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Set aside the technical issues. Assume for the moment that the sperm can be screened to avoid age-related genetic flaws. Is it wrong to donate sperm so your son can raise a genetically related child? Why? (Yuck is not an answer. Give your reasons.)

Heck no it's not wrong.

If we are allowed to donate to strangers, we can donate to kin. It is not the girl's father donating sperm, so it isn't even incest linked in any way. If dad can donate $10k for a new house with a nursery or a college fund, why can't he donate the means to require the house or fund???

I don't see what the big deal is either. It's his daughter-in-law so there's not a blood relationship and as long as they're doing this in a lab there's not a physical relationship so I don't see why this would be considered squicky.

Although there might be a moment when the lady's in stirrups and the doctor gets ready to do the insemination that she'll look down and say to her hubby, "Look! It's your dad's sperm." Goodness knows, I would say that in the same situation - of course I'm known for my unique sense of humor :)

As far as the kid is concerned is "Mommy and Daddy couldn't have a baby so we took part of Mommy and part of Daddy's Daddy and made you" that much weirder than the exact same story with "a complete stranger" substituted for Daddy's Daddy? I really don't think it is.

I see nothing wrong with it. Women become pregnant from donated sperm all the time. I can certainly see how a man who was unable to have children would want something like this done if he wants children.

Considering how many alternative family arrangements there are out there, I doubt the kid will be all that wigged out. I would wait until he or she is in his teens before telling him though.

I don't see it as a moral problem, not even a 'yuck' since the would-be mother and father are not genetically related. Labeling this column with 'Incest' is pretty yuck-inducing on Slate's part, though.

I would have no problem with this if grampa had frozen sperm from his twenties or thirties, but we're making a mighty big leap to assume that our screening process is good enough to spot all the possible problems in old sperm. It's just been a few years since anyone was willing to admit that there are genetic problems associated with old sperm. I don't think there's any safe screening process designed to spot the problems associated with old men producing babies.

Of course, this is not just an issue if it's your grampa. It's an issue with old men getting fertile women pregnant, period.

Not wrong. Weird, perhaps.

I don't see a problem at all. At least they know they're getting genetic material from a man who's made it to 72 years old and is still healthy enough to donate. Sounds like a better bet than the way lots of people choose the genetic parents of their children... one night stand, anyone?????

Some would say that:

1. It is always and everywhere wrong to conceive children through means that don't consist of a penis ejaculating inside a vagina that it has a right to be in. (This is the position of certain religious groups.)

2. The ickiness of this particular case proves the more general problem with anonymous sperm donation, because you do not know if it will end up with, say, your sister, which is gross. (Early Christian authorities held that it was wrong to abandon children, because they would usually be enslaved and forced into prostitution, with the result that fathers might unwittingly have sex with their own children. Yes, that's why abandoning children is wrong!)

3. The family will be screwed up. The child may want to sue to become his genetic father's son so that he will inherit directly when the old man dies and not have to wait for his "father," who is really his genetic half-brother, to die as well. Furthermore, by what right would "dad" exercise paternal authority over a son he did not father? (Ancient Greeks objected to the Christian doctrine of bodily resurrection because they foresaw it playing havoc with inheritance, title to property, and familial duties.)

The chances of your getting healthier genetic material from a one-night stand are greater than getting it from a senior citizen. That's because women are more likely to have a one-night stand with a younger, more physically fit male than they are some random geezer. The fact is that sperm's quality goes down as a man ages. That is why nature programmed hot, young wives to cuckold their old husbands.

Primarily what is wrong here is the description. There are two senses of father here, related but distinct, and they are being conflated. There is the first sense of father, as the male biological parent, the one who contributes the sperm. There is the second sense of father as the male who raises the child. Now, as is often the case, the person fitting one description fits the other. It goes without saying that this is not always the case -- with divorces, adoptions, etc. When speaking about family relations, we often speak with the biological sense primarily in mind. People referring to adoptive or step-parents will often qualify their references, or take pains to compensate for the lack of a biological connection and distinguish their 'real' parents, the ones who raised them, from their merely biological parents. In the case of this article, we have lost track of who is what. A man who donates sperm to father a child his son will raise is, in essence, fathering a child that will be raised by the child's half-brother. The male parent will not be raising 'his' child, but his father's, and the child will be his half-brother or half-sister. Now we may be polite in talking about 'fathering a grandchild' but in fact nothing of the sort is happening, which would truly be inexplicable in any case. The discomfort really arises from the realization that we have allowed our parent, with whom we have one type of intimate relationship, seemingly inappropriate access to our spouse, with whom we have another, and that we are raising a child whose primary relation to us is not that of son or daughter but brother or sister. As compassionate as we may wish to be both to infertile couples and those relatives trying to help them, we should call a spade a spade and deal with the real issues. For my part, I find the intrusion of one's parents into one's marriage in this manner as well as the resulting ambiguity of the child's familial relationship to be something akin to incest.

That's just it. You can't father a child by the grandfather and call it your son just because you want to. He IS a grandchild and a brother any way you look at it.

I thought it was a really bad country and western song.

I think its wrong, because their brother will NEVER be their father. So it would be as if she had gotten pregnant from a stranger, because her children will be denied their REAL father. This is nothing like a grandmother carrying her grandchild with her daughters eggs. People are so selfish and so screwed up these days. Meanwhile children wait to be adopted.