Reyes López Medina
Psychologist specialized in Fertility at Eva Alicante, Elche and Benidorm
Usually, the main reasons in becoming parents is having children to give love, taking care of them and becoming a guide throughout their life; on the other hand, it is about conceiving a new human being who will become a part of us being characterized by our genes, features and habits.
In a certain way, when there are fertility problems and the only other option to become parents is undergoing treatment based on gametes’ donation, there a lot of doubts which arise on a individual level, on the couple and about the future child. Many times, these doubts depend on a lack of information so choosing this kind of treatments has to be well-balanced and considered decision according to our needs and beliefs.
What kind of doubts may appear in regards to the donation of gametes and how can they be solved?
The first problems to consider are the following:
- Be aware of our aim and the most important thing for us: donating love and affection or having a child with our same characteristics? Moreover, we need to take into account that the genetic characteristics of a human being do not affect his habits, values, and way of thinking, feelings and actions. All of this depends on the education and environment where we will raise our children.
- On the other hand, we need to understand the procedure of donors’ selection in order to clarify all our uncertainties regarding the genetics of our future child, plus the motivations and rights of the donors. In Spain, the human assisted reproduction law (14/2006) states that for the donors it is necessary being subjected to a biomedical and psychological examination in order to rule out any incompatibility, disease or disorder. It also contemplates that the choice of the donor must guarantee the maximum phenotypic (physical characteristics) and immunological similarity with the recipient woman. In terms of donor’s rights, the donation is anonymous and the privacy/ identity of the donor will be kept safe.
- Another important doubt to consider is: “Should we tell our child about his origin?” Definitely. In a healthy relationship it is always better not to keep secrets because honesty benefits the relationship between parents and children. The starting period from 3 to 8 years old is good to face the topic since they start to construct their identity and ask about their origins. In this way, parents have to be the responsible in telling the truth by taking advantage of the child’s curiosity in order to adapt our answers to his age. They just have to be explained while they are able to understand without going further than is necessary; as time goes by they will ask for more information. It is very important to carefully plan our response and the information we are going to provide in order not being caught by surprise and to be ready to answer them. We can also use examples, fairy tales, drawing, games, etc in order to better assimilate everything.
- Finally, we have to be aware and capable of conveying our message to our child because the characteristics associated to everyone are obtained by parent-child communication. For this reason, the topic has to be faced in a normal and natural way in order to make the children comfortable to talk about themselves whenever they need to without creating taboos.
