Embryo adoption & sperm donors
Dec. 3rd, 2009 02:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
7rinSee the question asked at http://community.livejournal.com/adoptedintheuk/4464.html
Confessions of a Sperm Donor: Hundreds of Kids
My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived through Sperm Donation
15 major findings
Confessions of a Sperm Donor: Hundreds of Kids
My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived through Sperm Donation
15 major findings
- Young adults conceived through sperm donation (or "donor offspring") experience profound struggles with their origins and identities.
- Family relationships for donor offspring are more often characterized by confusion, tension, and loss.
- Donor offspring often worry about the implications of interacting with - and possibly forming intimate relationships with - unknown, blood-related family members.
- Donor offspring are more likely to have experienced divorce or multiple family transitions in their families of origin.
- Donor offspring are more likely than those raised by their biological parents to struggle with serious, negative outcomes such as delinquency, substance abuse, and depression, even when controlling for socio-economic and other factors.
- Donor offspring born to heterosexual married couples, single mothers, or lesbian couples share many similarities.
- At the same time, there appear to be notable differences between donor offspring born to heterosexual married couples, single mothers, and lesbian couples.
- Donor offspring broadly affirm a right to know the truth about their origins.
- About half of donor offspring have concerns about or serious objections to donor conception itself, even when parents tell the children the truth about their origins.
- Openness alone does not appear to resolve the complex risks that are associated with being conceived through sperm donation.
- While a majority of donor offspring support a right to know the truth about their origins, significant majorities also support, at least in the abstract, a strikingly libertarian approach to reproductive technologies in general.
- Adults conceived through sperm donation are far more likely than others to become sperm or egg donors or surrogates themselves.
- Those donor offspring who do not support the practice of donor conception are more than three times as likely to say they do not feel they can express their views in public.
- Donor conception is not "just like" adoption.
- Today's grown donor offspring present a striking portrait of racial, ethnic, and religious diversity.