Meet Matt Stone. He’s a 37-year-old software technician living in Raleigh, North Carolina and according to his calculations, has fathered at between 70 and 100 children in the past four years.
Talk about a large family.
Offering his services for free via a Facebook page, the American says his decision to donate to couples in need came after working at a sperm bank in his 20s.
“Sperm banks are incredibly expensive and I don’t think they always have the couple’s best interests at heart,” Stone told news.com.au. “I feel the reproductive medical companies find situations where people have to pay more and more for a chance to become parents, which is really unfair.”
Facebook sperm donor, Matt Stone. Source: Facebook.
Having had the Facebook page active for four years now, Stone says that on average, he is contacted “by 10 people a day”.
But wanting to ensure things are done right, the IT technician has a stringent vetting process, asking potential parents a number of questions about their family history, relationship behaviours, career and income before agreeing to donate.
“I care a lot about the wellbeing of the future children and screen the parents, I don’t want to see the offspring in bad situations," he said. “When screening, I look to see if there has been negativity in their lives, if they have complaints about their relationship, if they’re employed, if it looks like they have a healthy, stable home-life and their age.”
A successful donation. Source: Facebook.
While the known number of successful births is not known, Stone estimates that he has at least 70 know children but the number could go up to 100. He adds there are as many as 20 women possibly carrying right now.
“Currently, there could be between 10 to 20 people carrying the children,” Stone said. “I have 70 guaranteed conceptions, but I could have up to a third more, it’s usually a one-off interaction and you don’t always hear anything more from them so I could have many more children."
"Holy smokes, another first cycle success," Stone wrote. Source: Facebook.
Already a father of two himself, Stone continued, “I have a fairly strong success rate of helping people conceive, the majority of the people contact me because they know I’m in high demand, I’m donating to multiple people a week. Once I donated to four people in two days and three fell pregnant.”
As for complications in the future, Stone says he keeps his distance from the couples, respecting their privacy and roles as the true parents.
“I’ve only met one of the children, I keep things mainly online and feel that me being involved would create a confusion. I keep my distance, as I don’t want the children to see me as an absentee father, the child’s parents are their parents in my eyes,” he explained.
Stone recently helped conceive triplets. Source: Facebook.
Hoping to have more children of his own one day, Stone says his retirement is nearing, with the plan to drop out of the game at 45 years old.
“A lot of couples come back to me for second children, so I figure when I hit that age I’ll have to stop accepting new people," he said.
Top Comments
It's not just about the desire / right to become parents, the responsibilities of the parents and the donor must also be considered in respect of the offspring's long-term needs and rights.
Having accessed IVF counselling last year, and given thought to a lot of this, if I were to have used a sperm donor, I'd have paid the extra money to access sperm though the system which protects the rights of the resulting children.
Following plenty of history and research, two are especially important:
In Australia the law is that donors are limited to donating to a maximum of 10 families, or five same-sex couples.
In addition, at least in Victoria, the law says once the resulting children turn 18 they can access the donor's details - this also applies to embryo donors. This is a very important aspect for these children to know their biological origins. It can be quite upsetting, frustrating and even damaging to be denied this information. It is selfish of parents not to think of this before conception, and no one understands baby fever more than I did last year!
The law exists to protect the offspring. How is he attempting to meet this? It doesn't sound like he's even bothering with the first part at all.
so what sort of record is being kept to ensure that these 60 odd children don't meet and hook up / marry / have kids in the future? there is a reason why clinics are here not least of which is the record keeping process that attempts to alleviate issues like this from occurring.