Part of the impact of the film is the way it confounds our expectations. For Jerry, “Jeffrey is not what you would expect of a sperm donor father. Everyone needs to deal with those expectations.” What exactly we might expect a sperm donor to be is another matter entirely. “It’s an odd system that those who donate sperm are perhaps those who are least interested in the consequences and yet for the child that’s born, that connection with who has donated the sperm is very important.”
Looking back on his own donations on film, Jeffrey recalls that back in the 1980s he felt “somehow I was karmically being asked to be a soul caller.” He also used his donations to pay his bills, but what does he think now? Jerry believes Jeffrey’s donor children have “become important to his sense of what he’s achieved in life. He has that line ‘I’m a financial failure, but a biological success.’ More important than that probably is that it has brought him a set of connections which he didn’t otherwise have. In a way he’s living a life that is quite a long way from ‘family’ and I think it’s given him a set of connections.”
Jerry believes that Jeffrey’s lifestyle, unencumbered by the ties of a traditional family who might feel threatened by the idea of donor children, may have made it easier for him to identify himself. Since March 2005 British donors have not been able to remain anonymous, and there are efforts to change the law towards open donation and a national donor registry in the United States as well. JoEllen reminds us of the significance of reforming the law in the USA, “I think that’s probably the most important thing, so we have those records so if there’s medical issues or anything that comes along you can always find out who was responsible for the donation.” She says that many offspring don’t want to meet their donor fathers, but “I think that biological connections are important and you should respect that when you are thinking about donating.”
Although the story is very much a product of our age, of the ‘biological century’ as it has been called, in some ways it is also age old. Family structures have always been more complex that we might have been able to admit, and the competing influences of nature and nurture have long intrigued scientists, philosophers and the rest of us.
The current interest in genealogy is also an attempt to learn something about our identities. Now JoEllen can join the rest of us in hunting down our father’s forebears, “I remember having my mom’s giant family tree that went back at least six generations and thinking about making my own. OK, I had this one side that was completely filled and I had a donor number on the other side. I think that kind of bothered me, I mean even if I didn’t want to have a relationship with the donor, I still wanted to know what was behind that, what the generations before him were like. Now I’ve got to see that.” Quite how much the sins and virtues of the father shall be visited on the child is open to question, but now at least JoEllen and her siblings have a chance to find out.
Read our review of Donor Unknown here.
