The Man With 1000 Kids True Story Explained: What happened to Jonathan Meijer?

Netflix’s new three-part docuseries, The Man With 1000 Kids, is currently the No. 1 show on the streaming platform. While watching, you might have questions about what happened to the families in real life and where Jonathan Jacob Meijer is now.

Jonathan Jacob Meijer is a Dutch musician and YouTuber who allegedly has upwards of 500 children worldwide from sperm donation. Meijer said in a YouTube video in February 2024 that he was inspired to become a sperm donor after a classmate told him he was infertile.

There have been speculations about whether or not the docuseries is based on a true story. However, in a conversation with BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, Jonathan Jacob Meijer called the allegations “misleading”.

He also claimed that the creators of The Man with 1000 Kids framed his activities in a deliberately negative light.

1. Who is Jonathan Jacob Meijer?

Jonathan Jacob Meijer, 42, is a Dutch YouTube personality and musician. Previously, he worked as a civics teacher, a mailman, and a cryptocurrency consultant. He has seven siblings. Meijer’s YouTube channel has about 6.17k subscribers. Here, he shares about his travels, why he started donating sperm, his thoughts, and his music.

According to his friend Patricia, who appears in The Man With 1000 Kids, the serial sperm donor struggled to find his voice and identity amid such a large family. He also drifted from one job to another and frequently changed his looks.

2. When and why did Jonathan Meijer start donating sperm?

Meijer entered the fertility industry when he began donating sperm in 2007. According to a February 2024 video, he said the idea occurred while studying to be a teacher. A classmate told him that he was infertile, which led him to donate his samples and help couples experience the joy of having a child.

Lack of any family history of chronic or genetic diseases, diabetes, and cancer further made Meijer’s donations helpful for many.

According to The Mirror, the sperm donor had registered with 11 sperm clinics worldwide and at the Danish sperm bank Cryos. He also joined Facebook groups of prospective parents who couldn’t conceive to contact mothers who would use his samples.

But things took a turn when it was known that Meijer had breached the country’s laws and fathered much more than the limit of 25 children. “Over the years, Meijer lied to everyone. He told each clinic he would exclusively donate there, and he told each prospective mother he ‘only’ had about 10 children,” according to the publication.

3. The true story of the rulings against Jonathan Meijer Explained

Parents who had children via Meijer’s sample happened to meet each other by chance. Among these parents was single mother Vanessa van Ewijk, who had Meijer’s sperm when she first became a mother in 2015. She linked with him on a website and received the semen through independent donors.

When she sought pregnancy again in 2017, she met Jonathan, but this time, she also got to contact another single mother on Facebook and got to know about the fact that in 2017, there was an enforcement to ban Meijer’s sperm donation.

It was said in the New York Times article that the report was from an inquiry by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sport on a period of 2017, and it showed that Jonathan Meijers had children who were at least 102 in number over the country throughout different fertility clinics.

This figure did not include his private donations through websites.  The Dutch Donor Child Foundation was her destination when she wanted to put this case of deception into the limelight, and there it turned out that the number of mothers who had the same misgivings was rather high. Their reports demonstrated that Meijer has fathered 80 babies in the Netherlands, whereas they are better absorbed worldwide.

Nevertheless, Meijer allegedly made anonymous donations despite the prohibition, mostly under aliases. He had children in Australia, Italy, Serbia, Germany, Poland, Hungary, Switzerland, Romania, Denmark, Sweden, Mexico, and the USA.

Another banning came in 2023 when the Court of The Hague decided that Meijer must not supply sperm. The same court also asked the Dutch clinics and sperm banks to destroy all of his specimens. The decision also provided the prescription that the verdict will enable Meijer to fine every time he violates the term a certain amount of 100,000 Euros, and the information is referred to and confirmed to Reuters.

The Dutch Donor Kind Foundation supported the latter and reasoned that Meijer was mending the recipients with false information about his number of offspring. The CEO, Ties van der Meer, as per The Mirror, added, “Meijer’s acts are so difficult! He has 550 children, according to the judge’s ruling. I’m afraid he will try to break a previous record by saying that he already has 1,000 of them.”

4. How many children does sperm donor Jonathan Jacob Meijer have?

Well, that’s a million-dollar question with no exact answer.

While the 2023 verdict said it to be around 550, others like van der Meer or The Man With 1000 Kids state that it could be above 1,000.

In an email to The New York Times in 2021, the serial sperm donor dismissed them all, stating, “I have approximately 250 children.”

He added, “Assumptions of 1,000 are ridiculous. I am disappointed by the obsession of the numbers. I became a donor not for any numbers but out of love to help parents with realising their dream. I cannot understand how anyone can only focus on numbers and see my donor children as a number.”

In another email, he wrote: “I know people are quickly judging me or thinking that I donate for selfish reasons. But I am quite down to earth about myself and I don’t think too highly about myself. What motivates me as a donor is just to do something really big with just a little bit of help, the appreciation of the recipients and the warm feelings and memories I share with the children and the recipients.”

5. Why was Jonathan Meijer banned from donating sperm?

Because Meijer’s sperm donations have led to several children across the globe and a large population in the Netherlands, it has led to each child having hundreds of half-siblings. In such a small country, this can lead to accidental incest and inbreeding.

One of the mothers featured in the docuseries, Natalie, said, “Children who haven’t been brought up together are more likely to get attracted to each other because they see some familiarities in the face of the sibling. That feeling of attraction can result in romantic love, a phenomenon known as the ‘Luke and Leia complex,’ named after the characters in Star Wars.”

Different countries have different rules about how many times a person can donate sperm and the number of donor-child he can have. However, the lack of global laws and strict rules make this aspect of the fertility industry quite a loose end.

6. Where is Jonathan Meijer now?

Meijer doesn’t have a fixed address. His YouTube channel suggests he travels across the world from where he posts videos about his life, his reaction to the Netflix documentary, and even his thoughts about the entire sperm donation journey. However, his latest videos indicate Meijer is based in Zanzibar.

7. About The Man with 1000 Kids

The Man with 1000 Kids is a three-episode docuseries that takes on the monumental task of trying to piece together the havoc wreaked by Jonathan Meijer across several countries and continents — in addition to 11 sperm banks in the Netherlands and private donations, Meijer had been donating sperm all over the globe.

The three-part docuseries, directed by Josh Allott and produced by Kathryn Taylor, premiered on Netflix on 3 July 2024. It shares insights of families who conceived with Meijer’s sperm but were unaware of the extent of his donations — that he had sired over 500 children. Despite families filing lawsuits against him and the Dutch court banning the serial donor from donating sperm to banks, Meijer continued.