The Sperm Wail

Sperm, as Helen and I have noted in several of our video blogs, is only the start of the lesbian-parenting journey (and isn’t part of the journey at all for adoptive parents). Choosing sperm is important while you’re doing it, and children may develop a natural curiosity about their donors, but most of us are not as obsessed in everyday life about sperm as media depictions of lesbian moms would have us believe.

Once in a while, though, the facts of our children’s creation can come back in negative ways for both moms and donors. Donors may fight for custody, or conversely, moms may try to force donors to pay child support, as happened last week in New York. This particular case is complicated by the fact that the moms and donor let the man put his name on the child’s birth certificate, and send the child money, gifts, and letters signed “Dad” or “Daddy.” There wasn’t an excess of involvement, however; the donor and child only spoke by phone about seven times over the past 15 years. (Thanks, National Gay News.)

In a similar case, over in the U.K., a biological mom is asking her donor to pay child support after she and her partner broke up. The man claims the three had agreed he would have no responsibility for the child; the bio mom says, however, that he changed his mind: “He was a father to the children, a dad. He played a father’s role for two years,” even watching the girl one weekend every month. (Thanks, PageOneQ.)

Whatever the truth of these situations, the message is clear: If you are using a known donor, make your arrangements in writing, in conjunction with a lawyer. On a macro scale, however, this leads to all kinds of interesting questions about the legal system and new conceptions (!) of parenthood. A Canadian court has already ruled that three people can parent a child (bio mom, non-bio mom, and bio father), and other parents are creating contracts that reflect their own similar arrangements. The distinction, of course, is that some families want to be a unit of three parents, whereas others prefer only two (or one, in the case of a single mom by choice). Will courts be able to understand intent and accept these new arrangements, or will they try to shoehorn families into molds that just don’t fit? Yes, the best interests of the child come first and foremost, but as many still believe this means the traditional one-mom-one-dad configuration, that’s not as clear a touchstone as we might hope.

Family law is going to be one fun ride over the next decade or so. Now there’s a great theme for a new legal drama on TV. Make one of the lawyers a lesbian mom for good measure. Any striking writers want to work up a draft for later use?