Dispensable Dads

Are fathers dispensable in today's culture? Kay Hymowitz asks in yesterday's WSJ, "Where in the World is Octodad?" Should donor children have the same right to know their parentage as adoptive children already have? In Canada donor children have brought a class action lawsuit to accomplish that right. Norway, the Netherlands and New Zealand have all banned donor anonymity. Britain now requires donors to agree to be contacted when their children reach eighteen.

Octomom, Nadya Suleman, continued making news this week, when it was learned that she and her mother owe $23,000 in back mortgage payments. Also, it has been reported that her sperm donor begged her to stop having babies after the first six.

Yes, Nadya's babies do have a father. He is hardly mentioned in any of the stories about his fourteen children Nadya gave birth to. Ms. Hymowitz believes we have a "cultural ambivalence about fathers, an ambivalence fed in no small measure by the fertility industry." Hymowitz notes that "donors - or, more precisely, sellers - sign contracts that assure them, contrary to Father's Day rhetoric, that responsibility really does end at conception."

Hymowitz goes on to report that "out-of-wedlock birth rates in the U.S. are now 38%" which includes African Americans, for whom the rates are now 70%.