Article 18

Mummy, Daddy, donorSaturday May 19, 2007The Guardian
In the US, at least 15,000 IVF cycles are performed every year using a donated egg. In Britain the figure is lower, but still significant - in 2003 (the most recent figures available) out of a total of 38,264 IVF cycles, 1,381 were undertaken using donor eggs, resulting in 554 babies. In the same year in the UK, 1,156 children were born as a result of IVF using donated sperm, with a further 825 children born as a result of other donor insemination treatments.
Most of these are situations in which people who want children have no choice but to enlist the help of someone who will have a direct genetic connection to the child.
"The whole concept of family is so wide open now," observes Lori Maze, director of Snowflakes, which helps parents sign over surplus frozen IVF embryos to other infertile couples. People who just a few years ago were trying to have a family are now poring over biographical profiles to select the families who will receive their own excess potential offspring. Full siblings are being raised in separate households, sometimes getting together for barbecues, sometimes unaware of one another's existence. "Family is not just that little nuclear genetic family that it was in the 1950s," says Maze.
Of course, the family has evolved over time, surviving migration, war, adultery, epidemics, remarriage, slavery, step-parents, increasing human longevity, social upheaval and dramatic shifts in gender roles. But science has given us something new: families that are designed, from the start, to have only a single parent; to have quite a few parents; to have two parents, only one of whom is biologically related to the child, with a third party out there who is biologically related but, often, unknown. Families with these qualities have spontaneously arisen in the past, and still do, of course, but now they are being consciously formed.
Parental roles are being divided and divvied out, outsourced and reshuffled - even deleted. In addition to enabling the creation of families headed by heterosexual couples, reproductive technology has fuelled the creation of families headed by same-sex couples, challenging our understanding of what a mother is and does, what a father brings, and precisely what significance these terms "mother" and "father" still have.
The possibilities are endless. In America, some infertility websites now include an "arranged parenting" section whereby a man or woman can advertise for a partner to have children with, using IVF. It's online-assisted shared custody, without the dating, the marriage, the sex or the divorce.
Then there are co-parenting arrangements where a lesbian couple raise children together with a gay couple, one or both of whom donate sperm to one or both of the women, resulting in children with two biological and two "social" parents. One teenager described being conceived by a lesbian couple as well as two gay men who later split up and found new partners. He ended up with two mothers and four fathers. "Once you realise it's something to be proud of, you're set to go," he said, though the qualification "once you realise" implies that coming to this realisation did involve some struggle.
This is an important point: how deeply loved all of these children are. Back when IVF was getting started, it was feared that IVF parents might be scarred; that fathers might feel alienated from the child, and mothers pathologically overprotective. Instead, psychologists found that families planned this way tend to be more highly functioning than naturally conceived ones, because the parents are so motivated to have children, and so gratified once they arrive. "Children conceived via assisted reproduction are not disadvantaged," says Susan Golombok, director of the Centre for Family Research at Cambridge University.
Still, there is no question that many of these parents feel anxiety over their child's origins. Kendra and Laura are unusual. Many families do not tell their children the truth of their origins, and most parents do not know the identity of the egg or sperm donor. Many don't want to. "If I never meet her, it won't feel like my husband is having a child by her," I was told by one mother conceiving with the help of egg donation, who did not plan to tell her child the truth. Parents sometimes fear the power of genetic connection so acutely that, if they can get away with asserting their own fictional status as genetic parent, they will do so.
With collaborative reproduction, what you get is a sex-adoption hybrid, and this, for some families, is a source of real, unresolved anxiety. One reason parents don't tell children about egg and sperm donation is that they fear genetics will trump love. They fear that genetic bonds are so fundamental that the child, if told the truth, might reject the genetically unrelated parent.
As is the case with adoption, parents who do tell their children about their origins usually create a narrative that minimises the importance of genetic connection ("You were a much-wanted baby, and that's what matters!"). But there is no guarantee offspring will agree. The unresolved question is: do these families resemble adoptive families, or do they resemble families created through natural procreation? There is furious disagreement.
'I've always looked at this as adoption that is run by the medical profession," says Bill Cordray, an adult offspring of sperm donation who believes donor-conceived individuals have a moral right to know the truth of their parentage.
"It is very different from adoption; it's a purchase of cells," says one pregnant egg-donor mother, who did not intend to tell her child the truth.
"It's just like a blood donation," insists Gail Taylor, who runs an egg-donation agency.
Collaborative reproduction also exposes the contradictions between several popular theories of child development. For more than a century, child-rearing experts have debated the ideal role of mother and father. Should mothers be strict? Firm? Warm? What about fathers? Authoritative? Loving? The assumption is that children would have - should have - one of each.
More recently, an "attachment" model of parenting has emerged: the idea that what a child needs most is a warm, bonded relationship with a loving adult - any loving adult, or six loving adults, or one, or two, male or female. You could call this the Harry Potter theory of child development: the idea that a parent's warm, unconditional love provides a magical protection against the many and varied trials of later life. This persuasive theory minimises the importance of having parents of both genders, and it minimises the power of the genetic bond to trump all others.
But what, then, about "genetic bewilderment"? This is the term used to describe the confusion of a child who does not know the true identity of his genetic parent, and as a result cannot fashion a satisfactory identity of their own. The importance of knowing one's biological parent is a tenet of the way adoption is practised now. In the 1970s, for an adopted child to search for their birth parents was considered pathological and maladjusted. Now it's considered normal. Certainly, it is accepted that adopted children at the least should know they are adopted. Whether children of gamete donation have the same need is, however, unresolved.
Parents using collaborative reproduction often bounce back and forth between all of these theories. Parents using donor gametes hope that attachment will suffice; at the same time, many fear that the genetic ties are the ones the child will secretly honour. For single mothers and gay and lesbian parents, whether and to what extent their children will be affected by the lack of a rearing parent of each gender is usually a burning question.
Vocabulary:
Offsring: You can refer to a person's children or to an animal's young as their offspring.
Reshuffled: When a political leader reshuffles the ministers in a government, he or she changes their jobs so that some of the ministers change their responsibilities.
Fuelled: A machine or vehicle that is fuelled by a particular substance works by burning that substance.
Alienate: To alienate a person from someone or something that they are normally linked with means to cause them to be emotionally or intellectually separated from them.
Acutely: If a feeling or quality is acutely unpleasant, it is extremely unpleasant.
Trump: If you trump what someone has said or done, you beat it by saying or doing something else that seems better.
Parentage: Your parentage is the identity and origins of your parents. For example, if you are of Greek parentage, your parents are Greek.
Bewildered: If something bewilders you, it is so confusing or difficult that you cannot understand it.
Tenet: The tenets of a theory or belief are the main principles on which it is based. (FORMAL)
Maladjusted: If you describe a child as maladjusted, you mean that they have psychological problems and behave in a way which is not acceptable to society.
Gamete: Gamete is the name for the two types of male and female cell that join together to make a new creature. (TECHNICAL)

Suffice: If you say that something will suffice, you mean it will be enough to achieve a purpose or to fulfil a need. (FORMAL)


Main ideas:

In the US, at least 15,000 IVF cycles are performed every year using a donated egg. In Britain the figure is lower, but still significant
· Situations in which people who want children have no choice but to enlist the help of someone
The concept of family is wide open
parents sign over surplus frozen IVF embryos to other infertile couples
siblings are being raised in separate households, sometimes getting together for barbecues, sometimes unaware of one another's existence
reproductive technology has fuelled the creation of families headed by same-sex couples

Personal Reaction:

Family has evolved during the last years. There children who are risen by the grandparents, by their mother or father, by a father and two mothers or the other way round or by two mothers and two fathers. Family nowadays has changed its stereotype, thank to the development of science. However, each member of these new “family” are not concerned who the kids love more since children receive the love of each member of the family who have wanted them for years.