Contents
Many couples suffering from infertility go to extreme measures — they take someone else’s biomaterial. Such a family can be understood: they want to give warmth and care to a new person. But what drives the men and women who make money from donating sperm and eggs? We understand the causes and consequences together with the psychotherapist Anastasia Belan.
It is not customary to talk about donation: it is believed that society is saturated with stereotypes and will certainly begin to criticize. For those who use other people’s cells, the topic is painful, but for men and women who make money on it, it is taboo. The latter often justify themselves by doing a good deed, giving someone a chance to become parents.
But is it really so? Do people deceive themselves by justifying such a side job? Let’s try to figure it out.
Male donor
A man donates sperm, receiving from 1 to 500 rubles for this. He may have a bunch of biological children that he only suspects. What drives them? Is it really such a small amount?
“There is an interesting point,” says psychotherapist Anastasia Belan. — When does the development of a man begin? From sperm and egg. But spermatozoa are cells that form in a teenage boy. The male sex does not have an unconscious idea that the spermatozoon is me, a part of me, my body. Accordingly, it is much easier and easier to give it away. It is natural for a man to be a donor of genetic material. Biologically, his task is to impregnate as many women as possible in order to continue the race.
A man donating sperm does not contradict his nature. There is no biochemical support for feelings — no hormones, for example, are produced.
Men do not realize that their biomaterial is future children
“Paternal feelings wake up quite late, towards the end of the first year of a child’s life. And then, if the father spends a lot of time with him, hugs him, wakes up at night, invests strength and resources in him, the expert says. — Unlike women, most men do not have emotions for the unborn child at the level of pregnancy, and even at the level of sperm return, and even more so. Therefore, we can say that sperm donation is a fairly natural thing for male nature.”
In most cases, they do not realize that their biomaterial is future children who will start running around the planet in a few years. Sometimes donating is a great way to kick out testosterone and feel like a mega-male who is also paid to do it. But later, closer to forty years, everything can change.
“It happened once in my practice,” Anastasia shares. — One patient earned money by donating and believed that he was the best man that nature had chosen for reproduction. Twenty years later, he realized that he needed the help of a specialist. He reasoned differently: “I was fixated on myself and was afraid to become attached to a woman. He considered raising children not a male occupation, and donating sperm was an excellent way out. But now I’m sad. And one thought that I have a lot of children, whom I did not look into the eyes, just kills.
Donor woman
Spermatozoa are produced in men, they do not accept them as part of themselves. Women are different. “In a woman, the eggs are laid at the time of the grandmother’s pregnancy, that is, in utero in the mother. Metaphorically remember the matryoshka: three pieces one inside the other. Accordingly, for a woman, the egg is part of the body, part of the body. And surrendering it is like giving away a part of yourself — a leg, an arm. Roughly speaking, trade in the body. I noticed that they have very similar unconscious conflicts with those who are engaged in prostitution. They also treat the body as a commodity, something impersonal that someone else can use.”
For one attempt to donate eggs, women receive from 50 to 60 thousand rubles a month, since the procedure is much more complicated than for men. Female donors rarely seek psychological help, as do surrogate mothers, at least in Russia. Most likely, they are afraid of judgment. Somewhere in their subconscious, they have attitudes that abandoning a child at any level, from a cage to a newborn, is bad, against nature.
“As young girls, such women experienced the trauma of being abandoned, when the mother leaves too soon, dies or seeks to have an abortion, send her to an orphanage,” the expert explains. — Then he changes his mind, but the information is already being stored in his head. I have a lot of women in therapy who treat the body as a tool: someone earns on sexuality, someone on donation, someone allows her husband to beat them.
Each person decides for himself how to dispose of his body
All of them are deeply lonely: they were often abandoned in childhood or even mocked at their bodies. Therefore, in adulthood, it does not have much value.
“There was a case, one of the clients, who was sent by the social service, wanted to help a childless couple by giving her unborn child. She said that her mother did not sit with her in childhood: she gave birth and immediately went to work. She does not remember her well, grandmothers, nannies were engaged in her upbringing, she does not have one image of a mother in her head. Therefore, in her world, leaving a child after childbirth is normal. I think that she acted even more humanely than she once did with her: she carefully chose the family to whom she could give the child.
Each person decides for himself how to dispose of his body, earn a living, relate to this or that circumstance. Everyone has their own view of things and their own criteria for what is right and what is bad. It is only important to understand that responsibility is a sign of a mature personality.