This is a newsletter bonus question. Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.
Dear Care and Feeding,
My wife “Nadia” and I have been married for six years, together for 10. Our marriage is great except for one thing that is becoming a real source of conflict: We both want kids, but we disagree on how we should go about having them.
Nadia is adamant that we either adopt or use an egg donor. Her reason is that her family has a number of members who suffer from serious psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression). Nadia says it’s no small miracle she “lucked out in the genetic lottery” and didn’t end up with one of the mental illnesses. After witnessing and experiencing what those disorders are like, she isn’t willing to take a chance of somehow passing along those disorders given the genetic components involved.
I would really like to have a child or children that are biologically mine and Nadia’s. I have pointed out that there’s always a chance for a kid to have a mental illness, even if we were to adopt or use an egg donor. Her answer is that she has “bad genes” and doesn’t want to knowingly risk inflicting them on a child who will have to suffer the life-long consequences. Is her position a reasonable one?
—You Never Know What You’ll Get
Dear Never Know,
Yes, your wife’s desire to use an egg donor or adopt is reasonable! Her eggs are part of her body, and it’s entirely her choice what to do with them. You have shared your point of view with her, that you’d like to use her eggs and your sperm to create an embryo, and she’s shared that it’s a nonstarter for her. This is absolutely OK, and you need to respect your wife’s decision on this.
She doesn’t need a “reason” for it to be OK for her to not want to pass her genes on. But, for the record, hers is a very good one. You’re right that it’s possible that her egg and your sperm could create an embryo that becomes a human who ends up having no mental illness. It’s also possible you could create a person who ends up with serious mental illness. As you point out, both outcomes are also possible with your sperm and a donor egg or with an adopted child. But the difference there is that, with a donor egg or adopted child, any mental illness will truly be a matter of chance. By adopting or using a donor egg, your wife mitigates the known risk of passing on serious mental illness that comes with using her egg. By doing that, she also preemptively absolves herself of the guilt and blame.
I understand your desire to have a child that is half your genes and half Nadia’s. That would be really beautiful. But it’s just not possible. It’s OK for you to mourn that, but please accept it the same way you would accept it were it true for another medical reason.
Any child you raise together will be half yours and half Nadia’s, no matter how that baby comes into the world. Genetics are only part of the magic that makes us who we are. How you and Nadia parent your baby, and the kind of home you’ll make for them, will be just as important in helping your baby become the person they’ll be. And that’s beautiful, too.
—Logan
Classic Prudie
My father was murdered over 30 years ago when I was 6 years old. His murder was never solved or investigated, to my knowledge, although his death certificate lists his cause of death as a homicide. This was in Detroit during the ’80s, and I was always told it was a robbery gone wrong. Around my 16th birthday my paternal grandmother, on her deathbed, told me that my uncle—my mother’s brother—murdered my father.
