In
the best interests of the child? The first generation
of sperm-donor babies can now speak for themselves,
and what they have to say about biology and family is
disconcerting.
Does
biology matter? Ask Rebecca Hamilton, a sperm-donor
baby who's now grown up. She has been searching for
her biological father for years.
"It's
a very human need to be able to look at a face and say,
yes, that's where I come from," she says. She thinks
the widespread practice of donor anonymity does a huge
injustice to the offspring.
The
first generation of sperm-donor babies can now speak
for themselves.
And
what they are saying raises disconcerting questions
about biology, identity, and families. Is it right to
deprive people of knowing who their natural parents
are? What happens to your sense of identity when one
of your biological parents is missing? Is there a difference
when you're raised by "social" rather than
biological parents? What if those parents are two women,
or two men, or perhaps three people? Are children's
understandings of parenthood as flexible as we would
like to think? How do kids feel about all this? And
do their feelings matter?
There are now a million or so donor children in the
world (no one knows for sure), with 16,000 or so in
Canada. They love their parents. But many of them say
they feel as if half their identity is missing. "We've
treated the biological-genetic link as if it's irrelevant
to the child," argues Ms. Hamilton, who attends
Harvard Law School on full scholarship. (Her mother
never graduated from high school.) Evolutionary psychologists
(as opposed to social psychologists) would argue that
it's nuts to think that severing the biological link
between parents and their children has no consequences.
Biological parents share half their genes with their
kids. That means they're hard-wired to look out for
them. Biology's not everything, of course, and biological
parents can be awful. But it may be more important than
we think.
"Biological
mothers and fathers seem to matter to children,"
says Elizabeth Marquardt, an expert on children and
divorce. "We don't know much about the long-term
emotional impact of having biological parents on the
margins. The common question these children have is
why - why didn't my biological parent want me?"
Ms. Marquardt, who lives in Chicago, is asking an extremely
awkward question. What happens when adult rights clash
with children's needs? And how should we resolve these
conflicts? She explores this dilemma at some length
in a new study called The Revolution in Parenthood:
The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children's
Needs. She argues that in our rush to redefine parenthood
and families, it's time to stop and ask some child-centred
questions.
A
case in point is Child X, who could become the first
child in Canada to have three legal parents. The five-year-old
boy is being raised by his biological mother and her
lesbian partner in London, Ont. His biological father
is a friend of the couple and is involved with the child.
Citing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, they want
the court to make the non-biological partner a third
legal parent. They may have a reasonable case. The Law
Commission of New Zealand has already proposed that
children conceived with donor sperm or eggs should be
allowed to have three or more legal parents, with donors
allowed to "opt in" to parenthood if they
want.
In
an ideal world, a reasonable response might be, "So
what?" But this is not an ideal world. Already,
courts in the U.S. are wrestling with custody issues
that not even Solomon could sort out.
They
are frequently required to decide who a child's parents
are, picking among the many adults who might be involved
in planning, conceiving, birthing, and raising her.
"Once
you get three legal parents, why not four or five?"
asks Ms.
Marquardt. "What if they can't agree? It's hard
enough for two parents to agree. What if these three
people break up? Is the child supposed to travel between
three different homes? How many homes are necessary
to satisfy the parenting needs of three separate adults?"
No one doubts "social" parents love their
children, or that their children love them back, or
that same-sex couples can be great parents.
"Love
is not the question," stresses Ms. Marquardt. "The
concern and good intentions that non-biological parents
have for their children are not in question." The
question is whether it's okay to deprive a child of
half her biological inheritance before she's born.
Rebecca
Hamilton marvels at adults who claim that what children
really need is a loving family, and biology doesn't
matter. Yet it obviously matters quite a lot - to adults.
"If biology didn't matter, infertile couples would
just adopt, instead of taking themselves through expensive
fertility treatments," she says. And if biology
doesn't matter, then why do so many parents of donor-conceived
children keep their origins a secret? Ms. Marquardt
(who is married, with two young kids) didn't set out
to be a voice of conservatism on family issues. "I
grew up the child of a feminist single mother,"
she says. But then she wrote a book on the children
of divorce. And she found that even children of a "good"
divorce grow up with significant identity issues. "It
was the same argument with divorce - trickle-down happiness,"
she says. "We thought that if we take care of adult
needs, the children will be fine." Ms. Marquardt
knows that even raising these questions is enough to
brand somebody as intolerant and anti-gay. (Just ask
Margaret Somerville, the McGill ethicist.) But the issues
concern biology, not sexual orientation. Most of us
would like to believe that all kinds of family arrangements
are equally good for kids, but the truth is that they're
not. The preponderance of the evidence shows that when
compared to children in many other alternative family
forms - children of divorce, never-married heterosexual
parents, stepfamilies, and single-mother families -
children who are raised by their biological mother and
father in a low-conflict marriage do best.
So
how do the kids of even newer social arrangements fare?
Some studies say they do just fine. But really, we don't
know yet. "There are no good data on the long-term
emotional well-being of children conceived with donor
eggs or sperm, or those raised by same-sex couples,"
Ms. Marquardt says. "We need to find out how they
do.
And,
when they're grown up, we need to listen to what they
say."
Meantime, new legal definitions of parenthood - often
conflicting, contradictory, and inconsistent - are sprinting
way ahead of the public debate. "In the brave new
world of redefined parenthood, sperm donors might or
might not be fathers," Ms. Marquardt writes.
"Mothers'
girlfriends, and even ex-girlfriends, can be mothers
or even fathers [as is the case in Quebec, where lesbian
partners can be registered as fathers]. Despite their
biological or gestational relationship to the child,
egg donors and surrogates are usually not considered
mothers, but they can be. Absent fathers, when they
anger their ex-girlfriends, can be reduced rhetorically
to mere sperm donors.
But generally unlike sperm donors, the state holds them
accountable for child support for years to come."
And if you think things are confused now, just wait
for reproductive cloning and same-sex procreation, coming
soon to a lab near you.
Fanciful?
No. Scientists are working on creating human embryos
with only one genetic parent - or three.
Rebecca
Hamilton, the Harvard student, is here to tell you that
when we make the rules about these things, we can get
it terribly wrong. In response to heavy pressure from
her and other donor-conceived offspring, both New Zealand
and Britain have ended the practice of donor anonymity.
Now, any donor must agree to be contacted once his or
her child turns 18. And in Australia, donor fathers
are now allowed to contact their adult children - the
majority of whom don't know they are the product of
artificial insemination. Meantime, Ms. Hamilton has
found six potential fathers who've agreed to DNA tests.
So far, there's no match.
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