In one of the strangest “feel-good” stories you’re likely to find, Good Morning America featured a segment on four different women and their kids, who were conceived all from the same male donor.
The big hook is that these separate “half-families” have met up and become some sort of hybrid family, which is sweet in a grotesque and depraved sort of way. GMA lavished praise on the fatherless configuration as a “family of choice” and a “new 21st century family.”
Oh yes, because progress is explaining to your kids that your father was less supportive than a medical test tube, and he was that way with three other families.
GMA’s Paula Faris began the profile on the “very big happy family” of four mothers and their new compound family of sperm bank babies. The four parents lovingly call their collective brood “‘diblings,’ or ‘donor siblings’ and they see each other at least once a year.” So cute.
As the spritely, family-friendly music cued up, Faris explained the strange situation involving “four women, four different states, linked by one thing: they all share the same sperm donor.” None of these women are related or have known each other in any way, but the nine kids they have between them have been “fathered by the same donor.”
GMA affectionately called them “a family that could only exist in the 21st century.” The network was smitten with the idea that two of the half sisters “Gabi and Laurel” “look almost identical.” Wow, imagine that.
The segment talked to Glamour Mag contributor Joseph Amodio, to whom one of the mothers, Meredith, came with the story. Amodio admired how Meredith started out searching for the other families “because of her daughter.”
“What she wound up finding was this ad hoc sisterhood that she never knew she needed,” Amodio added. Kind of like a harem. Faris smiled and nodded as if this was the feel good story of the year.
The segment went into how the new compound family found itself on online database “The Donor Sibling Registry.” One of the mothers, Marianne, claimed, “I wanted my kids to always know their family, family has always been the most important thing to me.” Another of the moms called the situation “a new family of choice.”
One mom commented that she wanted her daughter Gabi to see the situation as “just part of her story,” or “something to celebrate.” Well, how nice. The in-house audience applauded. And about the father’s involvement in their lives? Faris relayed that he’s “willing to meet all of the kids when they turn 18.” It’s so awesome that GMA is all here for no frills fatherhood. And when some of these end up confused about their gender, we’re willing to bet they’ll roll out that red carpet as well.
