Ask Miss Rose Rose!
Aug. 14th, 2008 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseFull disclosure: Letter stolen from today's edition of Slate's Dear Prudence. This person did not solicit my advice, but since this is the Internet and that means my opinion is just as important as Prudence's, I'm offering it anyway.
Dear Miss Rose Rose,
I am a college student who has been fortunate to grow up in a wonderful, loving family, and I'm very close to my parents and younger siblings. Recently, when I commented about an article I was reading on sperm donation, my mother disclosed to me her decision several years ago to have her eggs harvested and given to an infertile couple who were friends of the family. I was devastated by this news. That family conceived triplets with my mother's eggs, and I have met the children on many occasions. My mother insists that those children are not "her kids" and that she simply helped her friends become parents. My father is the only other person in our family who is aware of the situation, and the other family now lives in a different state. On one hand, I love her even more for such a selfless act, but on the other I feel upset by this news. Am I ridiculous for feeling intensely jealous and heartbroken? She is my and my full siblings' mom, and I don't want to know anything about these half-siblings. How can I get rid of the disdain I've developed for these children and erase the fear that she loves them as much as (or more than) me?
—Jealous and Confused Son
Dear Jealous,
WTF is wrong with you? You discovered that you happen to share some genetic material with a set of triplets in a completely different family, in a situation where all parties knew what was going on and was okay with it, and this makes you "intensely jealous and heartbroken"? Your mother is (by your own admission) a kind and selfless person, and what she does with her genetic material is her business. It has no effect on you - she didn't carry these children, she certainly didn't raise them, and it sounds like she doesn't even see them very often. Frankly, the fact that you're so attached to the idea of your mother being exclusive to you makes me wonder if you don't need some therapy. And perhaps to move out of her basement.
Dear Miss Rose Rose,
I am a college student who has been fortunate to grow up in a wonderful, loving family, and I'm very close to my parents and younger siblings. Recently, when I commented about an article I was reading on sperm donation, my mother disclosed to me her decision several years ago to have her eggs harvested and given to an infertile couple who were friends of the family. I was devastated by this news. That family conceived triplets with my mother's eggs, and I have met the children on many occasions. My mother insists that those children are not "her kids" and that she simply helped her friends become parents. My father is the only other person in our family who is aware of the situation, and the other family now lives in a different state. On one hand, I love her even more for such a selfless act, but on the other I feel upset by this news. Am I ridiculous for feeling intensely jealous and heartbroken? She is my and my full siblings' mom, and I don't want to know anything about these half-siblings. How can I get rid of the disdain I've developed for these children and erase the fear that she loves them as much as (or more than) me?
—Jealous and Confused Son
Dear Jealous,
WTF is wrong with you? You discovered that you happen to share some genetic material with a set of triplets in a completely different family, in a situation where all parties knew what was going on and was okay with it, and this makes you "intensely jealous and heartbroken"? Your mother is (by your own admission) a kind and selfless person, and what she does with her genetic material is her business. It has no effect on you - she didn't carry these children, she certainly didn't raise them, and it sounds like she doesn't even see them very often. Frankly, the fact that you're so attached to the idea of your mother being exclusive to you makes me wonder if you don't need some therapy. And perhaps to move out of her basement.
