Relatedness in Assisted Reproduction Families, Origins and Identities

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.

Tabitha Freeman is a Research Associate at the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge.
Susanna Graham is a Research Associate at the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge.
Fatemeh Ebtehaj is an Associate Member of the Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge.
Martin Richards is Emeritus Professor of Family Research at the University of Cambridge, Centre for Family Research, which he founded and directed until 2005.