2-053 - 'The ties that bind’: non-genetic motherhood and the consequences for parent-child relationships and child adjustment

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Dominant Euro-American family ideology commonly frames the notion of motherhood in biological/genetic terms. Yet the growth of assisted reproductive technologies and the increasing visibility of diverse family forms has meant growing numbers of women are forming their families in ‘non-traditional’ ways and may not share a genetic connection with their child. Developmental psychology has a significant contribution to make in understanding the effects of non-genetic motherhood on parent-child relationships and child adjustment.

The four papers presented in this symposium use data from different family types to explore the effects of non-genetic motherhood on family functioning. The first paper examines the quality of the mother-child relationship in infancy in families formed using egg donation. The quality of mother-infant interactions and mothers’ representations of the relationship are compared between mothers who conceived using a donor egg and mothers who conceived following IVF with their own gametes. The second paper examines the quality of mother-child relationships in lesbian mother families, in which one mother is genetically related to the child and one mother is not. Paper three presents findings on child social, emotional and cognitive adjustment in adoptive families in comparison to children raised in institutions. Paper four investigates the non-genetic parent-child relationship from the child’s perspective through donor-conceived adolescents’ accounts of their relationships with their genetically related and non-genetically related parents in lesbian mother families.

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chair

• Susan Golombok, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge

Individual Presentations

• Non-genetic motherhood: the quality of the mother-child relationship in infancy in families formed through egg donation - Presenting Author: Susan Imrie, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge

• Genetic versus non-genetic motherhood: the quality of mother-child relationships in lesbian mother families - Presenting Author: Lucy Blake, Edge Hill University, UK

• Social, emotional and cognitive development of Chilean adopted children aged 4 to 9 - Presenting Author: Pamela Jimenez Etcheverria, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge

• The adolescent perspective: non-genetic mothers and the parent-child relationship in families conceived by sperm donation - Presenting Author: Jenna Slutsky, New York-Presbyterian Columbia University Medical Center