Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, just posted a very pretty and personal story to his followers. This tech mogul shared that he has more than 100 biological children, by virtue of donating his sperm in the past. This not only obviously illustrates Pavel Durov’s unique contribution to the lives of very many families, but also underscores a general trend: the demand for donor sperm keeps growing.
Fifteen years ago, the journey of Durov into fatherhood started with an extremely bizarre request from one of his friends. His friend, desperate because of his infertility problems, asked for his sperm to be able to impregnate his wife. He shrugged it off at first, but then he started to take the problem seriously and decided to help. That was the beginning of everything.
Very soon, the clinic’s director understood the high quality of donor material from Durov and persuaded him to further donate. He addressed the problem of healthy sperm, making Durov’s donating more of a civic responsibility to help more couples tormented by the problem. Durov agreed only to the chance of making a difference to a large number of unknown lives. In fact, children were born from his anonymous sperm to families all over the world.
Move on to 2024, and the donations made by Durov in the past have led to more than a hundred couples in 12 countries being able to conceive. Some of the clinics still keep his frozen sperm in storage years after he ceased donating. This amazing contribution has brought joy and filled the lives of so many families.
In a post, Durov declared that he would release his genetic material to the public. He mentioned how dangerous it was but that he has no regrets regarding the issue. He also shared about the tremendous shortage in healthy sperm and the effort he will put toward answering this problem. Durov states that he also hopes to remove shame from the practice and to start forming a group of healthy men who donate sperm to provide multiple healthy standard sperm supplies to families distressed by infertility.
Today we learned that the Telegram CEO, Pavel Durov, has over 100 biological children. 🤯 PIC.TWITTER.COM/B7G7SLDYZ3
— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) JULY 29, 2024
Durov’s dramatic disclosure joins other public figures who have become prolific fathers, among them the likes of Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, the electric vehicle maker, and SpaceX. Having fathered 10 children with three women, Musk insists his children are important to him despite his busy professional life.
Another notable case is actor Nick Cannon, who has 12 children by six native ladies. The media have prominently reported Cannon’s prolific fathering and, over time, come to question what modern parenthood should look like and what responsibilities a parent with many children should have.
The stories of Durov, Musk, and Cannon point, however, to a more general trend throughout society in the face of unconventional methods by which to become a parent and in changing definitions of what family can be. The choices increasingly larger numbers of people are making in their method of having a child raise important questions both about genetics and identity and about the nature of families in the future.
