12/21/2023 0 Comments Dear prudence slate![]() It would be helpful to seek a support group of people in a similar situation to find out what they've done. My suggestion is that you tell your wife you understand and accept her feelings, but suggest you two periodically review the topic as the children get older. In addition, this is information that would hard to process for young children. But telling the kids (and you don't say how old they are) is not something you should do unilaterally. It's sad that your wife thinks the truth would take her children away from her. The thing that really makes me think your children should be told someday is that you call this a "deep family secret." Those tend to come with corrosive emotional burdens for the people keeping them. At least, as you point out, until some kind of genetic testing or blood work later in life might be the cause of the big reveal. But it is possible to keep secret the fact that a sperm or egg was purchased. Keeping an adoption hidden (as they sometimes used to be) is today agreed to be destructive and almost impossible. In the case of sperm and egg donation the rules are still being figured out. Still, people understand that hidden parentage packs an emotional punch, that's why it's been used by storytellers from the Greeks, to Dickens, to George Lucas. Though Steve Jobs, who was adopted, contacted his biological mother as a young man (and never spoke to his biological father) he always insisted that his "real" parents were Paul and Clara Jobs. I'm generally in the camp that people have a right to know their biological origins, even as I think we put way too much emphasis on genes in cases of adoption, gamete donation, or even extra-marital affairs. ![]() You have quite an existential dilemma about whether to tell about the eggs. However, I still think they should know when they are 21 or so, even with the social and cultural dislocation they'll certainly feel. I agree that it's much more important to her than to me, and so far, I've respected her wishes. My wife's point of view is that telling the children that fact would be like taking her children away from her. Anyway, they will find out immediately if either one ever has a DNA scan-the results will come back with the "wrong" country of origin, and better they hear the news from us instead of from some lab. The issue is whether or not the children ever know their origin, and if so, when? My point of view is that there are important medical issues potentially at stake, and they should eventually be told. The donor was of my wife's general ethnicity, skin and hair color, etc., so the children's looks are a near-perfect blend of hers and mine, and nobody suspects. But, there's a deep family secret: Everybody knows we used in-vitro fertilization, but only my wife and I know the children came from donor eggs. We've been happily married for over 20 years, and we are blessed with two wonderful children (twins).
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