(Image: Private Media)

In Everyday Dilemmas, Dr Leslie Cannold uses her ethical training to help solve your problems. Send your questions to letters@crikey.com.au with “Dear Leslie” in the subject line. She might even reply…

Dear Leslie, 

I’m donor-conceived. When I turned 18, my parents gave me the details of the sperm donor so I could contact him if I wanted. They said I don’t have to do it and I don’t know if I want to right now. Is that stupid? 

Puzzled in Preston 

Hi Puzzled, 

Congratulations on becoming a legal adult.

Even in our world of complex choices, this one is a humdinger. But here’s the good news: you don’t have to do anything right now, or ever.

If you were conceived in Victoria, you have a right to access non-identifying and identifying information about your donor — and to seek your donor’s consent to make contact — but you can do just one, just two, all three or none of those now or in the future. The choice is yours. 

Your donor has the same rights, which means that while he can find out who you are through obtaining identifying and/or non-identifying information about you, if he applies to contact you and you’re not interested you can refuse now and forever or leave open the potential for contact in the future. Again, it’s up to you. 

There is a cartload of good advice for people in all states and territories on this VARTA website, the agency that holds the information on donors and donor-conceived people, provides mandatory and voluntary counselling to those making applications for information or connection, and facilitates contact. 

There is absolutely no “normal” or “right” desire by a young adult or adult child to know about their biological parent or to meet them. While some adults conceived by donor conception felt so strongly about accessing information and having the option to meet their donor that they fought to change the laws governing the creation of children this way, others felt and continue to feel no need for such information and/or contact because their social parents tell them everything they need to know about who they are. 

Good luck on your journey, wherever it leads.

Leslie 

Dear Leslie, 

My fiancé and I are having couples counselling and have learnt we strongly disagree about one thing. As a cultural Catholic, I think it’s best to teach kids enough about their faith that they can accept or reject it. My soon-to-be husband is a lapsed Catholic and has no desire to hide from kids that he thinks religion and the church is a crock. It’s been three days since our last session and we’re still fighting about it. Help! 

Fuming in Fairy Hill 

Dear Fuming, 

Pre-marital counselling! What a brilliant invention. While I sympathise with the stress you and your betrothed are under, value clashes in a marriage — particularly when children are planned — are inevitable. Hats off to you and your husband-to-be for attempting to clear such obstacles now or, if you can’t, going into the commitment of marriage with your eyes wide open. 

Disagreements about child-rearing practices are among the most intractable in a partnership, both because these questions are important and usually have an all-or-nothing flavour. You can’t, for example, teach your kids that your faith tradition is silly and corrupt while, at the same time, show them that the rituals are important enough for them to learn so they can make up their own mind. 

Or can you?

One of the most interesting findings from divorced households is how easily children adapt to different values, rules and expectations in two separate households. Mum lets us swear, Dad doesn’t. Dad lets us run around the neighbourhood after dark, Mum doesn’t. 

I think it would be hard to inculcate children into an unquestioning allegiance to a particular faith position, including belief in a deity, while living with a constant religious critic and cynic. However, your aim seems more modest, which is to keep their minds open. 

I know a number of adults who grew up in households where one parent was a believer and churchgoer and the other wasn’t, including my partner’s. In his case, neither parent criticised or even commented on the beliefs or practices of the other. Live and let live, in other words. The result is four kids who all have a different attitude to their mother’s faith, ranging from the eldest, who is indifferent and completely non-practising, to the youngest brother who was a leader in an evangelical church until he became disillusioned with the organisation, though he maintains his faith in God — and everything in between. 

Would such a compromise work for you and your intended? It certainly allows you each to be true to your own values which is critical with kids, since they can read you like a book and will always do as you do, not as you say. If they observe your faith, they’ll come to understand that tradition while at the same time, through observation of their father’s indifference and non-participation, see that is an option, too.

This disparity is also likely to peel their eyes to variations in their school and sporting communities along the belief/non-belief, practise/non-practise, indoctrination/opportunity spectrum, increasing the options they see for their own lives. 

I hope this provides some doorway towards you and your fiance’s shared future.

Leslie 

Send your dilemmas to letters@crikey.com.au with “Dear Leslie” in the subject line and you could get a reply from Dr Cannold in this column. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity.