How do modern fertilization technologies affect our ideas about the family? The opinion of a psychoanalyst.
In vitro fertilization, sperm donation, surrogacy… Thinking about the variety and complexity of modern artificial insemination techniques makes one dizzy. In addition, they completely change the traditional ideas about the family and procreation. This raises many questions in the fields of ethics, psychology and jurisprudence, but the main one is this: is the family changing in connection with these unprecedented changes? We talked with psychoanalyst Geneviève Delaisi de Parseval about how modern technologies have turned the very concepts of motherhood and fatherhood upside down.
Psychologies: Do parents develop a new sense of self in what you call the “new fertilization kitchen”?
Genevieve Delaisy de Parseval: Undoubtedly. For the first time in the history of mankind, all the processes necessary for conception have become clear and manageable: it is now possible to produce embryos that can be placed in the uterus of another woman, not the one from whom the oocytes were taken — a surrogate mother — or these embryos can remain frozen in for many years.
- Is surrogacy dangerous?
Medical assistance during fertilization shatters all ideas about the family, which seemed to be generated by common sense, and makes us reconsider hitherto seemingly unshakable concepts: what does it mean to be a father? Mother? Brothers and sisters? This is an unprecedented upheaval, the consequences of which are not yet fully understood. Until the 1970s and 80s, parents were two people of different sexes who were married or simply living together and gave birth to a child they recognized as their own. However, with the beginning of the use of donor sperm, with the advent of surrogate mothers, with the emergence of demand for children from so-called same-sex parents, the very concept of «becoming parents» becomes more and more complex.
In addition, the age at which conception is possible is now being extended …
Indeed, a large number of women who use donor oocytes become mothers quite late, and maybe after a while we will see how people will freeze germ cells and embryos in anticipation of a “opportune moment” or a “good partner”! We are present at the beginning of absolutely revolutionary changes in the very concept of the family. I bet that in ten years the concept of parenthood will be associated not so much with the concept of a couple, but with one person who will perceive his fatherhood or motherhood as a duty, the most important element that determines his sexual, social, civic identity.
- «I have a very sensitive child»
Science rushes forward by leaps and bounds, but does our psyche keep up with it?
As a psychoanalyst, I have always wondered how artificial insemination parents show their creativity in creating their own parenting scenario. Our subconscious is flexible, it adapts to a new situation, but with one condition: it must be provided with good material. For parents who turn to new technologies, this means being clear about what happened to them, not isolating other people, and being able to convey their story to their children without burdening it with either lies or reticence.
I can state that more and more young people, artificially conceived in the 1980s with the help of an anonymous donor, are turning to a psychoanalyst in connection with severe existential problems. They feel that they are in a worse position compared to adopted children, who, for the most part, can access their personal file. This causes suffering to their parents as well. The subconscious does not miss anything. What has been repressed or repressed is returning. “Drive nature through the door, it will fly in through the window”… We cannot pretend that biological or genetic heredity does not mean anything in the “true biography” of a person.
New methods of fertilization pose a question that concerns us all: what is a family today?
This is the most important question. The family remains the place for the birth and upbringing of children, but having passed through the nuclear stage (when the family consists of two parents and their children), it is now entering a period characterized by polyparenthood. The family revolution is in full swing today. I have noticed that the various ways of creating a family associated with artificial insemination, in fact, do not threaten the social bonds that are tied around the process of procreation. Rather, they enrich it: I mean the “feeling of fatherhood during pregnancy” that some fathers experience when a couple resorts to the help of an anonymous donor, or the relationship that future parents establish with surrogate mothers … In some In this sense, artificial insemination parents help the entire society move forward.