Donor Insemination
Here is excerpt from the following article as a follow-up to yesterday’s posting about whether dads should be involved in the decision-making process.
Who's Your Daddy?
There's more to fatherhood than donating DNA. by W. Bradford Wilcox 12/12/2005, Volume 011, Issue 13
BIRTHS TO UNMARRIED MOTHERS ARE at a record high in the United States--almost 1.5 million in 2004 alone, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. While the rising trend is of long standing, one novel factor driving up childbearing outside marriage is the growing popularity of single motherhood by donor insemination. The incidence of this "assisted reproduction," as it is called, has more than doubled in the last decade.
Most public discussion of donor insemination for single women has been carried on in a neutral, positive, or breathlessly celebratory tone. Isn't it great, the thinking seems to be, that these women are fulfilling their aspiration to be mothers with the latest technology that medical science can offer? Support groups like Single Mothers by Choice and mainstream publications like the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and the Washington Post describe donor insemination for unmarried mothers occasionally as a "sad" necessity for women who cannot find "satisfactory" partners, but more often as "awe"-inspiring, "liberating," or "empowering." Television shows like NBC's drama Inconceivable, broadcast this fall, glamorize assisted reproduction.
This enthusiasm is notable at a time when European countries are skeptical enough to actually ban the process. Sweden and Italy bar single mothers from engaging in either in vitro fertilization or use of anonymous sperm (or, in Italy, eggs), and Britain and the Netherlands have banned the anonymous donation of sperm. Also striking is how adult-centered our public conversation has been. Until recently, virtually no attention was paid to how the children of donor fathers make sense of their experience. Nor has the public debate acknowledged the moral and social ramifications of deliberately creating a whole class of children without identifiable fathers.
The article goes on to discuss the poor statistics that occur with these kids:
Take crime. One study of 6,403 boys carried out by scholars at Princeton and the University of California at San Francisco found that boys raised in single-parent homes are twice as likely as others to end up in prison. Or teenage pregnancy. University of Arizona psychologist Bruce Ellis, who studied 762 girls in the United States and New Zealand, found that girls who saw their father leave the family before age six were more than six times as likely to have a teenage pregnancy as girls whose fathers stuck around through their entire childhood. Or suicide. A study of all Swedish children between 1991 and 1998 found that those in single-parent families were twice as likely to attempt suicide and 50 percent more likely to succeed in committing suicide than children in two-parent families. Note that these studies control for factors like race, education, and poverty that might otherwise distort the relationship between family structure and child well-being.
And finally the article completes with the following excerpt:
For all these reasons, it is time to bring children's welfare into the discussion of donor-assisted single motherhood. A serious consideration of children's best interests would probably lead us down a regulatory road comparable to that being pursued in Europe, with bans on the donor-insemination of single women and on the anonymous donation of sperm and eggs. It won't be easy to rein in a multibillion-dollar fertility industry that is used to catering to the desires of adults unhindered by regulation or moral objection. Nor is it possible to protect all children from fatherlessness, given the vicissitudes of life. What should be possible is to reject the deliberate conception of children without flesh-and-blood fathers committed to playing a paternal role in their lives.
I think it’s time we reconsider our overall thought process regarding these issues for the health and well-being of our kids and our society.
Who's Your Daddy?
There's more to fatherhood than donating DNA. by W. Bradford Wilcox 12/12/2005, Volume 011, Issue 13
BIRTHS TO UNMARRIED MOTHERS ARE at a record high in the United States--almost 1.5 million in 2004 alone, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. While the rising trend is of long standing, one novel factor driving up childbearing outside marriage is the growing popularity of single motherhood by donor insemination. The incidence of this "assisted reproduction," as it is called, has more than doubled in the last decade.
Most public discussion of donor insemination for single women has been carried on in a neutral, positive, or breathlessly celebratory tone. Isn't it great, the thinking seems to be, that these women are fulfilling their aspiration to be mothers with the latest technology that medical science can offer? Support groups like Single Mothers by Choice and mainstream publications like the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and the Washington Post describe donor insemination for unmarried mothers occasionally as a "sad" necessity for women who cannot find "satisfactory" partners, but more often as "awe"-inspiring, "liberating," or "empowering." Television shows like NBC's drama Inconceivable, broadcast this fall, glamorize assisted reproduction.
This enthusiasm is notable at a time when European countries are skeptical enough to actually ban the process. Sweden and Italy bar single mothers from engaging in either in vitro fertilization or use of anonymous sperm (or, in Italy, eggs), and Britain and the Netherlands have banned the anonymous donation of sperm. Also striking is how adult-centered our public conversation has been. Until recently, virtually no attention was paid to how the children of donor fathers make sense of their experience. Nor has the public debate acknowledged the moral and social ramifications of deliberately creating a whole class of children without identifiable fathers.
The article goes on to discuss the poor statistics that occur with these kids:
Take crime. One study of 6,403 boys carried out by scholars at Princeton and the University of California at San Francisco found that boys raised in single-parent homes are twice as likely as others to end up in prison. Or teenage pregnancy. University of Arizona psychologist Bruce Ellis, who studied 762 girls in the United States and New Zealand, found that girls who saw their father leave the family before age six were more than six times as likely to have a teenage pregnancy as girls whose fathers stuck around through their entire childhood. Or suicide. A study of all Swedish children between 1991 and 1998 found that those in single-parent families were twice as likely to attempt suicide and 50 percent more likely to succeed in committing suicide than children in two-parent families. Note that these studies control for factors like race, education, and poverty that might otherwise distort the relationship between family structure and child well-being.
And finally the article completes with the following excerpt:
For all these reasons, it is time to bring children's welfare into the discussion of donor-assisted single motherhood. A serious consideration of children's best interests would probably lead us down a regulatory road comparable to that being pursued in Europe, with bans on the donor-insemination of single women and on the anonymous donation of sperm and eggs. It won't be easy to rein in a multibillion-dollar fertility industry that is used to catering to the desires of adults unhindered by regulation or moral objection. Nor is it possible to protect all children from fatherlessness, given the vicissitudes of life. What should be possible is to reject the deliberate conception of children without flesh-and-blood fathers committed to playing a paternal role in their lives.
I think it’s time we reconsider our overall thought process regarding these issues for the health and well-being of our kids and our society.
posted by Anonymous at 6:00 AM
3 Comments:
Healthblogger,
This is one of those topics that gets me going and I end up saying things that are usually misunderstood but here goes anyway.
I am truly in favor of mandatory birth control for many of the reasons stated in your post and more.
Just because one can produce does not mean that one should. The ramifications go way beyond either the desires or needs of either of the the two primary individuals involved. They affect a totally new human being that had absolutely no say in the matter.
After the fact, the rights of the father and/or mother can be disected and debated til ad infinitum but all the while the child/children are in limbo at best and utter chaos at worst. They have to deal with issues of insecurity and self worth for their entire lifetimes and more often than not repeat the same mistakes as their parents. I use the term "Parents" loosely.
As moral as we like to think we are in this country, we often misuse the term as a panacea for all ills.
Case in point and again this is just my personal experience speaking. My firstborn had open heart surgery at three months of age. The stress of a month in the hospital and the aftermath worries of money,guilt, and his future health put a serious strain on our marriage. In time he healed but the marriage did not. The well intentioned around us suggested that a second child would solve the problem. I thought not but my wife felt it worth the risk. A second healthy son was born and try as we might the relationship slid even further downhill. Divorce followed and I became an absent parent.
The result for the kids was that they grew up with me being around seldom and our relationship has suffered greatly. We see each other and get along fine but there is a hole in all three of us that will never be filled.
Granted, having children was not the root cause of our marital problems but in hindsite they certainly were not the cure either.
I cringe when I hear of a young unwed woman who is pregant. People automatically come at me with " you just don't like kids!" Nothing could be further from the truth. I love kids.
What I detest is what we do to kids as a society to feed our own egos followed by what we allow kids to do to themselves and others under the auspices of "they have the right to live as the please" or "life will teach them what they need to know".
God would (if there is one) that we learn to grow up and accept personal resposibility for our actions both individually and as a society.
Just a final comment on the mandatory birthcontrol isssue. Individual rights not withstanding, if one cannot/will not accept responsibility, one forfiets the right as far as I'm concerned.
Thankyou for your very sincere and heartfelt words. I hope others read and learn.
I also hope we can make changes in our society to protect kids and encourage traditional families. They are our future.
I realize the focus of the article being discussed is children being "created" outside of marriage but I wanted to chime in as one half of a couple that used DI to conceive two kids inside a marriage.
I am also putting aside the identity issues related to DI kids as I recognize this to be a valid issue.
My comment is in response to the title of the article being reviewed that there is more to fatherhood than donating DNA. I just wanted to say that tere are men like myself who are proving that being a father/dad does not necessarily mean the DNA has to be yours.
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