Behavioral Science – Missing Mom

On Dec 3 2023, Emily Bazelon published an article in the NY Times – LINK>Why Anonymous Sperm Donation Is Over, and Why That Matters. She notes that while activists are trying to end secrecy for sperm and egg donors — it is a campaign that troubles some LGBTQ families.

The article begins with this story (and blogger’s note – I’ve read quite a few others with similar trajectories) –

A few years ago, when he was in his early 30s, Tyler Levy Sniff took a home DNA test he received as a gift. The results revealed a staggering truth: His father wasn’t biologically related to him. Levy Sniff confronted his parents, who explained that after years of trying and failing to have a baby, they turned to a sperm donor. Following the standard advice at the time, they decided not to tell him for fear of driving a wedge into their family.

Levy Sniff felt as if he’d found a key to his identity that he was looking for. “It made sense of why I felt different from my family,” he said recently. He wanted more information about the person he called his “bio father” to understand his genetic heritage. “It was so important to me to know my bio father’s life story, his personality and talents and struggles,” Levy Sniff says.

But by the time he found his donor, through relatives on two genealogy websites, the man had died — another revelation that shattered him, he says. To Levy Sniff, the value of knowing where you come from is self-evident. “A lot of influence comes from your biology,” he says.

Recent findings in behavioral science show the role of genetics in shaping certain individual characteristics. Questionnaires from doctors routinely ask for generations of family medical history. And learning about your genetic ancestry can be emotionally powerful — one reason millions of people buy inexpensive at-home DNA tests and sign up for genealogy websites.

Blogger’s note – in my own roots discovery journey, both Ancestry and 23 and Me, contributed invaluable assistance in my finding my own genetic, biological heritage and connecting with people that I am thus related to, though for over 60 years, neither they nor my self knew of one another. Adoption (both of my parents were adopted) robs us of important knowledge.

Lesbian couples and single parents make up 70 percent of the people who now use sperm donors, according to a 2022 study of an assisted-reproduction clinic. Some of these families fear that disclosure laws will open the door to recognizing biological donors in some way as parents — possibly granting them parental rights and more broadly undermining the legitimacy of LGBTQ families.

In sperm and egg donation, secrecy was the old-school choice — the one that seemed easier to many heterosexual couples as they raised their children. But now it’s nontraditional families who are most nervous about ending the practice of anonymous donation. It’s one thing for parents to choose transparency, but it’s quite another for the state to mandate it — enshrining into law, some fear, the notion that genetics are an essential part of being a family. In many states, if you are part of a couple raising a child, and you never marry or you get a divorce, and your partner wants to sever the connection, you can be deemed a legal stranger to a child you helped raise but with whom you don’t share a genetic tie.

Blogger’s note – Being honest about how one’s children were conceived tends to strengthen parent-child relationships. My family chose that strategy. My husband, our egg donor, and my sons all did 23 and Me DNA testing. That site allows for private communications (should my sons want that) with a donor they have had only minimal physical contact with in the past (several times we have had the opportunity to get together with her and at least one of her children). Thanks to Facebook, I have been able to show my sons photos of the donor and her genetic, biological children over the years – so that they have some sense of these other relationships that may someday be important to them (or not). They seem well adjusted to the reality.

As I was reading a review of this book, it struck me that these are issues that come up frequently in my all things adoption group. I am also personally familiar with secondary infertility and abortion. Looks like a good read. Here is the review by Viv Groskop in The Guardian titled – Motherhood: A Manifesto; (M)otherhood; The Motherhood Complex review – calling time on the cult of the perfect parent. Yes, she reviews 3 books, I’m only highlighting one here – (M)otherhood by Pragya Agarwal. You can read about the other two at that link.

In (M)otherhood, behavioral scientist Pragya Agarwal wonders if a book questioning the parental self and society’s attitudes to that self needs to define itself either as memoir or as political writing: “Does it really have to sit in a box?” Here is proof that it really doesn’t: this is an exhilarating, genre-defying read. Unsurprisingly, coming from the author of Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias, Dr Agarwal is especially concerned with issues of identity, which makes this a thoughtful, anthropological journey. What does it mean to want to be a mother? What will others assume about you if you choose that – and if you don’t? What do these assumptions tell us about who we are as a society?

She frequently wonders about the role of the judgmental words we use around female bodies. She is told she has an “incompetent” or “inhospitable” uterus. She writes movingly of the ambiguities of motherhood, secondary infertility (being unable to conceive after giving birth in the past), surrogacy and her personal experience of abortion as a single mother: “A contradiction: I was a mother, but I couldn’t be a mother. Not then.”

All these moments are seamlessly interwoven with statistics, quotes and scientific evidence to clever narrative effect: the personal and the universal aspects of motherhood are illuminated as interchangeable in a way that is reminiscent of Olivia Laing’s writing on loneliness or the body. The science writer Angela Saini sums up (M)otherhood perfectly in her cover quote as “a step towards a literature that acknowledges the breadth and the variety of the parenting experience and its cultural meanings”. The whole thing adds up to the most thoughtful, empathic and inspiring science of the self. (Not that I can see Waterstones – a bookstore in the UK – adopting this as a shelf category. But perhaps it should.)

The reviewer ends with these thoughts – Overall this trio represents a side-eye question: “Haven’t we all had enough of trying so hard?” As Eliane Glaser points out in Motherhood: A Manifesto, many of the current stereotypes of mothers “symbolize our failure to improve the experience of motherhood.” See TV’s Motherland, books like Why Mummy Drinks and endless “hilarious” jokes about wine o’clock: “The only suggestion we can offer is to just drink through it.” Melissa Hogenboom’s conclusion in The Motherhood Complex? We are so obsessed with being “perfect parents” that we set ourselves up for failure. Better to be “selfish” (actually, sensible) and leave children to their own devices more often. I’ll drink to that.

What does this have to do with adoption ? If we can address what drives EVERY woman to believe she needs to have children, we can lower the demand by infertile women for other women’s babies and perhaps address the core issue of providing financial support and encouragement for mothers to keep and raise their own children. So yeah, it IS relevant.