Should children be told they are test tube babies?

From the April 16, 2010 issue of the Psychiatric News

Some people may pine for the good old days when parents could tell children that the stork delivered them. Today that discussion is much more complex, thanks to “assisted reproductive technology.”

The first “test-tube” baby was conceived in 1976. She was the product of an egg from her mother and sperm from her father, but conceived in the lab, not in her mother's body.

Then, during the 1980s, sperm from men other than the father and eggs from women other than the mother became available for in vitro fertilization.

Since then, thousands of children in the United States have been conceived with such high-tech methods, or what today is called “assisted reproductive technology” (ART). Indeed, in 2007, 57,564 American children were so conceived, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Moreover, the ART combinations today can be astounding, experts say. A child may have three parents instead of two. A child may live in a family with two biological mothers—one the egg mother and one the womb mother. A child may have myriad half siblings from an egg donor or sperm donor, for example, or a twin born in a different womb or at another time.

Not surprisingly, ART has ushered in a wealth of psychodynamic issues, and perhaps none is more crucial than the question: Should ART children be told how they were conceived?

Some psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, and psychologists with an interest in the subject think that they should. They explained why at the American Psychoanalytic Association meeting in New York City in January and in interviews with Psychiatric News.

To read the whole article, click here.