Redefining Family Conference:

Early this year I attended the Redefining Family Conference in Auckland, New Zealand.

This conference provided a first time opportunity for me and others to listen to researchers, professionals and lay-persons from the fields of donor conception, surrogacy and adoption reflect on, and explore the dynamics, of families created through these means.

Not that I’m thinking about creating a new family.

My interest was more as an adopted person from the closed adoption era touching base with the contemporary world to listen and observe what drives family creation today. Have we learnt anything from adoption? What can we take on board from those who live with adoption given it has a much longer history than families created through various forms of medical engineering?

Modern forms of family creation remain contestable, emotionally charged, have ongoing personal and social ramifications and continue to challenge the legal profession, legislators, ethicists and various religious institutions.

There has never been more choice to create a family.

Today there is a growing acceptance of diverse families through various forms of family creation, whether through traditional heterosexual marriage, blended families, single parenthood, same sex couples via natural procreation, adoption, fostering, surrogacy, donor-conception or other ways of medical engineering.

How different this is from one or two generations ago when young, single, pregnant women were shamed and shunned for having a baby out of wedlock or childless couples shamed and stigmatised for being infertile.

For unmarried mothers the ‘choices’ then were largely limited to abortion or adoption where for infertile couples they were childlessness or adoption.

Putting the inclination to judge, or choose sides to one side, it is interesting to observe in a world of unlimited choice of family creation there is a tendency for various parties to claim unlimited ‘rights’ and occasionally believe their ‘rights’ trump other parties ‘rights’. The outcome is no longer a contest of ideas and practice but also of self-interest.

In a world of unlimited choice it is important to have guiding principles to remind us of the end game – the children, who become adults, and who have to live with the decisions of their parents. Sanity checks are needed to manage unfettered expectations.

And as much as some would like to stop or ban these family creation practices the reality is the demand for children – through whatever means, is there, and rising – and most of these practices are governed by legal frameworks, either mature, as is the case of adoption and donor conception, or evolving, as is the case with surrogacy.

The desire for children to complete a family is as strong as ever.

In a world of open markets, of which family creation is now a functional part, there were some reminders during the conference about the importance of framing principles or values to guide current practice. Three points struck a chord in relation to offspring:

Openness and Honesty

To reduce or eliminate stigma, shame, secrecy or uncertainty in family dynamics open and honest communication is essential.

This openness and honesty needs to extend to listening and supporting children deal with the inherent, deep seated loss and grief that comes through losing a first family –  their original identity through adoption or some form of medical science.

Parents have a responsibility to communicate with their children openly, honestly and supportively about their children’s origins.

The Right to Personal Information

Children have a right to their personal information about their biological origins including the way medical science may have crafted their existence with various participating parties.

Those of us who live with our adoption or donor experience know the value of personal information and its supreme importance in establishing a healthy sense of self, and identity, essential for our ongoing relationships. Critically important is biological information that could be a line between life or premature death.

Institutions, medical practitioners and parents involved in creating families have a responsibility to keep and disclose full personal information about the children, early and unconditionally.

Respectful of Offspring

The conference material noted the importance of bridging the divide between empirical knowledge (the domain claimed by academics or researchers) and experiential knowledge (those who live with their particular status of family creation on a daily basis) to develop collective knowledge that becomes useful to inform those who work in the fields of family creation or who support children (or their parents) deal with the consequences.

The recognition of the value of personal lived experiences in its own right to a growing knowledge base, rather than an appendage to formal academic research, was heartening as many a person from an adoption and donor conceived background can testify, especially within the Australian context, of being the subject of several government inquiries or research projects, where we were researched ‘on’ rather than ‘with’.

This shift in emphasis to respect and learn from the offspring of different forms of family creation, as partners in research and enquiry, rather than simply subjects upon which others build their expertise or frame policies, is welcomed. Hopefully others will embrace this approach.

Family constructs are changing. New families are created daily through many different forms as was evident from the diversity of presentations. The open ended nature of family creation can be confronting and challenging.

Who we are, and who we are related to, remain critical questions for adults, who were once children with origins that were, or remain, uncertain.

Thomas Graham