COMMENT BY HELEN RILEY
I would like to take up some of the issues raised by Margaret Allum in her article "Biological parenthood" (GLW, May 17).
I am extremely concerned by the argument that we ought to support all technological advances that broaden women's reproductive choices. If those choices have more to do with engineering people out of infertility than creating a relationship between all parties (including the donor child) based on openness and shared information, we need to think again.
In capitalist society, biological kinship is used ideologically to support the nuclear family, inheritance and patriarchy. However, that does not automatically mean that a person's biological history should be seen as unimportant or irrelevant to them. Extended family, kinship and clan systems in other cultures have successfully managed adoption of children, but these cultures existed in spheres of interconnectedness that do not exist under capitalism. If a child was adopted outside the clan or kinship grouping, it was likely that the child would always be aware of their connection to the original grouping and continue to have some contact with it.
Is it true there is no "biological imperative" to produce children who are genetically related to their parents? It seems to me that the biological imperative is extremely strong. This is why adults believe they can extend their own existence into the future by having children. It is also one of the reasons so much secrecy accompanies adoption practices.
Similarly, secrecy dominates the process of donor conception. If a couple cannot have children who are entirely or partially biologically theirs, let them pretend otherwise or engineer a solution! While this process undoubtedly tries to mimic all the primary features of the nuclear family, that does not mean that the desire for biological continuity is not a natural factor in child bearing, independent of capitalism.
The experience of adoption gives some insights. Thousands of children in Western society have experienced, and are experiencing, severe genealogical bewilderment caused by their complete dislocation from any biological connection. Even those children who never knew they were adopted and were happy in their adoptive families experience this bewilderment — a sense of not fitting, of being alienated.
A capitalist construct?
Within Western society, who you look like is an important component of "belonging". Family photos, comments from family and strangers about resemblances, cognisance by the self of ways of moving and speaking in that group, are all important elements for building identity. Is this just a capitalist construct? It is far more complex than that.
Dismissing the notion that knowledge of biological heritage is unimportant, or just capitalist ideology, has enormous significance for the children whose lives are being, and will be, "constructed" through technology.
It is also useful to remember that Western society — including the debate about nature versus nurture — is still significantly influenced by the philosophy espoused by the emerging capitalist class in 17th and 18th century Europe. The emphasis was on the rights and freedom of the individual and a separation between mind and body (dualism).
This philosophy promotes the view that children's biological heritage can be hidden or destroyed without repercussions. It is assumed that all human beings are two separate entities — the mind and the body — and that the mind controls all through reason and rationality. That being the case, there is no "problem" in separating one human being from another, a mother or father from a child, a body from its biological history. Each person is disembodied and dis-embedded, asocial, acultural and ahistorical (which includes biological history).
It is the ideal capitalist construction, reducing society to merely a sum of its individual parts. This is reflected in the assumption that infertility can be solved through technology because every individual has a "right" to reproduce and the offspring will be distinct, separate entities with no need for a personal history. They supposedly should exist through rationality alone.
Already, the children created by donor conception have formed support groups to deal with the fact that they may never know their biological history. Over the past 20 years, many of the records involving donor conception have been destroyed by the medical profession to "protect" the "infertile couple" and the donor. In other cases, the donor children are permitted to access only basic non-identifying information when they turn 18.
Nature and nurture
While restrictions are now being placed on donor conception, for the thousands of children born from this process, in a climate of secrecy, the knowledge that they may have numerous brothers and sisters "out there" is disconcerting. Ultimately, it may be problematic should any of these siblings coincidentally form sexual relationships (as has already occurred). Donor conception should not be used to engineer couples out of infertility when little thought is given to the impact on the child.
Within the adoption triangle, secrets and lies are now considered to have been the most damaging factors in attempting to build healthy relationships. Both children and adults are therefore the victims of this process of social engineering, which (coincidentally?) is a large profit-making exercise for the medical industry.
In a society that promotes individual rights as the epitome of freedom and democracy, biomedically engineering couples out of infertility is ideologically easier (and more profitable) than counselling and alternative practices. Couples need to accept infertility and then look at other options. These options must be conducted within a framework of total openness of all parties and access by the child to all of its biological and family history at the earliest possible time. Ideally, a donor child should also have contact with the donor.
A simplistic argument that an emphasis on biological kinship is merely a capitalist construct ignores the role of nature in the nature/nurture debate. It is natural to want to give birth to children who share your biological makeup. That should not and does not preclude individuals from loving and valuing children who are not connected to them through biology.
The fact that so many infertile couples desire biological children at whatever price is an expression of alienation projected through the nuclear family. The absence of extended kinship with its many children to be cared for and shared, produces a disproportionate desire for a child at whatever cost.
A child is formed from a history of genetic interconnectedness that determines a significant slice of who they are. The proportion of who and what we are that is nature, and how much is nurture, is still an unanswered question. Because capitalism uses biological interconnectedness to its advantage in certain scenarios should not blind us to its fundamentally dynamic role in identity construction and life meaning.
The important thing is not what proportion of our identity is formed by nature or nurture. Rather, it is interconnected and cannot be torn asunder without severe repercussions for the children being created.