Assisted Reproductive Technology Research Paper

Brandon Freeman
Professor Lee
English 101
25 February 2017
Problems with Assisted Reproductive Technology and the Definition of the Family
It is not unusual for people to think of a family in its basic form as a mother and a father and the child or children they conceive together. But a genetic connection between parents and children is not necessary for a family to exist. New families are often created by remarriage after a divorce or the death of a spouse, so that only one parent is genetically related to the child or children. Also, the practice of adoption is long-standing and creates families where neither parent is genetically related to the child or children. There are many single-parent families in the United States, and some of these
may be families where the parents live together but are not married (Coontz
147). Couples that consist of two men or two women are also increasingly common, and more of these couples now also have or want children (Buchanan). Although there is no universal definition of the family, in recent years scholars have established that the
“normative” definition in most societies is “at least one parent and one child.” This definition goes on to say that a child does not have to be genetically related to the parent, and “children conceived through artificial insemination or a surrogate mother” count (Munro and Munro 553).
Though we may accept the idea that the definition of the
“normative” family is a broad one and that no biological relationship is needed for a parent and child to form a family, for many people genetic heritage remains an important factor in describing who they are and how they relate to other members of their family. This thinking, which persists despite the broad variety of families that now exist, provokes particular conflicts for members of families that are created with the new methods of assisted reproductive technology, methods that are new in human history, having developed only over the past few decades.
Assisted reproductive technology (including artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization) is often used when one member of a male-female couple is infertile; the resulting child is usually related to at least one member of the couple.1 This
technology is also used to allow male-male and female-female couples to have children. In 2005,
52,041 children were born in the United States through assisted reproductive technology, an increase of more than a hundred percent from 1996 (United States 61). It can be argued that the new families formed through artificial reproductive technology
“tend to be stronger and more highly functioning than naturally conceived ones, because the parents are so motivated to have children, and so gratified once they arrive” (Mundy
99).
If the parents involved tell their children how they were conceived and if the sperm donors, egg donors, or surrogate mothers are not kept anonymous, then the children resulting from artificial reproductive technology can have more than two “parents” or parental figures in their lives, possibly enriching their emotional environment. Artificial reproductive technology can give infertile women the chance to have a biological mother’s relationship with a child, since the technology allows them to bear a child, givebirth, and bond with the child through breastfeeding. The possibilities given by artificial reproductive technology thus seem to support the idea that love and care from parents
(“nurture”) outweigh the importance of genetics (“nature”) in forming strong families.
But though this may be the case, the fact that many couples decide on artificial reproductive technology rather than on adoption means that the origin of these new families lies in the enduring importance of genetics in people’s ideas of what a family
should
be.
As Mary Lyndon Shanley points out, genetic relationship in families creates a sense of “genetic continuity through the generations” and is vitally important to many people’s identity, which is why people want to know who their biological parents are:
“The right to learn the identity of one’s genetic forebear stems from some people’s desire to be able to connect themselves to human history concretely as embodied beings, not only abstractly as rational beings or as members of large social (national, ethnic, religious) groups” (268). We seem almost unable to see a child with his or her parents without looking for a resemblance between them; a lack of resemblance between parents and children can be a source of stigma (Mundy 194-95). Like adopted children, the