ABSTRACT
Although the use of donor sperm to enable couples with an infertile male partner to have children has been practiced for many years, it is only since 1983, following advances in reproductive technology, that infertile women have been able to conceive a child using a donated egg. This chapter examines parents' emotional well being, the quality of parenting, and childrens' socioemotional development in families with a child who is genetically unrelated to the mother or the father. It discusses an additional group of families with a child conceived by egg donation and examines together the donor insemination, adoptive, and in vitro fertilization (IVF) families. The comparison between families according to whether or not the child was genetically related to the mother, and whether or not the child was genetically related to the father.
