Pros And Cons Of Egg Donor Conception

With the progress in reproductive technologies, parents have greater choice and control when it comes to bringing children into the world. In vitro fertilization, sperm donor insemination, egg donor conception and surrogacy are all alternatives to natural child conception. As a result, families created with donor assistance are becoming more and more frequent (ISLAT Working Group, 1998). In the past, utilizing donor insemination (DI) was a highly secret affair. Parents were encouraged not to inform their child about their true genetic background (Lycett, Daniels, Curson, & Golombok, 2005). More recently, however, there has been a trend toward openness regarding donor conception information. This trend has, in part, been due to the growing

When comparing surrogacy conception, egg donor conception and sperm donor conception, DI parents are the least inclined to disclose to the child (Readings, Blake, Casey, Jadva, & Golombok, 2011). One of the main reasons for this nondisclosure is the subsequent acknowledgement of the father’s infertility. The social stigma, as well as the overall negative attitudes towards male infertility and sexual inadequacy, discourages the disclosure of DI information (Cook, Golombok, Bish, & Murray, 1995). Consequently, infertile men are among the last to become comfortable with openness pertaining to donor insemination (Beeson, Jennings, & Kramer, 2011). Second, as mentioned above, parents are uncertain about the most appropriate time and method of telling the child how they were conceived. Compared to adoptive parents, DI parents do not have a ‘script’ of how to go about this revelation, as they might not receive as much information, advice and counseling in relation to disclosure (Cook, Golombok, Bish, & Murray, 1995). In addition, the lack of genetic information available for the child proposes a barrier to disclosure. Parents might not have access to information about the biological father to share with the child (Cook, Golombok, Bish, & Murray,

Parents want to shelter their child from undesirable social pressures, which might have a negative effect on their wellbeing. Moreover, parents fear that the father-child relationship will undergo emotional strain if the offspring finds out about their true method of conception (Golombok et al., 2002; Lycett, Daniels, Curson & Golombok, 2005). Finally, favoring non-disclosure might be due to the fact that “parents do not feel the donor conception had any bearing on the parent’s or child’s life and therefore there was no need to tell the child” (Lycett, Daniels, Curson & Golombok, 2005, p. 812). More specifically, they felt there was no need to disclose, as the conception method was “not an important issue, was a personal matter between the couple, or that the family felt ‘normal’ and saw no point in disclosure (Lycett, Daniels, Curson & Golombok, 2005, p. 813). As a result of these obstacles, most DI parents conclude that non-disclosure is desirable for the protection of all family members and their