A Sperm Donor's Quest to See His Biological Children

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Amy Dockser Marcus, A Sperm Donor's Quest to See Kids; Man chases a Role in the lives of the 96 children he fathered. Wall Street Journal, Aug 28, 2023, at page A1.
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/re ... y-children-146617c8

Note: poison oak
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_oak
contains irritant urushiol which was used as lacquer by Chinese in ancient times.  
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Dylan Stone-Miller took a 9,000-mile road trip this summer to see some of his 96 children.

Emotionally, logistically, in all ways, it is complicated for the kids, their families and for Stone-Miller, a prolific 32-year-old sperm donor. His road trip is part of a larger odyssey—to figure out how he fits in the lives of the boys and girls he fathered in absentia. It began three years ago, when he first saw a photo of one of his biological children, a toddler named Harper who had his blue eyes and his sister’s blond curls. He got tears, he recalled, and unexpected feelings of kinship.

“I think of her as my first child,” Stone-Miller said. He met Harper when she was 3 and decided he wanted to foster relationships with as many of the children as possible. He quit his job as a software engineer and has funded his quest with savings. So far, Stone-Miller has met 25 of his biological children. Because tracking progeny from a donor isn’t always reliable, “I will never know for sure how many children I have,” he said.

Stone-Miller’s mission is itself an accident of birth, springing from the unforeseen union of in vitro fertilization, the internet and low-cost DNA testing. Together, these disparate advances have made it possible to find biological fathers who in the past were kept largely anonymous by sperm banks.

Months after Stone-Miller and his wife split up in 2020, a stranger messaged him. “I really hope you don’t feel violated in any way, but it’s Canadian Thanksgiving and I wanted to tell you how grateful my family is to you,” wrote Alicia Bowes, one of Harper’s two mothers. She had tracked Stone-Miller through social media and clues from his donor file, including his first name and his father’s occupation as a forensic psychologist.

Stone-Miller opened Bowes’s Instagram page and saw Harper’s photo. Days later, he asked Bowes if he could join a Facebook group of parents called Xytex 5186 Offspring, named after his sperm bank ID. She agreed to form a new group for those interested. When he told the group he wanted to meet their children, the parents of 20 of them responded. Most of the parents in the group are female couples or single women, reflecting a trend in the sperm-bank industry.

Stone-Miller learned about the Facebook group at a tough time in his life. His former wife and her young son had moved out of the three-bedroom house in east Atlanta they bought together. “I felt like such a failure,” he said. A few months later, on the first day of a new job, he received Bowes’s message.

The relative ease of finding the identity and whereabouts of sperm donors is remaking traditional views of what comprises a family. Parents say introducing a biological father to their children carries potential rewards, as well as the risk of hurt feelings and failed expectations. More than a million Americans have been conceived through artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization; the number born of sperm donors isn’t tracked.

Sperm donation, long shrouded in secrecy, had already changed by the time Stone-Miller began. He gave permission for the sperm bank to reveal his identity to any of his biological children after they turn 18. Joining the Facebook group opened the door years early. “I wanted to watch the children grow up,” he said.

Some parents decided they wanted nothing to do with him. Those who have welcomed him to their home are trying to figure out his role—a biological father, a donor dad, a visitor or special friend. Neither parents nor Stone-Miller are certain where to draw the line.

“There are moments when it feels intrusive with Dylan,” said Bowes, who has allowed Stone-Miller to visit twice in the past year. “It’s about us figuring out what boundaries are, as well as him figuring out his boundaries.”

Stone-Miller’s mother, Rebecca Stone, said she doesn’t have a simple answer to explain her son’s motive. She is delighted, though, to see the photos Stone-Miller sends of her biological grandchildren. “I can see facets of Dylan in almost all of the children,” she said. “So many of them are blond and blue-eyed the way he was. I can see the spark, the spark he always had.”

As a college student, Stone-Miller said, he donated sperm for the money, $100 a visit. Looking back, he said, it was more than cash that kept him at it for six years.

Stone-Miller has twice visited Harper and her sister Harlow—also one of his biological children. In July, he stayed nine days at an Airbnb near their house in Edmonton, Canada, the longest visit of his road trip. The girls’ mothers acknowledged the complexities of the relationship, from his role in their lives to what to call him.

“I don’t want Harper to feel like she can call him anything,” Bowes said. “He is not her dad. Period. If she were to say that in front of us, we would straight up say, ‘Dylan is not your dad. He will never be your dad. You don’t have a dad. You have a donor.’ ”

That didn’t set [sic; should be 'sit'] well with Stone-Miller. “It was hard to look my biological daughter in the eye and tell her I wasn’t her dad,” he said.

Early in his trip, Stone-Miller stopped at his grandmother’s house in Marshfield, Mass., and voiced his disquiet about finding his place among all the children. “Am I a parent? Maybe sometimes from the child’s perspective? I don’t know,” he said. “It’s not for me to say, but it certainly feels like parenting every once in a while.”

Stone-Miller said he had told his therapist that he expected to stay connected with his biological children indefinitely. “And yet,” he asked, “how is that possible?”

Hard goodbyes
Before leaving on his trip, Stone-Miller went to see Cal, his 6-year-old biological child who lives in a suburb of Atlanta. He had visited the boy several times in the past two years, and Cal told his two mothers that he wanted to spend time alone with Stone-Miller. The moms agreed to let Stone-Miller drive Cal to a Target store to buy toys.

“I have some trepidation about sending Cal off in the car with Dylan,” said Lindsay Harris, one of Cal’s mothers. “But I believe Dylan is who he says he is. He has proven that. It feels reassuring. I totally trust him.”

After Target, they went to the park to spend the afternoon with Cal’s moms and his 3-year-old brother, another of Stone-Miller’s biological children. When it was time to leave, Cal was sad and so was Stone-Miller. “It’s hard to say goodbye each time,” he said.   

Cal’s mothers were grateful for the visit. “Where we live, there is no family like ours,” Harris said. “So when a kid says, ‘You don’t have a dad,’ Cal can say, ‘I do have a biological dad. I have a donor dad. I see him. He is part of my life.’ ”

Two days later, on May 26, Stone-Miller ate a pile of banana pancakes, and at 9 a.m. he left Atlanta in a Toyota RAV4 packed with clothes for hot and cold weather, camping gear, Frisbees and children’s books, including “Harold and the Purple Crayon.” He reached his most distant point, Vancouver, at the end of July, and he expects to return home by September.

Stone-Miller made an early stop in eastern Connecticut, to see 5-year-old Mac Wraichette, who was waiting expectantly. “The moment he woke up, he asked, ‘Is Dylan coming?’ ” said Jessie Wraichette, one of Mac’s two mothers. It was Stone-Miller’s third visit.

During their time together, Mac got in the pool to show off his swimming. “You’re like a fish,” Stone-Miller told him. He pushed Mac on the backyard swing set. When Mac ran to the slide and climbed the ladder, Stone-Miller called out a warning to Mac’s mothers about nearby plants.

“Is that poison oak?” he asked. “I don’t want him to touch that if it’s poison oak.”

Perfect storm
Stone-Miller’s parents divorced when he was 14. He and his sister, who is four years younger, spent six out of every 14 days with their father and the rest with their mother, who was a professor of ancient indigenous American art history at Emory University in Atlanta.

When he was 19, Stone-Miller said, a woman he dated told him she was pregnant. She had planned to have the baby but changed her mind. “I had started to make the mental shift toward becoming a father,” he said. “I had a vision in my mind about what it might look like to have brought life into the world.” Her decision left him with a lingering feeling of loss, he said.  

Nine months later, Stone-Miller, who was studying psychology at Georgia State University, was arrested for underage drinking. His parents told him he had to pay for a lawyer. A roommate told him about the money he was making as a donor at the sperm bank Xytex. The opportunity came during a “perfect storm of financial need and personal events,” he said.

Xytex said it monitors the reported geographic distribution of children born from a common donor, in line with industry guidelines.

Stone-Miller collected seashells from a beach in Costa Rica, where his father, now remarried, lives. When Stone-Miller visits his biological children a second time, he asks them to choose one as a gift. He said he tries to be fair about splitting his time with the children. He keeps a spreadsheet for their names, ages and birthdays and when he last saw or spoke with them.

Stone-Miller planned to see 14 on his road trip, setting aside the longest amount of time for Harper and Harlow. He arrived to see the girls on July 10 and stayed nearby. He babysat them, affording their mothers a night out. Stone-Miller said he made ravioli that night, but Harper didn’t like it. He fixed her toast and eggs. He read the girls bedtime stories and helped them brush their teeth.

During the visit, he took Harper to the mall, and at the food court a passerby told her, “That’s one good dad,” Stone-Miller recalled. It was an awkward moment. “We look alike,” he said. “With the type of intimacy Harper and I share, it was easy for people to say this is a father-daughter relationship.” Harper, he said, calls him Donor Dylan.

Harper and Harlow had an older brother, Huxley, who died three days after his birth. To commemorate Huxley, his mothers got matching tattoos of Benedict the bunny, a stuffed toy, sitting atop the moon, three stars for the number of days the baby lived and his name. They also got washable tattoos for Harper and Harlow to wear. During his visit in July, Stone-Miller also wore one. Stone-Miller, who was Huxley’s biological father, said he, too, felt the loss.

He took a photograph of the tattoo and asked the mothers whether they minded if he got a real one like theirs. Bowes said that was fine. Later that night, the moms talked it over. They discussed personal boundaries—what belonged to the family, what they felt comfortable sharing with Stone-Miller. They have a role as parents, and he has a smaller role as a donor. Huxley’s memory was theirs, they decided.

“It felt like he was pushing too much,” Alicia Bowes said. “No one could understand the grief of losing your child. This felt like our personal space, something very close to our hearts.”

The next day, Bowes’s wife sent Stone-Miller an Instagram message saying she wasn’t comfortable with him getting the tattoo.

“I understand I did not go through the loss in the same way they did,” Stone-Miller said. “It was their experience. I had my own experience of it.”

Bowes said she has come to better understand Stone-Miller, and that she can imagine the powerful tug he feels toward the boys and girls who look like him and want his time and attention. She understands that her family and the other parents are connected to a man they barely know and whose steadfastness is untested.

“We came on the scene when he was going through hard times. Being with the children gave him a renewed sense of purpose,” Bowes said. “As we get to know him more, we all feel more comfortable. But my sense is he is going to feel more entitled, which can be problematic. We need to keep enough walls up to protect our girls and our family, but to make them permeable enough that he can come in.”

Write to Amy Dockser Marcus at Amy.Marcus@wsj.com