{"id":1015446,"date":"2026-08-21T18:45:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T18:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1015446\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T18:45:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T18:45:17","slug":"my-wife-just-told-me-how-she-wants-to-conceive-our-baby-uh-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1015446\/","title":{"rendered":"My Wife Just Told Me How She Wants to Conceive Our Baby. Uh, What?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Care and Feeding is Slate\u2019s parenting advice column.\u00a0Have a question for Care and Feeding?\u00a0<\/strong>Submit it here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Care and Feeding,<\/strong><\/p>\n

My wife, \u201cIrena,\u201d and I have been married for four years and are ready to start a family. However, Irena just announced the condition she wants to put on it: She wants to use a sperm donor! The problem isn\u2019t that I\u2019m shooting blanks or concerns over hereditary diseases. It\u2019s because she doesn\u2019t want any potential kid of ours to get my nose.<\/p>\n

I inherited my dad\u2019s nose, which I admit was a monstrosity of a honker and the source of many years of torment when I was growing up. I got a nose job during my freshman year of college. Irena and I met after the fact, but she\u2019s seen old pictures of me and has obviously met my parents and sister (who got dad\u2019s nose as well and also had a nose job), so she knows what the \u201cbefore\u201d was like. She also used to be chubby as a kid and was teased mercilessly over it until she got into dieting and fitness big time just prior to starting high school. She says there\u2019s no way she\u2019d want to risk putting a kid through what we suffered.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m finding myself conflicted. Part of me feels insulted, but another part can see where she\u2019s coming from. Does my wife have a point?<\/p>\n

\u2014Bad Genes<\/p>\n

Dear Bad Genes,\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not wrong to want to give your child the best life possible; it is real dicey when we start talking about eugenics. I do not want to discount the toll of the years of taunting you endured over your nose, but it should be your decision only to decide if that is something you think is worth taking a drastic step to avoid for your future child. The fact that your wife married you when she was likely planning to ask you this all along is a betrayal.<\/p>\n

There is a big difference between you making this decision for yourself and your wife telling you she plans on cutting off your branch of your genetic family tree in order to prevent a child from looking like you. And please remember the possibility that, even with donor sperm, your kid still may have something else \u201cwrong\u201d with them! How do you think your wife would handle that?<\/p>\n

As someone who has had a couple of plastic surgeries to address what I considered to be issues, I would also support my child in choosing to make the same decision when she is old enough (I\u2019d also feel inclined to help pay for it, if not pay for it outright, especially if I suspected that my post-surgery appearance had contributed to insecurities about her own.) I would not, however, consider not having a baby of my own blood to avoid making someone who looks like me. Only you can answer this question: would you?<\/p>\n

\n Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don\u2018t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication.\n <\/p>\n

Dear Care and Feeding,<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not long ago, my wife and I bought our 4-year-old son, \u201cJacob,\u201d his first pet in the form of a goldfish. We explained to him about feeding and care (we were doing the cleaning of the bowl), but also prepared him for when the fish would die by explaining that goldfish don\u2019t live nearly as long as people. Jacob seemed to understand this, but yesterday we found the goldfish frozen solid in a ziploc bag in the freezer.<\/p>\n

When we asked Jacob what happened, he said he saw a show with his older cousin on people being frozen \u201cso they could live forever.\u201d Apparently it was one of those science shows on cryonics and he applied the same concept to his fish thinking he was saving it. Obviously the fish isn\u2019t coming back to life, and now we have a situation where our son unwittingly killed his pet. My wife thinks we should replace the fish with an identical one while Jacob is at daycare and tell him it \u201cwoke up.\u201d I don\u2019t think deception is the correct answer. How do we deal with this without upsetting him?<\/p>\n

\u2014Frozen Fish Fuck Up<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Michelle Herman
\n So, It Turns Out Our Kid Was Not \u201cCrying Wolf\u201d About Her Teacher After All
\n Read More<\/b>\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Dear Frozen,\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n
    \n This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only<\/p>\n

    My Family Has Always Been Cagey About My Estranged Older Siblings. I Just Discovered the Shocking Reason Why.
    \n <\/a>\n <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Your wife\u2019s idea is not great and kills the value of having goldfish, which I\u2019m convinced exist largely to teach small children about death. If you tell your son that the fish woke up, he will be shattered the first time something, or someone, dies and cannot come back to life somehow. It\u2019s important that he understands that there are no living creatures that he can safely freeze.<\/p>\n

    You can preserve a little childlike wonder by explaining that the fish has gone off to the great ocean in the sky, or to the \u201crainbow pond\u201d or wherever you\u2019d like him to believe pets go when they die. But you gotta tell him the fish is dead. Give him space to grieve, encourage him to share his feelings and have a little memorial service, if you feel inclined (you may save this for the fish who lives long enough for him to get a little more attached.)<\/p>\n

    You can offer your son a trip to go and purchase a new goldfish. Or ,if you think it will soften the blow, come to the \u201cwe gotta tell Jacob the fish died\u201d meeting with the new ones\u2013but do prepare yourself for the possibility that he\u2019s too sad to engage with it immediately. Talk to him about proper fish care and give him a clear list of \u201cno-nos,\u201d which should include anything a 4-year-old might think to do with a small, wet pet.<\/p>\n

    \u2014Jamilah<\/p>\n

    More Parenting Advice From Slate<\/p>\n

    Three months ago, my dad asked me (in a non-pressuring way) if I could move out so there was room for his girlfriend and her daughter who I had never met. I gladly agreed, as I am 22 and had been looking to move out for a while. I moved into a nice one-bedroom apartment and am loving it so far! Only one problem: My stepmom (\u201cLauren\u201d) and my stepsister (\u201cElisa,\u201d 15) continue to make demands.<\/a><\/p>\n

    Get the latest from Prudie and our columnists in your inbox each weekday, plus special bonus letters on Saturdays.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Care and Feeding is Slate\u2019s parenting advice column.\u00a0Have a question for Care and Feeding?\u00a0Submit it here. Dear Care…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1015447,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[11],"tags":[600,246,210,251,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1015446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-advice","tag-family","tag-health","tag-kids","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117134986917875133","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1015446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1015446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1015447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1015446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1015446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1015446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}