From Leighton, Kimberly. “Addressing the Harms of Not Knowing One's Heredity: Lessons from Genealogical Bewilderment.” Adoption & Culture, vol. 3, 2005, pp. 63–107.

Harm is prominently conceptualized in current discussions of the ethics of anonymous gamete donation through a comparison to adoption. First developed in the 1950s and 1960s to explain what psychologists Erich Wellisch and H. J. Sants considered the maladjustment of their adopted patients, genealogical bewilderment is purportedly a condition people suffer from when they do not know their genetic parents. The fundamental claim of genealogical bewilderment, that children suffer from not knowing their “real” parents, has been accepted by many in the adoption community. The circularity of reasoning behind the claim of genealogical bewilderment has been noted by critics of the term in relation to gamete donation. The causal claim that ignorance of one’s genetic genealogy results in the harm that is genealogical bewilderment thus relies upon a specific commitment to the view that race is something that both is and should be reproduced.