by Ray Langley

Created on: November 26, 2010   Last Updated: November 27, 2010

How Children of Sperm Donors can find their Biological Fathers.

All children have questions growing up, but for some parents the answer to ‘where did I come from’ does not have a clear and simple answer. When a child is the offspring of insemination from donated sperm, it opens the door to many more questions. It can spark a life long quest within the child to find the answer and personal definition. It can be the challenge of finding who their biological father was, from the information that is out there, or the need for clarity of their own characteristics and traits that come from the donor parent.

The information is out there and the first place to start is with the custodial parents, the people that raised the child from donated sperm. It is a difficult subject to broach, and their needs to be sensitivity for the parents, who have lived this experience with the child. Ask where the donation came from, if they have any of the paperwork, and what influenced their choice of donor. If the parents cannot provide any information, check online to see what facilities offered the insemination procedure around the time of the child’s conception, in the area.

The second step is to approach the facility, if it still exists, first by letter, then by appointment. Unless the donor had at the time of the donation agreed to sign an identity release form, most records are sealed and considered protected under the laws of the issuing country. Australia and Sweden have laws that open records of sperm donations, once the child is an adult, yet the majority of other countries consider donation records to be private, and will require a court order for their release.

The third step has become the easiest step and the most important, which is to register with donated sperm groups and websites. In the past, these types of searches, limited to print media, were costly and yielded little results, but with the Internet and the growing curiosity of many children raised from donated sperm there are many private resources that are willing to help. Facebook has a group for donor children (both sperm and egg), and another website is the Donor Sibling Registry.

The journey for these donor children is never easy, and the end result is not always a happy one, but people have a need to know where they come from, to help define who they are. Anonymous donors do create anonymous people.

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