The results overturn the widely held beliefs on prior occasions that children born by third-party assisted reproduction have a drawback when it involves the wellbeing and family relationships as they have no biological link to their parents.
“Despite people’s concerns, families with children born through third-party assisted reproduction – whether that be an egg donor, sperm donor or a surrogate – are doing well right up to adulthood,” explained study lead Susan Golombok, Professor Emerita of Family Research and former Director of the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge.
But they discovered that mothers who start to reveal to their children about their biological origins in their preschool years had a relationship that was more positive with them as evaluated during an interview at age 20, and the mothers demonstrated less levels of anxiety and depression. For the majority of the parents who had made the revelation did so by age 4 discovering that the child handled the information well. This indicated that being open with children in regards to their origins when they are young is beneficial as indicated in the study.
Additionally, in the last stage of this 20-year study, mothers who revealed their child’s origins by the age of 7 had slightly higher positive scores for the questionnaire measures of quality of family relationships, parental acceptance together with family communication. An example was given where only 7 percent of mothers who had revealed by 7 years old indicated issues in family relationships, when contrasted with 22 percent of those who revealed after 7 years old.
For young adults where it was revealed about their origins prior to 7 obtained a slightly increased positive scores on questionnaire measures of parental acceptance communication as well as psychological wellbeing. They also had a lower chance of reporting issues on the family relationships questionnaire; whereas 50 percent of young adults told after 7 years old reported such issues, this was accurate for just 12.5 percent of those told prior to 7 years old.
“Today there are so many more families created by assisted reproduction that it just seems quite ordinary,” said Golombok.
