Sperm Donor Adventures: the fifth installment
a cautionary tale
(c) Melina Magdalena 2007
HOW TWO SENSIBLE, WELL-MEANING NICE INDIVIDUALS WHO CARE ABOUT EACH OTHER CAN RUN DIVERGENT AGENDAS AND ULTIMATELY RISK THEIR FRIENDSHIP. THE PARADOX IS THAT WHILE BOTH APPEAR TO DESIRE THE SAME AIM, WHAT EACH WANTS IS NOTHING LIKE WHAT THE OTHER IS PREPARED TO OFFER
This shattered fantasy
Once upon a time there was a woman-identified-woman and a man-identified-man, who had been friends for twenty years, ever since they shared a desk in the repressive high school environment that kept them both from being open about their true desires.
Now in their mid-30s, they have for several years flirted shyly with the possibility of starting a family together. The woman has been through a heterosexual marriage and its subsequent breakdown all within a few short years, while the man is finding it difficult to break from a long relationship in which he is being treated terribly.
Having a baby together seems like such a simple desire, but the idea drops like a bombshell into the relative stability of their lives, as each considers and weighs up the changes such an event would engender in their day-to-day lifestyles, future possibilities and current affiliations. Their conversation meanders over months of indecision and taut silences, at least where this topic is concerned.
And then one day the skies clear. The timing seems right. Both have entered new phases of their lives where they feel unencumbered by past mistakes and are free to seriously consider a shared future. They begin to talk with enthusiasm about the real possibility of becoming parents.
The man has wanted a child for a very long time. His family has pressured him for years to marry – even if he is gay, and to produce offspring, because otherwise who will look after him when he is old? He doesn’t want to marry – it wouldn’t be fair to the woman; nor is he willing to hand over his progeny for someone else to raise. Why can’t he have children on his own, as a single man? Society is against him.
The man and the woman come from divergent yet equally cherished cultural backgrounds. However, they also have shared understandings and similar experiences as people who go against the norms of their society. One idea leads to another. Soon they are talking on several levels about conception, pregnancy, birth, child rearing, schooling, extracurricular activities and housing. The more they talk, the more they realize they have in common. The possibility begins to take on a definite shape, rather like a fetus acquires more and more human characteristics, the longer it spends in the warm, creative environment of the womb.
They are mature enough to realize that clear boundaries need to be set around their possible family, around themselves as individuals, and around their relationship with one another as friends and co-parents. There is no question of changing their sexual preferences. Once the idea of a marriage of convenience has been raised, it can be set aside, as something that neither considers essential to their plan.
To co-parent, they will need to live in closer proximity to one another than they do at present. Having finally set his roots in a place he feels comfortable, the man is not willing to relocate closer to where the woman has her roots. In order for this to work, she will have to move to where he is.
Finally free from his oppressive relationship, the man’s horizons keep expanding, whichever direction he chooses to focus. He no longer needs to conceal his identity from workmates in order to protect his dignity and privacy. In this new space, he might even start developing new friendships. He begins to look backwards at his relationships with family members, and to slowly transform and reconstruct his position, which has never been satisfactory. He starts to give and accept respect from family members who have always seen him as a problem.
The woman is excited about moving to a new place. She considers the man’s demand reasonable. She has worked hard on herself, and feels she has the skills and experience necessary to develop new networks wherever she is. Her career is portable and in demand. Where the man lives, (as he points out), there are greater opportunities for her, because it is a larger city. If she were to pursue postgraduate studies in her future, a new place and a new institution would be desirable.
On the other hand, there are distinct disadvantages to moving, that she feels she needs to raise and consider.
Firstly, unless they choose to relocate with her (an option she is keen to extend to her almost grown up son and daughter), she would give up everyday access to them. It seems perverse to be considering starting a new family if it means abandoning her responsibilities to the family she already has.
The man says that he would welcome the woman’s children to this new city. He does not expect the woman to forsake her children.
Secondly, she would have to relinquish her close family ties. Her parents and siblings supported her through her troubles, and she sees herself now as someone who equally lends support to them. Living in a new place, away from them, would alter the dynamic of their supportive relationships. In today’s climate of explosive communications technologies, it wouldn’t mean giving up regular contact with her family members altogether though. The woman considers whether lessening their tight enmeshment might not be a good thing anyway. She thinks she can make it work.
Thirdly, though the man had actively dissuaded potential friends from getting to know him wherever he had lived, because he was embarrassed and did not want them to know that his partner was abusing him, the woman has developed several close and supportive friendships. She would be sad to cause these friendships to attenuate and change, because of the physical distance that would be imposed upon them. However, in the same way that her family ties could be maintained, she reasons that change is inevitable and not always a bad thing. At least her friends would have someone to visit, should they find the means to get away, once in a while.
Finally, she would have to give up her home. It is not a particularly nice home, but it is hers for life, the rent is controlled, and even as a financially vulnerable new mother, she will not risk losing it, because while she isn’t working, her rent will be reduced. She is allowed to have pets, she has a garden, and her home is conveniently located near public transport and not too far from anywhere she wishes to go. It took her 15 years to get this home. If she gives it up, she will never have that chance again. She needs to be sure about this.
She decides that she is willing to give up her home as well, in order to start a new family with her friend. They begin to explore the possibility of sharing a home, as well as talking over ideas about co-parenting from separate homes.
One of the striking differences between the man and the woman is the incomes they have at their disposal. The disparity between them is hardly unusual – most too-young-married-and-then-divorced-single-mothers take very little with them into their new lives, and what with healing from the treatment they received as wives, as well as nurturing their children, they have little opportunity to acquire property. As a childless-professional-man, he has properties, savings and future prospects. The world is his oyster.
They talk briefly about money matters. The man says: “I’m prepared to give money, but only for the child. Anything I give will have to be to educate and improve the child – music lessons, and so on.”
The woman believes that her education and healing experiences have well equipped her to set herself up as a new mother, and to sustain the level of affluence to which she has become accustomed. She is aware that their financial differences are more uncomfortable for her friend. He is still recovering from being cheated and robbed by his former partner. Of course he would be a little tender when it came to dealing with finances. Anyway, starting a family is not about the money. If he wants to be generous or stingy, that's his business. She doesn’t want or need his money.
If she can get a steady job, she can also get a mortgage. If they can’t live together, perhaps they can buy two plots of land side by side on one of the new housing developments? Maybe they can live next door to each other? The woman writes an email to the man, with this fantasy.
“I dreamed last night of a little girl, maybe eight years old. She had walked home from school with a friend, and as natural as could be, came home. She pointed at one house and said – that’s where Mum lives, but she’s at work today. On Wednesdays I always go to Dad’s after school. Come on, this is his house. She opened the gate next door to my house, and started up the garden path. It seemed so normal and natural for her, and she seemed so happy.”
Having lived largely off welfare benefits whilst raising her other two children, the woman plans this time around to be a full-time mother only for a year at most, and then to take on part-time work gradually, as her child grows old enough, but preferably not to have to put the child into care for its first three years of life. She feels strongly that it is better for children to be raised at home if possible. She and her friend have discussed this. He plans to work part-time, so that he can share the parenting.
The man has sold his most recent acquisition and is looking for a new home away from bad memories. Excited by prospects of starting a family with his friend, he changes the parameters of the house he is prepared to buy, to accommodate her and a child. He wants to live as close to the centre of the city as he can, because this is convenient for him in terms of work, study and play. He puts in an offer on a triple-storey inner city warehouse, and rings his friend to tell her all about it.
“It’s great! There are three bedrooms, each with its own en suite.”
“Three storeys?”
“Yes, and the bedroom at the top will be perfect for you and the baby.”
“They’re not babies for long, remember.”
“Yes – for the child. And a spare bedroom, in case anyone wants to visit.”
“And maybe if one of my kids wanted to move over, they could have that room?”
“Well … yes, they could stay for a while until they found their own place. It’s a guest room. The piano will go in the kitchen – that’s the only place big enough. I’ve measured.”
“Have you thought about what it might be like to be playing while there are other people racing around?”
“My old piano teacher’s children grew up with him playing all the time. They just got used to it.”
“Uh huh. What about the outside?”
“There’s no yard at all. Remember it’s an inner city place, and they’re very expensive, so I couldn’t really afford a house with a yard. But that doesn’t matter. I won’t have time to garden anyway.”
(long pause for thought)
“Well, you know I’m really a hippy at heart…”
“Yeah, and there are all these alternative people around. You’ll feel right at home. It’s near lots of trendy shops and things.”
“It would be hard to raise a child without a back yard.”
“Well you don’t have to live with me if you don’t want to, but there are parks – and besides you won’t have time to garden.”
“What do you think I’ll be doing with my time?”
“You’ll be busy with the baby. There’s a balcony outside the bedroom at the top, you can put some pot plants out there, and spend your time making the inside of the house look nice.
“Also, I've been thinking, and I think you would agree that it's fair that if one of us gets a partner, and I don’t expect this to happen for a long time, who knows – it might never happen, you would have to move out…”
(long significant pause)
“With the child, or by myself?”
(shorter significant pause)
“With the baby, of course.”
That night, the woman can’t sleep. She tosses and she turns. She cries, heartbroken. Something is seriously awry in the developing picture. Her idea was that they live close, parent together, and share their lives with their child – or even children, as they’ve discussed the possibility of having two, if she can manage it before menopause.
Now she’s not at all sure what he wants. She feels panicked, trapped, controlled. What would it be like living in that warehouse? How could she possibly afford the cost of living in private rental interstate where she doesn’t know anyone or anything and it’s well-known to be far more expensive than where she is? Does he just want her to have a baby so he can take it away, as he’d threatened once, long before?
She tries to be reasonable. The picture he paints of his warehouse doesn’t match the picture she had expressed in her email to him.
- Are there areas of compatibility?
- Can they still make it work?
- What are the possibilities?
- Does he realize what it wild cost (financially and emotionally) for her to uproot and move interstate?
- Is he prepared to support her in meeting those costs, since he refuses to entertain the notion of moving to where she is?
- Is it once again her, who has to do all the compromising and all the giving?
- Has he no idea that a stable home is one of the most precious gifts a child can receive?
- Will he use his professional capacity and buying power to take the child away?
- Will he expect her to live on her own with the child, unsupported financially and emotionally, yet be available at his convenience?
- What are his ideas about how it would be, to live together, or live close to one another?
- Does he want a baby?
- Does he want to parent?
- Does he want a family?
- Does he want to be a father only at his convenience?
- How will he cope with the restrictions having a child will inevitably place on his opportunities to live life the way he has been living as a single man (unattached)?
- Just what is he willing to put into this family, other than his sperm?
They talk again, the next day. The cracks have begun to show. The fabric of mutual understanding is fraying at the edges. The tension between them is palpable, zinging and pinging up and down the phone line.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think I’d be very happy to raise a child in a place like that without a garden.”
“I said before – you don’t have to live with me if you don’t want to.”
(oh but i do – while it lasted, it was such a beautiful, peaceful, rainbow-coloured fantasy)
“What about my idea of us living next door to each other?”
“You’ve never bought a house. You can’t know what it’s like. You don’t have any proper understanding of property values. I could never afford to buy an inner city block that was big enough. The chances of two places coming on the market near each other are impossible. What you’re talking about is a fantasy. It’s unrealistic.”
“But what about in one of those new developments?”
“I’m not moving to an outer suburb. I’d have to drive into work every day, or catch the tram or something. I suppose you could rent a house out there. It wouldn’t be as bad as if you lived interstate. At least I could come and visit regularly.”
“I’d still be giving up my children, my family, my friends, my home – and for what?”
“I thought you really wanted this baby.”
