LYING TO THE KIDS

"Donor embryo children 'not told'
By Caroline Ryan
BBC News Online health staff in Berlin

Only a third of couples who conceived their children using donor embryos plan to tell them, research suggests.

Researchers at City University, London, found many of the families they asked feared revealing the information could cause distress within the family.

In contrast, 90% of 30 IVF families and 100% of 28 adoptive families surveyed said they would tell their children about their origins."

There is no rational reason to lie to children about their genetic origins. It can only hurt them when they inevitably find out later. They will already know in their heart that something is wrong in their family. The averted eyes when the child asks a relative "why don't I look like you". The scramble to explain away why a blood type is incompatible. Kids can add, and will eventually wonder how their mother conceived them at age 45 or after a bout with chemotherapy.

We live in an age of genetic testing. It is needlessly traumatic for adoptees or children who came from donor embryos to find out they are not genetically related to their parents on the day they or a relative is diagnosed with a hereditary disease.

What is worse is when the children do not find this out. My ex has a cousin who was adopted at birth. She was never told about the adoption. Growing up a tall, pale, voluptuous woman with straight red hair in a family of short, olive-skinned people with curly black hair she didn't really need to be told she was adopted. It was glaringly obvious to everyone who met her. Yet every time she raised the subject she was told not to be ridiculous, of course she wasn't adopted. This is insanity.

When this woman's mother was hospitalized, and later died, from a serious inherited illness, any parent with an ounce of compassion would have told this girl she would never contract the same disease. But the lies continued.

Not telling the children they were conceived with donor egg or sperm is meant to spare the feelings of one person: the infertile parent. Any child who is the result of a gift of embryos will be proud to know the lengths to which their parents went to bring a baby into their lives. But adults are needlessly ashamed to have fertility problems and want to simply for get about it. They lie to their children because they are too insecure to tell the healing truth.

Prospective parents too ashamed and insecure to raise a child in a home where communication is open and family matters more than genes should rethink becoming parents. Lying to children about something as essential as their genetics serves no one and will ultimately destroy any trust the child has placed in the parent.

ANY JEWISH LESBIAN RECIPIENTS?

It seemed unlikely to me that I would find an infertile Jewish lesbian couple when I started looking for recipients for my unused embryos. After all, with two women there are twice the number of wombs and ovaries available in case one partner can't give birth.

Much to my surprise, I heard from four lesbian couples experiencing infertility who had one Jewish partner, and several other infertile lesbian couples with two Christian partners.

The typical first inquiry from these women looked something like this (note: this is not an actual email, as I consider those confidential).

"We are so happy and grateful to have found you. We are a lesbian couple. We have a four year old daughter. She has been begging us for a little brother or sister. I am forty-three and my partner is fifty. I am Jewish and she is not. We live in Massachussets and are legally married there. We tried IVF and it did not work. We desperately want another child to fulfill our daughter's dreams. Please consider us for your embryos."

I followed up with all of these requests but did not pick any of the candidates. One major reason is my own parents had me and my sister when they were in their 40's. That's pretty common today, but in the 1970's, when I was growing up, it was practically unheard of. I always felt weird having parents who were old enough to be my grandparents.

For a child, the age of fifty seems ancient. I was always concerned that my parents would die because they were older than everyone else's parents. That turned out to be unfounded. Everyone in my family lives into their 80's and my parents were some of the healthiest seniors I've ever seen.

I also found the part about the child wanting a sibling to be incredibly manipulative. Everyone said this in their embryo requests. I'm sure it's true, but it seemed like an attempt to make it harder for me to say "no" and disappoint a child. I would respect someone who said "as parents we feel it's important for a child to be raised with a sibling" or "we deeply desire another child" but the only person ever mentioned as wanting another baby was the existing child. And she wasn't the one who was going to change all the diapers.

If I based my major life decisions solely on what my kids wanted I would live in Disneyworld and serve ice cream three meals a day. None of these recipients seemed right, but would I ever find a young lesbian couple who were both experiencing infertility?