In honor of Father’s Day tomorrow, I thought it would be appropriate to revisit this Wall Street Journal article from last year, “Daddy Was Only a Donor”. The author is W. Bradford Wilcox of the wonderful Public Discourse weblog / online magazine.
Mr. Wilcox challenges the messages we receive from Hollywood and an aggressive liberal sociologists that “mothers can do just as well raising children with donor fathers as they can with real ones.” From a study by Commission on Parenthood’s Future, the reality is far more bleak.
The article reviews some of the studies findings, and includes this heartbreaking quote:
The study’s findings echo recent commentary from young adults conceived through donor insemination. Writing in the Washington Post a few years ago, Katrina Clark reported that she envied friends who had both a mother and a father. “That was when the emptiness came over me. I realized that I am, in a sense, a freak. I really, truly would never have a dad. I finally understood what it meant to be donor-conceived, and I hated it.”
We are hard-wired for the same values that Judeo-Christians have taught and followed for millenia. To continue to deny that while pursuing this brave new world of self-gratification is only creating broken people who grow up thinking of themselves as “freaks.” Despite all the propaganda, the social messages and cues, and the full backing of the media machine, these children do not accept that their lives are normal. Just the opposite. And statistic after statistic shows it.
Mr. Wilcox sums up the situation (as of last year’s Father’s Day):
So, despite the latest propaganda in favor of a father-optional future, this study suggests two stubborn truths: Children long to know and be known by their biological fathers, and they are much more likely to thrive when they have their own father in their lives.
On this Father’s Day, men who have managed to be good flesh-and-blood fathers to their children should take some satisfaction from the findings found in “My Daddy’s Name is Donor.” Even if the Big Screen portrays them as superfluous, in the real world, their kids are much more likely to turn out “all right” than kids who only know their daddy as Donor.
Happy Father’s Day, dads everywhere. We need you.
