walking around with half their DNA, and the gals got their kid with nobody else hanging around. Everyone goes home happy, except possibly for Junior who will never know who biological daddy is because neither parent thought it important enough to not participate in AI.”

     Please show me where I ‘moaned and cried’ about “the injustice of daddy not seeing the kid he didn’t want to see.” I do cite the example (above) of daddy being forced to deal with a kid (and/or mother) who he never wanted to be involved with, but that’s way different. What I’m disagreeing with is the double-standard that you and others embrace whereby you’d like to stick men with the responsibility for women’s decisions, good or not. If you’re going to force ‘daddy’ to have some responsibility re. AI, then he should at least have some rights. Same thing for pregnancies resulting from conventional sex and conception, but in that case the Holy Grail of “my body, my choice” forces ‘daddy’ out of the decision-making picture, except when ‘mommy’ wants to stick him with CS; at that point he can ‘choose’ to either pay up or go to jail. I keep asking for and you keep avoiding giving me your justification of this double standard. Now, how come I’m not surprised?

     Finally, you write: “Honestly, think about it: if a guy wanted a relationship with the children conceived with his sperm, wouldn’t he be leaving his “body products” directly inside the woman in question, instead of a plastic cup in exchange for money? He’s not being cheated, no matter what you think. Maybe the child is being cheated, but I guess he should have thought of that before he chose to sell off his semen if it’s something that bothered him.”

     Ok, once more, just for old time’s sake: I’m not arguing that the man who donates sperm to a sperm bank wants any kind of relationship with any kid(s) resulting from the use of his sperm. You’re the one arguing that, and frankly, it’s an absurd argument.

     “If you want to go on continuing to scream “the men are all innocent! it’s all the woman’s fault for everything!” by all means, do so, but you’re deluding yourself.”

     Transference? Projection? You should look those up in a psych text.

     “It’s everybody’s fault, from the donating man to the receving woman, to the bloody doctors doing the procedure. They’re all choosing facilitate the process.”

     Perhaps, but the ultimate and driving decision, and thus ultimate responsibility, lies squarely with the women who pay the sperm banks for these products. Without them, none of this would happen and men would be relegated to rinsing their sperm down the drain for nothing other than an orgasm.

132. “Which supports my thesis that the AI industry is one of exploitation of financially vulnerable men by sperm banks and well-to-do women. Not unlike to coca industry.

     Interesting. ”

     Cash-strapped women donate eggs, too. Cash-stapped women donating eggs don’t count to you? They’re not exploited because they’re women?

133. “Heh, were it that simple. What about the men who are hunted down and slapped with CS for children conceived from sperm sold to sperm banks? This happens right now in Scandanavia and if history is any indicator it won’t be long before feminist zealots and their fellow travelers here in the U.S. jump on that bandwagon. Or the men who are hunted down by the kids who share their DNA, whether or not those men wish it? And what about the kids who want to try and make ‘dad’ pay them CS? Follow the money in all this and it becomes pretty clear what this is all about.”

     Well, start putting up state legislation (as surprise- a “liberla” California does) regarding sperm and egg donor protection from CS. I know many feminists that would join you.

     Seriously Mr. Bad, you love lumping feminists into this one broad streak.

134. Perhaps, but the ultimate and driving decision, and thus ultimate responsibility, lies squarely with the women who pay the sperm banks for these products. Without them, none of this would happen and men would be relegated to rinsing their sperm down the drain for nothing other than an orgasm.

     And again, if the men didn’t provide the sperm, the sperm banks would have nothing to sell. We’re back to square one. And whether or not a man “gives a shit” what happens to the sperm is probably dependant on the individual. Unless you’re a mind reader who hangs out at sperm bank clinics, I’d be wary of making such an assumptions (but then, you ARE rather fond of irrational blanket assumptions, I’ve noticed).

     Generally speaking, wanting to get paid for something does not absolve you of the consequences of your action, whatever the action is. This whole “they just want to get paid” argument is bad ethics in ANY situation, period. People do all sorts of shady shit to get paid. Hell, hired assassins kill because they want money, not because they care what happens as a result of killing their target. Is the true murder the assassin or the person who hired the assassin? According to the law, both go to prison. You’d better come up with a better defense than “they just want money so it doesn’t matter” because I’m not buying that bullshit (to use your favorite turn of phrase). A person’s motivations are completely irrelevant, only actions count.

     the many, many more choices that women have re. pregnancy, childbirth, etc. relative to men.

     Bullshit. Men have plenty choice: use a fucking condom if you don’t want a kid. I know some women abort kids that their partners don’t want aborted, and I think that’s quite a nasty thing to do to somebody, but there are just as many women harangued into getting abortions they don’t want by their boyfriends who don’t want a kid. I personally know two women who’ve gone through just that, so don’t tell me it never happens. The solution, of course, is to use conventional birth control (i.e. condoms or hormonal drugs) and not get into such a situation in the first place.

     What about the men who are hunted down and slapped with CS for children conceived from sperm sold to sperm banks? This happens right now in Scandanavia and if history is any indicator it won’t be long before feminist zealots and their fellow travelers here in the U.S. jump on that bandwagon.

     Heheh. “The feminist zealots”. I love it. You say that like “the red menace.”

     I don’t remember ever saying that men should pay alimony on AI children either, that’s your bit, and you were the one bemoaning the fact that AI belittles the importance of the father in a family about 50 posts ago. As far as I’m concerned women who concieve by AI are on their own, that’s also part and parcel in the contract of anonymous sperm donation: financially the kid is theirs, and theirs alone and that should be understood from the get-go, regardless of the moral responsiblity. Otherwise, why bother with *anonymous* sperm donation? Isn’t the whole point that you don’t have to deal with having a relationship? Both father and mother however, are from a moral standpoint responsible for the creation of that child. It’s sort of somebody who refuses to get their dog spayed and then sells the puppies to somebody who abuses them. They relinquish complete control of the animals when they sell them, but they’re the ones who decided to relinquish control, ergo they hold some of the moral responsiblity for the treatment of the animals at the hands of their new owners. They may not be legally culpable for it, but at the end of the day, there’s still blood on their hands. That’s all I’m saying here. Relinquishing control of something is an active choice, not some passive byproduct of wanting money. ALL choices have consequences. We as sentient beings bear the moral responsibility of the consequences of our choices, both forseen and unforseen, intended and unintended.

     At any rate, what goes on in other countries is fairly irrelevant to the topic of American gender politics. Scandinavians don’t vote in this country, the last time I checked. If you don’t like the idea, vote against it.

     On a side note, as far as scandinavian countries go, if women are legally able to demand alimony of sperm sellers, then men who aren’t willing to take the risk of having to pony up the dough shouldn’t sell their sperm. Not a hard concept, really. If it bothers you that much, buy a plane ticket to scandinavia and go protest there.

     As far as the children themselves tracking their biological fathers down, it’s generally when the children are old enough to make their own decisions, and has nothing to do with their mothers. That’s also irrelevant to the discussion at hand as it is the child’s choice, not the mother’s.

     And for this “double standard” you keep harping about, I told you a million fucking times I don’t believe abortion in most circumstances is justifiable, no matter which parent wants it. Ask somebody who does and stop trying to tell me what I do or don’t believe in and what I do and don’t support.

     As far as child support goes, just don’t screw a woman if you can’t live with the possibility of a child being concieved and having to be financially supported. If there’s one way to guarantee 100% that you won’t have to pay child support, just don’t have any children and that’s easily obtainable with abstinence. I’m all for making men who get women knocked up live with the consequences of their actions. Hell, if a woman has a kid, dumps it on the father and runs, I’m all for making her pony up the money as well. The kid is innocent in the situation, and it’s got to eat, and somebody better damn well pay for it. I’m all for making all people who do stupid shit live up to the consequences of their actions. My biggest problem with America today is the whole “victim” mentality everyone has, and the idea that you should be able to do whatever you want and make somebody else clean up the mess for you (usually the government and justice system).

     If you won’t be responsible for the consequences of your actions, don’t do anything that will get you in trouble in the first place. Don’t do stupid shit and blame it all on some faceless Big Conspiracy like “the feminist zealots” or for that matter “the hidden patriarchy” or whatever your pet prejudice is.

     Transference? Projection? You should look those up in a psych text.
     Hello, Pot. I’m Kettle. How are you?

135. Seriously Mr. Bad, you love lumping feminists into this one broad streak.

     Tell me about it.

136. On the other hand, women do have many choices re. conception, abortion, adoption, etc., so IMO any case for immorality related to these activities falls on them. When you have the privilege to make such choices you are also (or should be) responsible for making wise choices and are (or should) be held responsible for the negative ramifications of them.

     There it is, first premises, with a bow. “Evil Feminists”, I think, is shorthand for women who don’t think that the morality and immorality of what happens around sex and conception should be solely on female heads.

     Ta Da! Thanks, Mr. Bad.

137. On the other hand, women do have many choices re. conception, abortion, adoption, etc., so IMO any case for immorality related to these activities falls on them. When you have the privilege to make such choices you are also (or should be) responsible for making wise choices and are (or should) be held responsible for the negative ramifications of them.

     There it is, first premises, with a bow. “Evil Feminists”, I think, is shorthand for women who don’t think that the morality and immorality of what happens around sex and conception should be solely on female heads.

     Ta Da! Thanks, Mr. Bad.

138. Sorry for the double post.

     Just a note, Mr. Bad. I think that our fundamental disconnect here is this: most of us are seperating out as different issues:

     Sex
     Conception
     Pregnancy
     Parenthood of Minors
     (Parenthood of Adults)

     So:

     Sex (short of rape), has 2 (or possibly more) people responsible. Those people each have rights, and responsibilities.

     Conception has 2 people responsible. Short of rape. Rights and responsibilites regarding protection of one’s own DNA are equal to persons.

     Pregnancy has 1 person responsible. Until the day that dads can gestate, that’s the woman. She has all the rights and responsibilities, therefore.

     Parenting has 2 people responsible and *three* people with rights.

     This is the place where I would have a meeting of the minds with you regarding men: I think they should have the during gestation right to “adopt away” a child that the mom’s choosing to keep, or to keep a child the mom’s choosing to “adopt away”. I have been told that in some jurisdictions this is already the case.

     For parenting, there’s one thing the woman can do solely, so the woman has both the rights and the responsibilities, and that is breastfeeding. The dad can have an opinion, but he can’t force the woman to breastfeed: it’s her body. Again, until a man can breastfeed and volunteers to do such work himself, he can’t demand that work is done by another person.

     On the other hand, if the dad wants to do all the work of, say, taking the child to hockey, then he has that right and that responsibility.

     Responsibilities and rights of parenting change over time. The choices we make aren’t uniform. Families usually try to do the best with what they’ve got, but the police have to step in for abuse, neglect, and abandonment. That’s the responsibility part.

     If there are cases in which the man is disadvantaged due to gender in the courts vis a vis parenting, or places where gender roles make us “assume” that women will do the work (and have the joy) of parenting, then I’m all for addressing those inequalities.

     None of which will say a darn thing about how I feel about *pregnancy*, which is work that only a woman’s body can do (as of right now.)

139. Well, I find artificial insemination to be morally repugnant, I hold the men equally as responsible, and yes, I support making them pay child support – and giving them parental rights to go with it – as a means of ending it.

     Fortunately, our welfare state which is running more and more in the red is looking to do just that.

140. Breadfish said: “Hell, hired assassins kill because they want money, not because they care what happens as a result of killing their target.”

     So now you’re comparing sperm donors with hired assassins. Good grief, your arguments more outlandish with every post.

     Continuing: “A person’s motivations are completely irrelevant, only actions count.”

     Really? Then explain why there are several categories or murder, manslaughter, etc. Or hate crimes? If motivations are irrelevant, then there should only be only one category of killing a person, one kind of assault (including rape in assault), etc. Your arguments don’t hold up.

     More: “Bullshit. Men have plenty choice: use a fucking condom if you don’t want a kid.”

     Ah yes, according to you men have “plenty of choice,” i.e., exactly one: A condom. Women have diaphrams, cervical caps, dental dams, IUDs, The Pill, The Sponge, spermicide, The Patch, Norplant, the Morning After Pill, RU486 and abortion.

     Now, who has more choices, more opportunities along the way to childbirth to make choices, and therefore, more responsibility for making sound choices and being responsible for those choices? Women, that’s who.

     “As far as I’m concerned women who concieve by AI are on their own, that’s also part and parcel in the contract of anonymous sperm donation: financially the kid is theirs, and theirs alone and that should be understood from the get-go, regardless of the moral responsiblity.”

     As for Scandanavian feminists passing laws forcing sperm-donating men to pay to CS: You don’t see that as zealotry? Geez, then I suppose Fred Phelps would be a normal, everyday guy to you, right?

     Then why are you arguing that men should be held equally responsible for children born via AI?

     As for your puppy analogy, that one doesn’t wash either.

     “As far as the children themselves tracking their biological fathers down, it’s generally when the children are old enough to make their own decisions, and has nothing to do with their mothers. That’s also irrelevant to the discussion at hand as it is the child’s choice, not the mother’s.”

     As much as folks like you insist that every issue is about women, sperm donation is not – it’s about men. Therefore, the above point doesn’t really involve the mother, it’s about the father’s rights (ooo, “father’s rights” – no doubt the priciple is anathema to you).

     You said: “And for this “double standard” you keep harping about, I told you a million fucking times I don’t believe abortion in most circumstances is justifiable, no matter which parent wants it. Ask somebody who does and stop trying to tell me what I do or don’t believe in and what I do and don’t support.”

     Geez, are you dense. I keep asking you and you keep missing the issue re. whether or not you think that other women have the right to abortion without the father’s input, and at the same time holding a sperm donor responsible for a child conceived via AI. It’s not about whether or not you personally believe that abortion is right, wrong, or in between, it’s about other women’s right to choose abortion and at the same time hold sperm donors responsible for children they conceive via AI. Please try and concentrate long enough to distinguish between your own personal little world and the world at large and give me an opinion about the world at large and not about yourself. Believe it or not, the universe doesn’t revolve around you.

     “I’m all for making men who get women knocked up live with the consequences of their actions.”

     Except this isn’t about traditional pregnancy, it’s about AI.

     ” The kid is innocent in the situation, and it’s got to eat, and somebody better damn well pay for it. I’m all for making all people who do stupid shit live up to the consequences of their actions. My biggest problem with America today is the whole “victim” mentality everyone has, and the idea that you should be able to do whatever you want and make somebody else clean up the mess for you (usually the government and justice system).”

     Really? Then how do you feel about paternity fraud? Should women have to pay back the man all CS he ever paid, plus interest, plus penalties? That would be the responsible thing to do. And to hear a feminist lecturing about the whole ‘”victim” mentality’ is beyond ironic.

     Arwen, you and I are on the same page except for breastfeeding, which is the best way to go for a young child but is not crucial. Lot’s of healthy kids have been raised on formula.

     Gonz, you and I disagree on this, and frankly I’m a bit surprised at your stance here. Being a Libertarian, I feel that the man has a right to enter into a private contract with a sperm bank without interference from the government in these private affairs. The man makes the choice to donate sperm and the woman makes the choice to create a child; the sperm bank is the link, aka middleman. Yet, your support for making him pay CS for a kid conceived via AI demands that the State get involved in such private matters. This just doesn’t sound like your normal view of Big Government, aka the Nanny State.

141. Mr. Bad: I think you and I are very much not on the same page, regarding sex, conception, and pregnancy. I believe you’re conflating all these issues with parenting, which I think we both see some serious gender divide on that we agree about.

     I am very pro-choice, and do think that (if AI was morally wrong) that both sides of the conception are equally responsible. I don’t think that those things have anything to do with one another, because I seperate out sex, conception, pregnancy, and parenting.

142. Ah yes, according to you men have “plenty of choice,” i.e., exactly one: A condom. Women have diaphrams, cervical caps, dental dams, IUDs, The Pill, The Sponge, spermicide, The Patch, Norplant, the Morning After Pill, RU486 and abortion.

     Now, who has more choices, more opportunities along the way to childbirth to make choices, and therefore, more responsibility for making sound choices and being responsible for those choices? Women, that’s who.

     Contraception is contraception. The diaphrams, IUDs etc are all same damn thing – a barrier to prevent pregnancy. Some are just more expensive than others. Both men and women have the same choice before having sex: either use contraception or not. The particular method of contraception is completely irrelevant as long as it works. If you want more options for men, go out and invent them. And you forgot one option for men: get the vas deferens blocked and that’s the end of your worries for the rest of your days.

     As for abortion, I’ve already told you what I think about that.

     Geez, are you dense. I keep asking you and you keep missing the issue re. whether or not you think that other women have the right to abortion without the father’s input, and at the same time holding a sperm donor responsible for a child conceived via AI. It’s not about whether or not you personally believe that abortion is right, wrong, or in between, it’s about other women’s right to choose abortion and at the same time hold sperm donors responsible for children they conceive via AI. Please try and concentrate long enough to distinguish between your own personal little world and the world at large and give me an opinion about the world at large and not about yourself. Believe it or not, the universe doesn’t revolve around you.

     I *was* talking about the world at large, dipshit. My opinion on abortion is my opinion on abortion unversally. You’re the one being dense. The universe doesn’t revolve around you either, regardless of the fact that you seem to think the whole thing is out to get you.

     As much as folks like you insist that every issue is about women, sperm donation is not – it’s about men. Therefore, the above point doesn’t really involve the mother, it’s about the father’s rights (ooo, “father’s rights” – no doubt the priciple is anathema to you).

     We were discussing the women at the moment (and you’re the one who’s been so loudly claiming that it’s all the women’s problem, thus implying that it’s a women’s issue), so that is what I addressed. And for the 500th damn time, don’t put words into my mouth. You don’t know me and you don’t know anything about me (obviously). As for an AI-produced kid going after the father, if the kid is no longer a minor, the kid’s got no claim on anything and can get lost. If the kid’s under 18, the kid is still the mother’s problem. If mom is dead and the kid is under 18, well I really couldn’t tell you but I suspect Junior would end up in a foster home or state home long before he’d end up with daddy.

     As for paternity fraud, fine, make her pay the money back if the man isn’t the real father, or better yet find the real father and make him pay up.

     And to hear a feminist lecturing about the whole ‘”victim” mentality’ is beyond ironic.

     LOL! Oh that’s real rich coming from you. Go on, tell me another one.

143. My position is strictly utilitarian – I wish it to be gone, therefore I wish to make it unattractive as possible.

144. PS. mr tempest-in-a-teapot, I love how you side-step anything you don’t like by simply saying it’s “bullshit” or “doesn’t wash out”.

     Well, I have three exams later this week to study for and a paper to start, so I’ll be gone for a few days, hope you all have lots of fun here without me.

145. There are a lot of political positions I take which may seem counterintuitive, Mr Bad, but there is a method to my madness.

     We already make men who never knew they were fathers pay Child support years after the fact – so why stop there? By allowing these laws to not be enforced in the extreme and egregious cases, which would let there be no doubt how bogus and outrageous they are, we let certain things stealth through under the radar.

     So – we have established the principle that fathers who have even been openly decieved must pay CS – even in the face of documentation to the contrary – so let’s let this principle go to men who intended to father a child, and weren’t decieved.

146. Gonz, Ok, I see where you’re coming from and in principle I agree. However, I just can’t help being concerned about the poor guys who have to fall on their swords so that the men who come after them get justice. For them the deal truly sucks.

     Breadfish, women have a lot more options for contraception than men do and all your machinations won’t change that. Women can (and do) simultaneously use, e.g., diaphrams, spermicide, and the Pill to prevent pregnancy. After accidental conception, they have the option of the Morning After Pill, if they wait too long for that, RU486. And if they really have trouble making decisions, they can get an abortion after that. Or not, for all of the above. Men have one choice, a condom. The situation for men and women vis-a-vis contraception and parenthood is nowhere near comparable. Women have many more choices than men do, and only a fool would argue otherwise.

147. Begging the question, though: why aren’t men demanding more choices? If you want more male controlled methods, start banging on the door of Big Pharma. Last I checked, there were more than 30 different ways to block fertility in men that appeared to be amenable to scientific intervention. Male pills are in development. Seriously, Eli Lily, et. al. are your friends.