Culture | TV This is a story to chill the blood: a cautionary tale about the perils of the modern age. The focus of the documentary is Jonathan Jacob Meijer, who has made headlines recently for being banned from donating sperm. Yes, he is the man with the 1,000 kids in the show’s title – though it quickly becomes apparent that he has no idea how many he actually has.
Though it could sound funny, this new three-part series quickly shows us it’s actually anything but. One after the other, we’re taken into the lives of the people he affected – from couples Suzanne and Natalie to Joyce and John and solo parents including Vanessa. They all had one thing in common: they were longing for a baby and unwilling to pay for an expensive clinic in the Netherlands, where they lived, for multiple reasons.
“I want to look the sperm donor in the eye and see if his personality fits my personality,” says Natalie: something anonymous donations wouldn’t have let her do. Instead, they found him on the website Longing for A Child. Things started well.
He was enthusiastic and handsome, “like a Viking”, as one says. He had a long mane of blonde hair that many apparently found dazzling – and even better, said he only wanted to father five children. Ten max.
He was keen to have children both “naturally” (yuck) and via insemination, and sure enough, children quickly started to be born. Very quickly. The law in the Netherlands states that the maximum number of kids one sperm don.
