Jonathan Jacob Meijer, the donor behind Netflix’s new docu-series, The Man with 1000 Kids, has spoken out against the show, saying he got ‘carried away’.
Meijer, who disputes the claim he has 1000 children and says it’s more around the 600 figure, admitted he didn’t want to be in the limelight, but since his face and story is being shown around the world in a Netflix series he’s giving his side to the story.
In 2007 he signed up to donate at a sperm bank, at 25 years old, after speaking to a friend at college who was unable to have children. But as much as the experience was ‘meaningful and real’ he wanted to meet the people he was helping face-to-face so looked into the private donation sector.
But he didn’t plan to have this many children from the start, only thinking he’d ‘help one or two people’, he told The Independent.
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‘The Man with 1000 Kids’ donor says people ‘think he’s crazy’
“I know people think I’m crazy and that I help too much, but in my opinion I was super selective,” he says. “People really don’t understand the shortage of donors.”
‘The Man with 1000 Kids’ donor typically provided donations in a plastic cup but admits he sometimes had sex with the women himself.
Meijer says he didn’t ask for money in exchange, except for travel expenses and covering the cost of STD tests. At times he thought about stopping but would receive a new message from someone who wanted help and couldn’t say no, saying ‘it’s something magical’.
However, some mothers on his list spoke out, saying he would lie to potential new recipients about how many children he had.
When asked if he misled the women, he said: “Sometimes I think I got too carried away,” he says. “I should have told myself that [a smaller number of children] is fine. It would be best if I had been open, but I chose to follow the international guidelines.”
In 2017, he was blacklisted from donating to clinics over fears of the dangers of incest or inbreeding, when he reached the number of fathering 10 children via multiple clinics in the Netherlands. There are guidelines where a man cannot father more than 25 children via sperm donation centers. There are rules in other countries too, the UK cap is 10 families (but unlimited children), and Germany states 15.
‘The Man with 1000 kids’ donor says he stopped in 2019, but was also ordered to stop by a Dutch court in 2024. Clinics were also told to destroy any sperm on hand and he was told he would face a $107,000 fine if he did not obey. But the court allows for mothers who are already recipients who want biological siblings.
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He refuses to watch the Netflix show
Meijer hasn’t watched The Man with 1000 Kids TV series, but when told of some of the claims against him, he says he will ‘definitely sue the hell out of the whole Netflix crew’.
Some accusations include competing with fellow donors over who could get the most people pregnant, and mixing his sperm with another man to see ‘whose would win’. Meijer outright denies these allegations.
Speaking against backlash, he said: “People say that I have a lot [of children], and I say: ‘But look around. Would your brother be a donor, or your husband?’ They say no, of course he would not! Well that’s why donors help so much.”
His oldest children at the moment are 17 years old, and his youngest are toddlers.
Meijer now wants to focus on settling down and having his own children.
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