By Terry Vanderheyden
LONDON, May 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A UK bachelor who spent £50,000 to beget triplets, now five years old, will be featured on a BBC television special to broadcast today titled One Life: I’m The Daddy.
In another version of “truth is stranger than fiction,” Ian Mucklejohn decided at age 58 that his life was incomplete, so he paid a woman to donate her eggs, which were then fertilized by his sperm; the new embryo was then implanted into the womb of a second (US) woman who acted as the surrogate mother. He chose an American as surrogate because it is illegal in the UK.
According to a BBC report, Mucklejohn does not believe the kids are missing out by not having a mother. “I knew I could combine both genders, and do constantly with the boys,” he claimed. “My children are the product of a single-parent family, like many of their friends and lots of people in today’s society,” he added.
“I have seen the unhappiness childlessness brings and this country makes it too hard to overcome that,” he said. “But it can be done.”
A Swedish study conducted in 2003 revealed that, even when poverty is not a factor, children raised by single parents were twice as likely to suffer from psychiatric problems, suicide and other injuries than those raised in intact two-parent homes.
See BBC coverage:
https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4986804.stm
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Children of Single Parents Have Poorer Health, Swedish Study Says
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/jan/03012806.html
Broken Family Structure Leads to Educational Difficulties for Children
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jan/06011605.html