TV shows we love: The Man With 1,000 Kids
I have three children and tbh at times it can be slightly overwhelming. So I am intrigued by those who appear on my social media feeds with eight or more children; how they dress them all, how long it takes to get out to school, which parent they all look like. The list could go on.
Which is why my interest was piqued by Netflix’s The Man With 1,000 Kids. Could anybody really want so many kids? Could he commit to them? The answer to the second is obviously no but the first, er maybe.
The three-part documentary follows Jonathan Jacob Meijer from Holland who at first appears to merely take advantage of the trust shown by sperm banks in men who say they will only donate to one at a time. This aims to prevent them fathering more than 25 children and reducing the possibility of unbeknown incest.
By speaking to the mothers and fathers that conceived with his help, mostly outside of these sperm banks, it soon becomes clear that Jonathan was not limiting himself and the mothers start to worry about how many children he really has. Although at first he says he is keen to be involved in the lives of these children as he is questioned by the mothers the relationships sour.
As this snowballs it becomes clear there is more than one way to fool the system, and the country’s borders do not limit him either. Videos on his blog show Jonathan in locations around the world which are soon linked to his sperm donation.
As the women join forces internationally they are soon led by fertility fraud activist (as the series shows, yes there really is a need for such a thing), Eve Wiley from America, who took on the mantle after finding out she was not the product of the donor her parents thought she was.
The mothers finally manage to persuade a lawyer to take on their case and after three and a half years a judge bans Jonathan from donating sperm anywhere in the world and will be fined €100,000 if he does so. A local TV interview shows him complaining about this but the mothers are jubilant.
The documentary shows Jonathan is a man obsessed with creating as many children as possible – he admits in court to almost 600 but estimates put it as high as 3,000 – although the reasons are not clear as he does not take part in the documentary, leaving behind hundreds of parents who although they have their dream of having children realised never quite bargained for what that could mean and the anger they would simultaneously feel.