Relatedness in Assisted Reproduction: Families, Origins and Identities

Cambridge University Press, 8/14/2014
EAN 9781107038288, ISBN10: 1107038286

Hardcover, 329 pages, 22.8 x 15.2 x 2 cm
Language: English

Assisted reproduction challenges and reinforces traditional understandings of family, kinship and identity. Sperm, egg and embryo donation and surrogacy raise questions about relatedness for parents, children and others involved in creating and raising a child. How socially, morally or psychologically significant is a genetic link between a donor-conceived child and their donor? What should children born through assisted reproduction be told about their origins? Does it matter if a parent is genetically unrelated to their child? How do experiences differ for men and women using collaborative reproduction in heterosexual or same-sex couples, single parent families or co-parenting arrangements? What impact does the wider cultural, socio-legal and regulatory context have? In this multidisciplinary book, an international team of academics and clinicians bring together new empirical research and social science, legal and bioethical perspectives to explore the key issue of relatedness in assisted reproduction.

Introduction Tabitha Freeman
Part I. Conceptualising Relatedness
1. A British history of collaborative reproduction and the rise of the genetic connection Martin Richards
2. Undoing kinship Jeanette Edwards
3. Genetically challenged
the determination of legal parenthood in assisted reproduction Julie McCandless and Sally Sheldon
4. On the moral importance of genetic ties in families John B. Appleby and Anja Karnein
5. Who cares where you come from? Cultivating virtues of indifference Hallvard Lillehammer
6. Legal kinship and connection in US donor families Naomi Cahn
7. Relatedness in clinical practice Andrea Mechanick Braverman and Lucy Frith
Part II. Experiencing Relatedness
8. Defining connections
gender and perceptions of relatedness in egg and sperm donation Rene Almeling
9. The significance of relatedness for surrogates and their families Vasanti Jadva and Susan Imrie
10. Frozen symbols of relatedness
Belgian patients and their decisions about unused cryopreserved embryos Veerle Provoost and Guido Pennings
11. Family relationships in gay father families with young children in Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom Marcin Smietana, Sarah Jennings, Cathy Herbrand and Susan Golombok
12. Stories of an absent 'father'
single women negotiating relatedness through donor profiles Susanna Graham
13. Infertility, gamete donation and relatedness in British South Asian communities Nicky Hudson and Lorraine Culley
14. Families created by assisted reproduction
children's perspectives Lucy Blake, Sophie Zadeh, Helen Statham and Tabitha Freeman
15. Making connections
contact between sperm donor relations Tabitha Freeman, Kate Bourne, Vasanti Jadva and Venessa Smith
16. Relational lives, relational selves
assisted reproduction and the impact on grandparents Petra Nordqvist and Carol Smart.