I know what I’m supposed to say about our family: Two moms are just as good! Maybe better! 😍 Love is love! 🌈
However, I don’t believe in gaslighting the public with queer talking points. All else equal, it’s better for kids to have a mother and a father. Some studies claim to show children have better outcomes with lesbian parents, but researchers can’t control for the differences in resources and preparation when one group includes accidental pregnancies, and the second is largely composed of couples who had the money and motivation to navigate third-party reproduction.
Clearly, children with two moms can thrive, but this doesn’t prove biological fathers are irrelevant. Fathers matter, and not having a father is a loss. The question is whether the absence is so harmful and enduring that it’s unethical for lesbians to conceive with donor sperm.
Most of the ethical problems with reproductive technology don’t apply when lesbians have kids. With two wombs between them, lesbians typically carry their own children. Babies stay with their biological mothers, and they are born already knowing the non-gestational mother’s voice. The tough part comes later, when children realize they don’t have a dad.
Reactionary feminists have qualms. In a discussion1 with Jennifer Lahl, Louise Perry said of sperm donation, “I think it’s less ethically naughty, definitely, because you’re not dealing with the sort of risks during pregnancy. […] The bond between mother and newborn is a lot stronger, and breaking it is a lot worse. But I have to say I do have misgivings. […] You’re stopping that possibility, at the beginning, of them having any kind of proper relationship with their father. I don’t think it’s as bad as surrogacy, but I do still think it’s a really tough ethical problem.”
Lahl agreed and pointed out that donor-conceived adults have organized in favor of laws requiring disclosure of sperm donors’ identities. She opposes all third-party reproduction because it deprives children of at least one biological parent.
However, the discussion didn’t cover alternatives to secrecy. We conceived with sperm from a family friend who is part of our lives, so our son has access to him. It has been really cool to see the connection. For example, our friend is an artist, and our son inherited his talent and wants to be an artist when he grows up.2 While our son is little, we facilitate contact, but one day it will be up to them to figure out their relationship. I hope it will always be warm and positive.
Not everyone has access to a known donor, but some couples work with sperm banks that allow access to the donor’s identity. They might also support the child finding biological relatives with a DNA test. And while some straight parents lie to donor-conceived children about their origins, lesbians don’t even have the option (not that we wanted it). We have a picture book explaining where donor-conceived babies come from, and our son can’t remember “finding out” because he has always known.
We also expose him to male role models, give him plenty of time with his grandfather, and so on. None of this erases the fact that he isn’t being raised by his biological father, but it helps.
Few families are perfect. In the United States, about a quarter of children live with single parents. Others live with stepparents. Others are adopted or in foster care. Some biological parents are unstable or unfit, and children in any arrangement may experience life-altering trauma and loss.
My son has two mothers who adore him, involved grandparents, and a comfortable life with pricey activities and private school. Considering all of his advantages, it’s impossible for me to look at my son and think he is so deprived that he shouldn’t have been born.
Critics of sperm donation point to intentions. Yes, millions of kids lack a father, but you intended for this to happen (you selfish monster). However, many straight parents raise children in suboptimal circumstances that were entirely foreseeable. I don’t believe we should judge single mothers, but it’s unfair to be even harder on lesbian mothers who did everything in their power to offer a secure and stable home.
Opponents emphasize the rights of children, that it’s wrong to deprive innocent babies of their fathers just so adults can fulfill their desire for a child. However, those children grow up, and involuntary childlessness can be just as painful if not worse. What if my son struggles with infertility one day? What if he says he’s happy with his family of origin, but devastated that he can’t have kids? The message “sperm donation is unethical” wouldn’t make sense.
I believe in balance. Adult desires matter, but we have a responsibility to put our children first. This means taking fatherlessness seriously instead of saying it’s homophobic to have concerns.
Tom Bilyeu made this point in a discussion with Konstantin Kisin:
Hey, everybody having kids! Gay, straight, single… What’s the outcome that you want? You want your kids to do well economically, emotionally, all of the above, whatever. Okay cool. Now let’s just look at the data. What choices are most likely to get you there? [A family with a biological mom and dad]
If you can’t make that choice either because you love somebody else who doesn’t fit that mold, or you lost your significant other, whatever—there’s a million reasons where you find yourself in one of the ones that’s maybe a higher risk group. It doesn’t make you bad. But you don’t want to be blind to those risks. You—I would hope—want somebody to tell you, “Okay, hey, you have certain things you’re going to need to address and really be thoughtful of.”
This is how I think about our family. We aren’t bad, but we need to be conscious of how not having a father might affect our son.
He has been content with our family for most of his short life, but when he asked for a dad (around age 3) I validated his feelings and told him it’s okay to be sad about not having one. I will never tell him it doesn’t matter or make him feel like he can’t confide in me.
Of course, I can’t be objective about my own precious bundle of snuggles and sunshine, my beautiful son, the one I love more than life itself. Every cell in my body rejects the idea that my child shouldn’t exist. If I’m wrong, I will never accept it.
Others may disagree, and that’s okay. There are no simple answers when it comes to nontraditional families, and I won’t know my son’s final verdict until he is an adult. But I truly believe our home is good enough.
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My high-achieving Asian wife is less enthused, but I tell her if he sticks with art, he can live with mommies forever. ❤️
This is one of those where I think critics are wrong on several counts.
For one, we do not owe our children picturebook-perfect lives. The entire notion that the creation and raising of children is some process that we need to optimize and game and perfect is viscerally disgusting to me. The same logic that says lesbians or single mothers should not reproduce would also have to extend to prospective parents in poverty, to prospective parents with criminal records, to prospective parents with chronic illnesses and/or mental illnesses, to prospective parents who are racial minorities, etc, etc, etc, etc. At the population level, all sorts of things are linked with non-peak outcomes. I don't think it's moral at all to expect parents to reproduce if and only if they happen to fall into a highly selective band. We'd laugh at the idea that white parents should be shamed into not reproducing because Asian kids have better test scores; why is the idea countenanced when it comes to lesbian mothers?
For two, parenting isn't an island (while it may be more islandy now than it's traditionally been). Society at large is also involved, and to the extent that there is disparate outcomes between different parenting groups, we should be asking to what extent social factors, not parents, are also involved. Single mothers, for example, struggled to find housing for a long time: how much of the disparate outcomes could be blamed not on a lack of a father, but a lack of a roof over their heads?
For three, the differences in outcomes measured are typically very small.
For four, I don't think that we can just throw out that lesbian couples pursuing reproduction tend to be higher-income. Family income is one of the most important factors in child outcomes. While there's a bunch of extenuating factors around my dad's adoption that led to a lot of family trauma, he was also undoubtedly better off being adopted by a wealthy, well-positioned couple than he would have been being raised by a pair of disowned teenagers (and again, the ethics of it all: my dad was literally stolen from his mother, and a focus on "outcomes" above all would suggest that that action was laudable and morally correct. Do we really want to go there?). I don't think you can just wave away the lack of a gap between heterosexual couples compared to lesbian mothers and single-mothers-by-choice; it is suggestive at the very least that money can overcome quite a bit of missing fatherhood.
I do think it's important for kids (especially boys) to have male role models, but I don't believe it's at all necessary for that role model to be their biological father.
I think the "how could you bring a child into such a suffering world?" argument is totally, unconscionably wrong-headed. Look at where birth rates are the highest globally, they are places where suffering - poverty by global rather than western standards - is rife. Women in Niger have seven kids on average; you think they stop to think "is it fair to bring a child into such squalor?
Even acknowledging the absence of a male role model, a child born to an aspirational middle-class lesbian couple will be more privileged than 99% of babies who have ever been born in human history. Fatherlessness is a hurdle to be overcome, but everyone has to overcome hurdles in their life.