How do I explain my baby-mama situation to my friends and family?

I don’t really see a big problem. You’re both adults and as long as the child is well cared for financially and emotionally, it’s not neccessarilly a bad thing. You’re not shirking any responsibilities that were set upon you and so you shouldn’t feel bad about anything.

So rather than going to a fertility clinic, she selected you as the biological father and she conceived through the conventional method but has no need or expectation that you will be involved as a parent in the child’s life. Is that it?

I’m with @py_sue on this.

@Dr_Lawrence
Yeah that’s the gist of it. A bit unorthodox but she is well cared for.

Sounds trollish to me.

@YARNLADY
A troll that pays child support

What is your real question? I was able to summarize it in two sentences (and I’m often long-winded. What is the problem? Is it that you want everyone to approve of your arrangement?

Just tell them. whether they like it or not that’s the truth and you don’t need to be ashamed of yourself. It’s your decision and your life.

Don’t. It’s not their business. If it comes up in conversation, either say you’d rather not get into it or just give the facts and move on.

only your close friends and family need to know and you can not go into details if you choose.
It’s none of their business unless you choose it to be,.

Tell them you’re a sperm donor, and this lady wanted you to meet the kid – so you did. It doesn’t go any further than that.

That is, if you want to say anything at all.

The baby is well cared for and the mother is happy to bring the baby up on her own.
You and your friend made this arrangement, and if it works for you both, then people shouldn’t be so judgemental.

I know someone with the reverse of this situation. The father is gay, an only child, very close to his parents. When he came out to his parents, the issue of the family dying out with him was a big source of sadness for them. After giving it due consideration, he arranged for a surrogate mother, and had a child with her by artificial insemination. He is raising the child himself as a single father. Once a month, the son goes to spend part of a day with the mother in town a few hours away. The child is quite secure and well-balanced. He’s raised by a single father, when people ask about his mother, he tells them where she lives and that he sees her once a month. He spends summer vacation with his grandparents, and both he and his father spend holidays with them.

If you don’t want people being judgmental, don’t talk about it. It’s really not anyone’s business. You don’t have to live your life as if you’re on Oprah. People don’t have a right to know if you’ve fathered a child, or if you pay child support or how much. The only person who has a right to know is the child, because it affects him/her. If is much easier for a child to be able to say, “I know who my father is. He and my mom have never lived together, I see him once a month. I look like him.” If there is no emotional attachment between the parents, and things are amicable, then things are good for the child; the arrangement will be normal. It only gets bad for kids when there’s emotional baggage between parents that the kids end up carrying.

Interesting. I new a girl once who made the same proposition to me. She even went so far as to offer documentation that would release me from any financial or parental responsibility. To each his own of course, but I did not do it, I knew that I would never be able to simply ignore my own offspring, regarding support, or parental attention. But at the time, I did not want that responsibility. So the answer was no. But if you feel comfortable with it, then what the hey.

I am firmly in the “It is None of Their Business” camp. You and this woman are both consenting adults, the baby is well taken care of, wanted, loved, and apparently rather good looking. You are doing what is expected of you and following through with any commitments you made. Make, “it is none of your business and not your place to judge me” your mantra. If that doesn’t do the trick, tell them all to kiss your ass.

Was the arrangement that you would father he child and she would raise the child without you?

If that is the case, then you are fulfilling your end of the bargain. The child may feel differently when he or she grows up, and you will need to be prepared what to say to them about things.

Why even tell people about your arrangement?

For the ones that know, why even talk about it? Simply say, “That’s private and is an off-limits topic for me.”

This kind of situation can be reffered to from several points of view:
If I look at it from the point of view of the mother and you: You have an agreement, you are both fulfilling it, everything is great.
But what about the child? it might be that if the child never knew you, and had a “sperm donor dad” is a toatlly diffrent message for him/her than “my dad only cares to visit me once in a few months”, I would consult a child therapist on that subject, maybe visiting now and then is worse for the child than just being a donor.
About your friends, I think it might be that you unconciously feel they have a point, otherwise it wouldn’t have bothered you what they think. If this was true, I would again consider the option of not seeing him/her at all, if the child is still young enough to not remember you, or, becoming a full-time dad.
In my view, your friends are just the trigger for thoughts you are having between you and yourself, once you are complete with your descision, you would just wave them off. How to do that? well, just say something like: “you guys, I am complete with my actions, please leave the subject alone, it is none of your bussiness”

I’m reminded of a favourite quote: A friend is someone who knows all about you – and still loves you.

I don’t think this situation is all that unusual anymore.
I think for a lot of women, it takes a lot of “what ifs” out of the equation.
Anyhow, as to your question itself, I agree with those who said not to discuss it. You don’t have to explain yourself.

I would also stop referring to the baby’s mother as your “baby-mama”. That makes you sound like a dead-beat dad that knocked up some woman and refused to marry her. It implies emotional relationship in which you’re a cad. If you fathered a child with a woman you did not have an emotional attachment to, you need to refer to the mother and her child. “Baby-mama” sounds like you’re having your wages garnished because you refuse to pay child support and the mother had to take you to court to collect. If this was a strictly platonic business arrangement, make it sound like it is. You don’t get to be cutesy or familiar about it without expecting people who are offended to drop you on facebook.

@PandoraBoxx
you’re right it sounds very Jerry Springer. I picked up that phrase from her brother, I’ll stop using it.