Effects of the USA Today Article: Part 1 - As Teaching Tool

I actually used the print edition of the Life Section as a tool to demonstrate to my son who and what a donor is.

This was possible because a few pages behind our aticle was an article about Donor 48QAH, where there was a picture of Dr. Matthew Niedner and his wife along with a picture of their now 11 day old newborn daugher. Further down that same page were pictures of a few of the children his sperm donations helped create.

I showed my son the picture of him, his sister and me stating that I am his Daddy and nothing will ever change that. I then showed him the picture of Matthew stating that a donor like him helped create him just as Matthew helped create the children in the other pictures. I stated that Jason was just like those other children but where a few of them only had mommies he had both me his daddy and his mommy. I stated that like them he had a donor who he was biologically connected to, who helped create him, but that we don't know who our donor is where these children will know who Matthew is.

I did not get into the fact that Matthew does not look upon his donor offspring as his children or anything of that nature. At that point I figured this was geting to be too much and I put away the paper. I doubt he absorbed too much of this exchange but I think showing real pictures was a cool thing as opposed to all the kid's books where there are drawings. I am hoping some psychoanalyst will not say I just messed up my son's mind.