A Sperm Donor Who Has 46 Kids

My friend’s lesbian sister became pregnant a while ago. She found her sperm donor through one of several Dutch websites where women who want kids and guys who will donate sperm contact each other. I visited those websites and found a weird community where single women, lesbian couples, and couples in which the male is infertile can find happiness in the form of a small cup of semen and the pregnancy it leads to. But it is also a place where women will unabashedly ask for tall blond guys with blue eyes and a high level of education, where there are some obvious predators looking for sex, and where some guys with an otherwise normal family will secretly donate sperm to father as many children as they can, influenced by a skewed reading of Darwin. On these unusual message boards, one guy’s name kept appearing on my screen: Ed Houben. He posted vigorously, offering his semen to many women. And apparently, many took his offer—Ed has 46 children and six women are pregnant by him as I write this. Recently, Ed had a reunion with 16 women who used his semen to get pregnant. Several of his kids, ranging from the ages six months to four years, attended as well. In total, 30 people were there. Um, what the fuck?

Vice: How did you start donating sperm on the internet?

Ed Houben:

But still, 46 kids is a bit much, isn’t it?

So how does it go? You post a message, you meet, have the sex, and bang—pregnancy?

If you have 46 kids now and 6 are on their way, it must cost you a lot of time.

You’re a pretty fertile guy then. What kind of measures do you go through to keep your sperm of high quality?

Right. How was it to see so many of your kids at the same place recently?

Aren’t you afraid to grow really attached to those kids while not being able to see them all the time?

Are you sure about that?

Do you have a girlfriend?