[Applause]
tradition is powerful the concept has
clout when applied to forms a family
building tradition verifies and vilifies
but while most of us are familiar with
traditional family forms our
understanding of diversity in family
life may be less well developed I’m part
of a team of researchers led by
Professor Susan Gollum Bock at the
University of Cambridge is Center for
Family Research our research gathers
empirical evidence about the experiences
and outcomes of parents and children in
different family types including those
families formed through the use of
assisted reproduction such as sperm
donation egg donation and surrogacy our
research has spanned decades in which
medical technological and social
developments have led to key changes in
the ways in which families are formed
today this year it’s possible that a
child will be conceived using donated
gametes that have crossed national
borders their parents might have been
strangers whose co-parenting projects
began with a meeting over the internet
they may be parented by a single mother
who’s used donor sperm or a single
father who’s used a surrogate all their
parents may be part of a same sex female
couple each of whom has a biological
connection to their child one through
her egg and the other through her wounds
families formed through the use of
assisted reproduction often described as
non-traditional
nature put simply they’re said to
deviate from the traditional model of a
man and a woman who have a biological
connection to their children as a result
of them having hetero sex this model is
often held up as the ideal or the
natural or the best way of building
families as a result families formed
through the use of assisted reproduction
are often subject to social criticism
but their use of assisted reproduction
is tinkering or tampering or meddling
with mother nature in ways that are
deeply damaging for society as a whole
and despite increasing uses of these
technologies and government legislation
that now accommodates their use by
different social groups these families
are still at the center of much
professional political and public debate
this is a problem let me give two more
concrete examples in a recent newspaper
article about funding for fertility
treatment the headline stated that the
government would be generating a
generation of fatherless families paid
for by the public and in a recent
parliamentary debate about access to
assisted reproduction it was argued by
one MP that those seeking to form
families outside of the heterosexual
couple would be hammering the final nail
in the coffin of traditional family life
well the traditional family hasn’t died
it couldn’t have because it’s never
existed in the ways in which we
ordinarily imagined it’s a myth how do
we know that this is the case we know
that in some societies no meaning is
made of genetic connections for the
Inupiat
of northern Alaska for example
biological ties do not bind instead
family relationships may or may not be
based
on biology and as the work of Barbara
Bowden Horne has told us these
relationships are also not fixed they
may change over time
but we don’t need to go to Alaska to
learn this here in Britain there are
endless examples of families who don’t
conform to this biological narrative
stepparents adoptive parents urban
families extended kin networks all of
these are examples of them and in
contrast people previously bound by
genetic connections may now experience
family estrangement and when social
scientists such as myself ask young
children who they think is part of their
families rather unsurprisingly they
rarely get told a story about genetic
connections rather it seems that up to
the age of about five children are more
likely to use criteria such as ko
residency or closeness in describing
their kin beyond this age and much like
the adults around them they’re also
likely to choose whether or not to make
biological matter significant and
children are also more likely to be more
creative in their language use to
describe these relationships than are
the adults around them so for example
they make aunts and uncles sisters and
brothers from emotional and not genetic
ties and perhaps most interestingly when
we asked them who’s a part of their
families they often discuss their family
pets
in general it’s no longer clear what
genetic connections are if ever it was
for example it’s now technically
possible for a child to be conceived
using the genetic material of three
people recent developments in the field
of assisted reproduction have resulted
in a successful transfer of
mitochondrial DNA that is the removal of
defective mitochondria from one woman’s
egg and its replacement with healthy
mitochondria from another of course
there are other examples from other
parts of the world where genetic
connections are not fixed in the ways
that we might assume in fact social
anthropologists have long shown that for
several societies other shared
substances can play an important part in
making and breaking kin connections in
some communities blood ties are bound up
with other practices and substances for
example the sharing of food or milk or
something else entirely
what I’m trying to get at here is that
the traditional family is a social
construction it’s a collective myth and
as Marilyn Strathearn here in Cambridge
has so eloquently stated there was
always a choice as to whether or not
biology is made the foundation of
relationships and in fact when we look
at the history of the traditional family
in which the biological facts are said
to be the foundations of these
relationships we learn that this history
was in fact rather recent and short the
nuclear family of breadwinner fathers
and
stay-at-home mothers in fact gained
prominence in countries like the UK and
the u.s. after the Second World War and
amongst specific social classes but by
the 1970s social changes were afoot
changes that have since led to the
demise of the nuclear family at least in
terms of demographic trends in the UK
today less than two-thirds of all
families are headed by married couples
now this statistic indicates a
significant 10 percent decrease in the
total number of traditional families
over the last 20 years given that this
is the case questions and eyebrows may
be raised why are we still talking about
tradition as though it’s the only way of
experiencing family or creating kin our
work at the center of family research
has shown that it’s not appropriate or
even accurate to discuss family
diversity in terms of deviation from
their traditional model in fact when we
speak to the parents in these families
themselves we often find that they draw
upon traditional narratives to explain
their experiences whether when
discussing how they chose a particular
sperm donor or how they divided up
family household chores or even how they
describe their connections to their
children but we desperately need new
ways of thinking and talking about
families not because families formed
through the use of assisted reproduction
signal or a significant shift to
tradition but because there are so many
more interesting eloquent and accurate
ways of discussing what’s important when
it comes to high quality family
relationship
and experiences our research on families
in which there’s one parents – parents
parents in same-sex couples parents in
opposite sex couples
parents in which they share a genetic
connection to their child and families
in which parents do not our research
shows a rather simple fact what matters
most for parents and children is not the
family structure of which they are apart
but the quality of their relationships
both with one another and with others in
a recent study in which we compared the
psychological adjustment of children
aged 4 to 9 years old growing up in one
parent families with children of the
same age growing up in two-parent
families all of whom had been conceived
using a sperm donor
we found no differences between the
outcomes of children in these two family
types when we looked more closely at the
factors that were having an impact on
children’s outcomes we learned that
stress in parenting and financial
difficulties contributed to children’s
difficulties themselves irrespective of
their family type so to be absolutely
clear there were no differences between
these children and due to them growing
up with one parent or with two parents
and where children were experiencing
difficulties this was not um related to
them being conceived using assisted
reproduction let’s take another example
in our research on same-sex female
couples who have adopted children
children with same-sex parents don’t
look any different from children whose
parents are in a heterosexual couple
they’re no more likely to suffer
psychological problems and in fact on
measures of parental warmth and
parent-child interaction we found that
the same-sex male couples were doing
especially well and yet despite these
positive outcomes for both parents and
children in these families we know that
society still stigmatizes them we know
this because we’ve studied the mass
media content that’s written about them
and we know this because we’ve spoken to
the members of these families themselves
we know that these families still live
in a social context in which having a
mother and a father to him you’re
biologically related is seen as the
social norm where some children who grow
up with one mother or two mothers are
asked by their peers to explain the
whereabouts of their father or invited
by their teachers to create Father’s Day
cards at school where some people
experience family estrangement as a
result of their choices regarding their
path to Parenthood and where sometimes
services are restricted on the basis of
people assuming or appearing as though
they’re part of the traditional norm
well the stigma that surrounds these
families which fundamentally rests upon
traditional family values needs to be
challenged we need to educate ourselves
and if we are ourselves educated educate
others about family diversity today in
fact this education would teach us that
what matters most for children is the
same in families of all structures
shapes and sizes that is a war
supportive and loving environment in
which to flourish
[Applause]
tradition is powerful the concept has
clout when applied to forms a family
building tradition verifies and vilifies
but while most of us are familiar with
traditional family forms our
understanding of diversity in family
life may be less well developed I’m part
of a team of researchers led by
Professor Susan Gollum Bock at the
University of Cambridge is Center for
Family Research our research gathers
empirical evidence about the experiences
and outcomes of parents and children in
different family types including those
families formed through the use of
assisted reproduction such as sperm
donation egg donation and surrogacy our
research has spanned decades in which
medical technological and social
developments have led to key changes in
the ways in which families are formed
today this year it’s possible that a
child will be conceived using donated
gametes that have crossed national
borders their parents might have been
strangers whose co-parenting projects
began with a meeting over the internet
they may be parented by a single mother
who’s used donor sperm or a single
father who’s used a surrogate all their
parents may be part of a same sex female
couple each of whom has a biological
connection to their child one through
her egg and the other through her wounds
families formed through the use of
assisted reproduction often described as
non-traditional
nature put simply they’re said to
deviate from the traditional model of a
man and a woman who have a biological
connection to their children as a result
of them having hetero sex this model is
often held up as the ideal or the
natural or the best way of building
families as a result families formed
through the use of assisted reproduction
are often subject to social criticism
but their use of assisted reproduction
is tinkering or tampering or meddling
with mother nature in ways that are
deeply damaging for society as a whole
and despite increasing uses of these
technologies and government legislation
that now accommodates their use by
different social groups these families
are still at the center of much
professional political and public debate
this is a problem let me give two more
concrete examples in a recent newspaper
article about funding for fertility
treatment the headline stated that the
government would be generating a
generation of fatherless families paid
for by the public and in a recent
parliamentary debate about access to
assisted reproduction it was argued by
one MP that those seeking to form
families outside of the heterosexual
couple would be hammering the final nail
in the coffin of traditional family life
well the traditional family hasn’t died
it couldn’t have because it’s never
existed in the ways in which we
ordinarily imagined it’s a myth how do
we know that this is the case we know
that in some societies no meaning is
made of genetic connections for the
Inupiat
of northern Alaska for example
biological ties do not bind instead
family relationships may or may not be
based
on biology and as the work of Barbara
Bowden Horne has told us these
relationships are also not fixed they
may change over time
but we don’t need to go to Alaska to
learn this here in Britain there are
endless examples of families who don’t
conform to this biological narrative
stepparents adoptive parents urban
families extended kin networks all of
these are examples of them and in
contrast people previously bound by
genetic connections may now experience
family estrangement and when social
scientists such as myself ask young
children who they think is part of their
families rather unsurprisingly they
rarely get told a story about genetic
connections rather it seems that up to
the age of about five children are more
likely to use criteria such as ko
residency or closeness in describing
their kin beyond this age and much like
the adults around them they’re also
likely to choose whether or not to make
biological matter significant and
children are also more likely to be more
creative in their language use to
describe these relationships than are
the adults around them so for example
they make aunts and uncles sisters and
brothers from emotional and not genetic
ties and perhaps most interestingly when
we asked them who’s a part of their
families they often discuss their family
pets
in general it’s no longer clear what
genetic connections are if ever it was
for example it’s now technically
possible for a child to be conceived
using the genetic material of three
people recent developments in the field
of assisted reproduction have resulted
in a successful transfer of
mitochondrial DNA that is the removal of
defective mitochondria from one woman’s
egg and its replacement with healthy
mitochondria from another of course
there are other examples from other
parts of the world where genetic
connections are not fixed in the ways
that we might assume in fact social
anthropologists have long shown that for
several societies other shared
substances can play an important part in
making and breaking kin connections in
some communities blood ties are bound up
with other practices and substances for
example the sharing of food or milk or
something else entirely
what I’m trying to get at here is that
the traditional family is a social
construction it’s a collective myth and
as Marilyn Strathearn here in Cambridge
has so eloquently stated there was
always a choice as to whether or not
biology is made the foundation of
relationships and in fact when we look
at the history of the traditional family
in which the biological facts are said
to be the foundations of these
relationships we learn that this history
was in fact rather recent and short the
nuclear family of breadwinner fathers
and
stay-at-home mothers in fact gained
prominence in countries like the UK and
the u.s. after the Second World War and
amongst specific social classes but by
the 1970s social changes were afoot
changes that have since led to the
demise of the nuclear family at least in
terms of demographic trends in the UK
today less than two-thirds of all
families are headed by married couples
now this statistic indicates a
significant 10 percent decrease in the
total number of traditional families
over the last 20 years given that this
is the case questions and eyebrows may
be raised why are we still talking about
tradition as though it’s the only way of
experiencing family or creating kin our
work at the center of family research
has shown that it’s not appropriate or
even accurate to discuss family
diversity in terms of deviation from
their traditional model in fact when we
speak to the parents in these families
themselves we often find that they draw
upon traditional narratives to explain
their experiences whether when
discussing how they chose a particular
sperm donor or how they divided up
family household chores or even how they
describe their connections to their
children but we desperately need new
ways of thinking and talking about
families not because families formed
through the use of assisted reproduction
signal or a significant shift to
tradition but because there are so many
more interesting eloquent and accurate
ways of discussing what’s important when
it comes to high quality family
relationship
and experiences our research on families
in which there’s one parents – parents
parents in same-sex couples parents in
opposite sex couples
parents in which they share a genetic
connection to their child and families
in which parents do not our research
shows a rather simple fact what matters
most for parents and children is not the
family structure of which they are apart
but the quality of their relationships
both with one another and with others in
a recent study in which we compared the
psychological adjustment of children
aged 4 to 9 years old growing up in one
parent families with children of the
same age growing up in two-parent
families all of whom had been conceived
using a sperm donor
we found no differences between the
outcomes of children in these two family
types when we looked more closely at the
factors that were having an impact on
children’s outcomes we learned that
stress in parenting and financial
difficulties contributed to children’s
difficulties themselves irrespective of
their family type so to be absolutely
clear there were no differences between
these children and due to them growing
up with one parent or with two parents
and where children were experiencing
difficulties this was not um related to
them being conceived using assisted
reproduction let’s take another example
in our research on same-sex female
couples who have adopted children
children with same-sex parents don’t
look any different from children whose
parents are in a heterosexual couple
they’re no more likely to suffer
psychological problems and in fact on
measures of parental warmth and
parent-child interaction we found that
the same-sex male couples were doing
especially well and yet despite these
positive outcomes for both parents and
children in these families we know that
society still stigmatizes them we know
this because we’ve studied the mass
media content that’s written about them
and we know this because we’ve spoken to
the members of these families themselves
we know that these families still live
in a social context in which having a
mother and a father to him you’re
biologically related is seen as the
social norm where some children who grow
up with one mother or two mothers are
asked by their peers to explain the
whereabouts of their father or invited
by their teachers to create Father’s Day
cards at school where some people
experience family estrangement as a
result of their choices regarding their
path to Parenthood and where sometimes
services are restricted on the basis of
people assuming or appearing as though
they’re part of the traditional norm
well the stigma that surrounds these
families which fundamentally rests upon
traditional family values needs to be
challenged we need to educate ourselves
and if we are ourselves educated educate
others about family diversity today in
fact this education would teach us that
what matters most for children is the
same in families of all structures
shapes and sizes that is a war
supportive and loving environment in
which to flourish
[Applause]
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