Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

News

Bloody Daily Mail! Why can't they publish a positive story about parenting a child that isn't genetically "your own"?

10 replies

hidingidentity · 12/03/2009 12:00

Because there have been lots if studies showing that if parents are open and honest with their children that donor that the children have if anything better relationships with their children and that the marriage tends to be stronger (not as a result of the fertility treatment IMO as it's a self-selecting group, but even so...). But no, they have to feed into the usual DM predudices about blood being thicker than water etc. etc. Not counting what that says about adoptions.

DM article here

Research for example like this:

In recent years, concerns have been raised regarding the potentially negative consequences of gamete donation for parent-child relationships. Findings are presented of a study of families with an infant conceived by gamete donation. Fifty donor insemination families and 51 egg donation families were compared with 80 natural conception families on standardized interview and questionnaire measures of the psychological well-being of the parents, the quality of parent-child relationships, and infant temperament. The differences that were identified indicated more positive parent-child relationships among the gamete donation than the natural conception parents, accompanied by greater emotional involvement with the child. Comparisons were also carried out between the donor insemination and the egg donation parents on their experiences of gamete donation. In contrast to the findings of earlier investigations, the donor insemination and egg donation parents appeared to be more open toward disclosing the donor conception to the child. It was concluded that infants conceived by egg or sperm donation did not appear to be at risk for parenting difficulties. Copyright 2004 American Psychological Association

OP posts:
ShyTalk · 12/03/2009 19:48

We know the DM as the "Daily Fail", if that's any consolation. I do understand your frustration - my elderly Mum reads and believes their ridiculous headlines and stories, as do a lot of people (I keep trying to tell her it's shit rubbish. I suppose the folks that choose to read this crap are never going to be on the side of intelligence and reason. Keep the faith, you know, and I know (FWIW), you are right.

ShyTalk · 13/03/2009 00:39

Bump for you

MrsFlittersnoop · 13/03/2009 12:10

It's actually worth checking out the DM readers' comments underneath this article.

The overwhelming majority of posters condemn this guy's behaviour and totally disagree with the premise that a REAL MAN can't be expected to bond with a child he hasn't fathered.

Sometimes, even DM readers see through the bullshit! (I can't believe I've just written that!)

The guy is a knob. End of.

FioFio · 13/03/2009 12:20

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

cory · 13/03/2009 12:25

Of course, no men ever walk out on their biological children...

solidgoldbrass · 13/03/2009 12:26

What a wanker he sounds. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was simply a matter of him shagging someone else that made him leave.

mayorquimby · 13/03/2009 12:55

in fairness (and not to defend the DM,it's not prevelant in ireland so i'm not overly familiar with it but i get the jist of it from on here,
but as someone once put it far more eloquently than i can "nice man,says nice thing about other nice man" is not a news story and doesn't sell papers.
so normal suburban couple have successful sperm donar experience and are still together.fairly happy, the odd fight over childcare and domestic chores, he doesn't really get in with his FIL but they're happy enough.
is not a news story.
there's nothing there to sell.

MrsFlittersnoop · 13/03/2009 13:02

Solidgoldbrass, that was my first thought too. His reported comments smack of the worst type of cowardly self justification.

This is not a news story. It's a very public piece of revenge by a wronged woman.

whitecoffeenosugar · 13/03/2009 19:09

MrsFlittersnoop - the story was not in the news section but Femail DM mag regularly featuring this type of interesting stories. Hardly a public revenge whith all staying anonymous, and rightly so.
hidingidentity - hmmm, which would I rather choose to read , an absorbing sad but true story or 'your' research or your choice of a boring uneventful tale of happy families ( good for them but I'm not interested)
shytalk what a childish rant ( oh, I'm sooo inteligent ) against DM with an obvious intention for a pat on the back of fellow DM haters

hidingidentity · 17/03/2009 14:17

Whoops it's taken me a while to get back to this!

Fiofio
I can't speak for every clinic, but ours asked us to have counselling (which was a very good idea, as even though it didn't change our minds it was useful to go through everything in advance). I would be astonished if donor treatment was offered with no discussion.

cory
That was one of my thoughts too, that men leave their biological children too.

whitecoffeenosugar
Perhaps I didn't make it clear that it's my family that I was referring to, we have two children through donor sperm. And we're very happy. It's not my research though, that comes from the American Psychological Association. There's plenty of other studies that back up those findings too, I wouldn't have had the treatment if I'd been worried about the mental health of my children as a result.

I've just re-read the article, and I notice that they mention that the baby was breastfed too. Well, I mean no wonder the father didn't bond. I suppose that I'm frustrated because third party fertility treatment is something that people tend to have bizarre assumptions about, and this just feeds into that.

OP posts:
New posts on this thread. Refresh page