The article was headlined 'Assisted reproduction kids do well psychologically'. One could say that this in itself was not necessarily 'news' since previously published studies had shown that samples of families created by IVF and by donor insemination were functioning well when the children reached adolescence. The new element in the current study was the inclusion of a group of families with 12-year-old children conceived through egg donation, where it was hypothesised that the lack of a genetic relationship between mother and child could potentially have negative effects on mother-child bonding, and consequently, on child adjustment.
Our findings suggest that this is not the case, since egg donation mothers had warm relationships with their children and the development of the children themselves was normal. This fits in with previous research, which has shown consistently that it is the quality of parenting and the desire to be parents that matters and not whether couples are the genetic parents of their child. Assisted reproduction parents have repeatedly been found to be very involved with their children and very committed to parenting, a fact which is likely to be due to the effort they have put in to becoming parents in the first place.
Full article: http://www.bionews.org.uk/commentary.lasso?storyid=2990
