AUSTRALIAAdam Hooper, 39, has donated sperm to more than 20 families, having more than 30 children. He said he did not make money from it, but just wanted to do something good.
Hooper started thinking about donating sperm more than 10 years ago, after his second daughter was born and he met a lesbian couple who wanted to have children but were having trouble.
“Being a father is a wonderful thing. If you give this gift to someone who really wants to have children and they become good parents, it’s definitely a good thing,” Hooper said on February 15.
He has since donated sperm many times for artificial insemination, helping more than 30 children to be born. He also decided to become a spokesperson for the benefits of sperm donation and founded an online community called Sperm Donor World in his home country of Australia, which has expanded to the UK, US, New Zealand, Philippines and more.
In 2015, the first child was born from his sperm donation. He was married at the time and his wife supported him, although they later split for other reasons. Hooper does not make money from sperm donation.
“Before I donate, I will get to know the person, to see if the child will be born into a good family, with good values and morals,” he explains. “I need to understand these things when I decide to give my DNA to someone, that the child will be well cared for.”
When the child born from Hooper’s sperm donation was three or four years old, he received messages from mothers asking if they could meet up and talk because “the child kept asking about me, or wanted to know more about me.” Hooper happily obliges, answering questions from children about his favourite colours or cartoon characters.
His two biological daughters, aged 14 and 10, support their father and join him at meetings with his half-siblings.
“I never tell other children to call me Dad,” Hooper said, adding that some parents tell their children to call him DD (Donor Dad).
“Every child will have a different feeling, a different perception of me. Maybe some want to talk to me more. Maybe some want to watch football with me when they’re older or keep in touch with me as a family friend or a close uncle,” he said.
Repeat donors can be accused of having a “God complex”, meaning wanting to create people, feeling superior and superior to others. The phrase has been used to describe Jonathan Meijer, a Dutchman who is accused of donating sperm to father more than 1,000 children despite claiming to have fathered only 550. Meijer was banned by a Dutch court in 2023 from donating more sperm and warned he would be fined $104,000 for each violation.
Hooper said it was wrong to use the phrase “god complex” to describe people like him, but acknowledged that repeated sperm donation can be addictive. “Some people are addicted to gambling, some are addicted to alcohol, some are addicted to drugs. Some are addicted to making other people happy,” he said.
Hooper said he holds group meetings with the families he helps every three to six months and has a Facebook group for people to socialize. This is to avoid the risk of children who are half-siblings later having romantic relationships.
Hooper has also paid a price for being a sperm donor. He was banned from two dating apps for publicly listing his donation in his profile. He once had to leave a barbecue when a woman he agreed to help texted him that he needed an urgent sperm transfer.
According to Hooper, “your daily life is affected by being a sperm donor, and you have to be disciplined” like being available to take calls at all hours, abstaining from sex to be ready to donate sperm, and getting regular check-ups to make sure you don’t transmit diseases.
He stopped donating sperm about a year or two ago. The samples he’s storing could lead to more babies. He’s happy to have helped bring babies into the world and “would never say no to helping someone else.”
