Nope, no way. I think that 6 billion of us is too many, and I won’t be contributing in any way to increasing the population of the world. There are plenty of other people who will more than make up for me. Count me out.
I was asked to father a child once. No strings attached.
A couple of reasons I said no:
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I couldn’t be sure she wasn’t later going to ask for support. I think fathers should support their families but didn’t want to later be blindsided when I moved on with my own life.
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Not sufficiently anonymous - I would know that I had a kid out there and I would have a hard time not keeping an eye out for it.
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I’m pretty sure it was just a ploy to keep me from dumping her. Insemination methods were to be, shall we way, traditional.
I never seriously considered donating sperm but my physical stats aren’t impressive and my pedigree is pretty mixed. The little swimmers probably wouldn’t have been worth much. (There’s no donating now, the highway has been cut-off).
About 10 years ago, my best lesbian friend asked me if I would, hypothetically some years in the future, be the donor – via the clinical method, I’m pretty sure – so she could have a child. I agreed that I would, provided we get in writing that the child was mine in DNA only, and I had no further responsibility. (Informally, I wouldn’t have objected to an uncle-like role, but I wasn’t ready to have children of my own.)
Recently my friend decided not to have a child after all. I was relieved because in the meantime I’d met my wife, who wasn’t too thrilled about this possibility. I told her I planned to keep my promise (made before we’d met, after all) and she accepted that, but I’m glad it never came to pass.
I’ve have similar requests made. For me, it’s usually been a straight single woman friend who made the request and I’ve always said “yes.” I think what happens is, a single woman starts feeling her biological clock ticking and stresses. Once they feel like they have a male friend they can trust & like who would give them a kid if they wanted, they calm down and think about it more and finally decide they’re ok being childless.
So I’ve never had anyone collect on my agreement.
In this hypothetical world, sure I would. In the real world, I think I’ve been subtly propositioned for the role on at least two occasions, and there was a third that I’m not so sure of. I wasn’t ready for it then, didn’t want even the potential of responsibility, and did not provide any sperm. Two of the three were young women I dated and slept with at least once; one, I never got to bed, though I did remain friends with her.
I’ll probably get labeled as a caveman throwback for not being a Sensitive New Age Guy, but I think it’s important to have kids that are genetically mine and there’s a part of my brain that’s not too particular about how that happens. While normally the other, more rational part of my thinking has control, I’m aware that when I think, “Hey, she’s pretty hot,” the same part of me that contributes to the undercurrent of desire is also thinking, “Damn, I’d like to enseminate her egg.”
I’m getting to the point where I’m thinking of doing it in a more traditional way in the next few years anyway. Yes, I do want to be a good father. In particular, I want to do things better than my dad did. He was slightly abusive, and was and remains an alcoholic. I will be putting in lots of daddy time with my own kids and I think that’s very important, both for me and the kids. If I ever had children with anyone I wasn’t also living with, I also would want to provide financially for my children if they needed more than their household could provide. But morally, I don’t have much of a problem providing nothing more than stud service for a woman as long as I think she’s worth having a kid with and she’s able to take care of and provide for a child.