Wanted: A Few Good Sperm

This NY Times article begines with a Jewish female's story;

One day last October, Karyn, a 39-year-old executive, pulled her online dating profile off JDate and Match.com, two sites she had been using, along with an endless series of leads, tips and blind dates arranged by friends and colleagues, to search for a man she wanted to marry and raise a family with. At long last, after something like 100 dates in the past 10 years and several serious relationships, she had found the man she refers to, tongue only slightly in cheek, as "the one." It all began last summer, when she broke off a relationship with a younger man who wasn't ready for children and got serious about the idea of conceiving on her own. She gathered information about fertility doctors and sperm banks. "Then a childhood friend of mine was over," she told me. "I pulled up the Web site of the only sperm bank that I know of that has adult photos. There happened to be one Jewish person. I pulled up the photo, and I looked at my friend, and I looked at his picture, and I said, 'Oh, my God.' I can't say love at first sight, because, you know. But he was the one."

What is the purpose of having children? Is it the same purpose for having Jewish children? Is there a different purpose based on what type of Jew one is?

Is it the same purpose of why women want children? Do men and women have the same purpose of having children?

When is the correct age to start having children?

Is the fact that today we have a "choice" as in "sperm banks and etc.", make us less serious in dating and/or compromising in the choice of our choosing a spouse?

For me as a Shadchun, stories like this confirm to me why the dating scene has become so difficult. One of the questions I ask is; "How much time after the marriage would you start having children?". Most answer that they want to wait several years. It makes me wonder what is it that they truly want.

Then there is the simple question; is having children a purpose to get married in the first place?