A 33-year-old Knoxville, Tenn. man with 30 children appeared in court this week to ask the state for child-support help, Memphis news station WREG reported Wednesday.
Desmond Hatchett has fathered 30 children – which is believed to be the record in Knox county, according to the Los Angeles Times – with 11 different women. His youngest children are toddlers and his oldest is 14.
Hatchett reportedly asked the court to give him a break on his payments, claiming that he’s struggling to make ends meet with his minimum-wage job. Currently, the state requires him to divide 50 percent of his earnings among the 11 women, some of whom receive as little as $1.49 a month, WREG reports.
How did Hatchett come to father so many children? “I had four kids in the same year. Twice," he told Volunteer TV in 2009. He also told a local news station that year that he was “done” having kids (he had only 21 at the time).
Hatchett isn’t the only serial father to make headlines. NFL player Antonio Cromartie, 28, famously fathered 10 children by eight women in six states.
“Moulay Ismaïl is alleged to have fathered 888 children. This is widely considered the record number of offspring for any man throughout history that can be verified. It is thought that Ismaïl would have had to copulate with an average of 4.8 women per day for 40 years to achieve that number of children.”
“Vassilyev and his first wife, whose name is unknown holds the record for most children a couple has parented. She gave birth to a total of 69 children. She gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets between 1725 and 1765, in a total of 27 births. 67 of the 69 children born are said to have survived infancy.”
I have a hard time believing that someone could have that many multiple births without fertility treatments that didn’t exist in the 1700’s, let alone actually carry them to term.
That’s what I intially thought, but then again she may have had a genetic disorder which overstimulated the hormone which triggered egg production (basically doing the same thing as fertility treatments).
Anyway, I always hear that the record would go to Genghis Khang – legend has it that 1 in 8 people of Asian decent is a direct decendent of him.
This Hatchett kid is old news and has been at it for some time. I remember reading about him a while ago when he was in the low 20s (must have been the interview referenced). I hope someone castrates that SOB soon – his offspring are no doubt going to be the gift that keep on giving to Knox county. Kind of disgusting, minus the kind of.
Cecil Byran Jacobson (born October 2, 1936 in Salt Lake City, Utah) is a former fertility doctor who used his own sperm to impregnate his patients, without informing them.