The Dilemma of Revealing How a Child Was Conceived

Abstract

Traditionally, there are two approaches to kinship and filiation: biological and social. The biological approach is characterized by sexual intercourse between a man and a woman, through which “same-blood” children are originated. The social approach, in turn, is characterized by the organization of interpersonal relationships based on conjugality and parenting. The mandate to multiply has been dictated since biblical times. Therefore, issues related to infertility, as the inability to conceive a child, pose a great challenge for individuals in their life trajectories. The development of reproductive biotechnology, however, has made new procedures available, which enable the possibility of having children when conceiving a child naturally would not be possible. One of the assisted reproduction techniques is the reception/donation of gametes (egg and sperm), which necessarily requires the use of gametes from a donor. Although it is currently a very well-known and used technique, this situation usually leads to many questions for those who opt to use it. Among them, there are conflicts on whether to tell the child his or her genetic origin and, also, the difficult decision whether to reveal this information to the families of origin and to other people who are socially involved. Whether or not to reveal this information has been a subject of debate. With this article, we aim to address what has emerged in recent years, which is a strong tendency in favor of disclosing the truth to children.