They are known as the “cryo kids” – children who were deliberately conceived through anonymously donated, cryogenically frozen sperm. Recently, a special study from the Commission on Parenthood's Future found that “cryo kids” are more likely to suffer from isolation and depression, and are roughly twice as likely as biological children to struggle with substance abuse.
Many find themselves desperate to somehow connect with their roots, and in particular, find their fathers, but these “cryo kids” whose conception fulfilled a biological desire for their mothers, now find themselves shut out from their own biological desires to know their heredity. This is because such a search is almost possible since agencies promise sperm donors complete anonymity.
"There is a whole generation of us out there now," says Kathleen LaBounty, whose parents chose artificial insemination with donor sperm when they discovered her father was infertile.
Both her parents are supportive of her quest.
"My mother saw the sperm donation as a medical treatment. She never considered the implications of how I would feel," LaBounty said from Houston, where she is a research counsellor at Baylor University in Texas.
She said she feels incomplete, curious and angry — but not angry at her parents. She's frustrated with medical and legal systems that don't support, or understand, the needs of donor children.
"I couldn't get records from the clinic where I was conceived."
She said it's unfair that decisions about information concerning her — and others conceived the same way — are made by everybody but her.
"It seems like society recognizes women's biological desires, but not ours," LaBounty said.
Vancouver adoption counsellor Lee Crawford said the preoccupation with solving the mystery is natural, and keeping information about children's biological origins away from them can be destructive. "That mystery takes up our time, we can become preoccupied, obsessed. We can't settle that internal sense of who we are."
She said it is inhumane to bar human beings from knowing their origins.
To live with the feeling of a missing link is psychologically distressing, she said.
"It transcends personality. It's a human need to know where the origins of the story are," Crawford said. "Nobody is thinking about these children that grow into teens, that grow into young adults living with that mystery."