How I conceived my child is none of your business
When did we as a society stop observing boundaries?
There used to be a time when an individual wouldn’t think to ask another individual how much money they made, who they voted for, what religion they practiced, how old they were, how much they paid on their taxes, how much they weighed, if they had plastic surgery or weight loss surgery, their sexual preferences or habits, if they were going to have kids or how many kids they were going to have.
But now we live in this fish bowl society where the above is asked on a daily basis repeatedly, and my question is why? why do we feel like that’s OK?
As a mother via egg donation and the leader of a nonprofit organization that specifically provides education, support, resources and empowerment to intended parents /parents via egg donation and embryo donation I made the choice to go public with my story. *I* did. I wasn’t bullied into it. I wasn’t forced into it. And thank God I didn’t have the media hounding me, writing stories about me, or speculating whether or not my partner and I used an egg donor to create our family.
I feel strongly regardless of who you are- as a woman, or a parent – we don’t owe anybody except our children any explanation in regards to how we create our families.
Zero explanation.
There’s nothing in the celebrity, public figure, entertainment, rulebook that states that family building requires an individual to be open and transparent about how they conceived. They really don’t owe us anything.
At the end of the day it’s none of our business, and more importantly it’s our responsibility to educate ourselves about our bodies and reproductive health. Certainly not a public figure or a celebrity.
In my organization we do not discuss celebrities, entertainers, or public figures or their reproductive health. For all we know they could be walking amongst us, needing that support, empowerment and education just like anybody else.
And one more thing – why are we not putting the kids first? These things stay up on the Internet forever. Google is worse than what appears on your credit report.
These kids are going to grow up someday and then happened to read about themselves in tabloids or the Internet etc, and that’s just not OK in my book.
The whole fish bowl mentality makes me really really sad.
When I read stories about celebrities, entertainers, public figures that have conceived over the age of 40 I just smile and say congratulations and Mazel tov. That’s all we should be doing.
