An Interview with ... Professor Susan Golombok

Susan Golombok is Professor of Family Research and Director of the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge.

She recently spoke to WorkLife Central members about her book ‘Modern Families’ which brings together research on parenting and child development in new family forms that differ from the traditional nuclear family unit.

1. What does The Centre for Family Research do?

The Centre studies different aspects of family relationships and child development in different family forms. Some of our work looks at processes within families, other studies look more generally at social influences on families, different family structures and how these affect children. All of our work focuses on parents and children. The Centre celebrated its 50^th anniversary last year.

2. What is a ‘modern family’ and what might this look like?

There isn’t a clear, universal definition. We think about modern families as families that first became apparent to the general public in the mid 1970’s. The term refers to a range of different family types that were either not visible before that time or simply weren’t possible. These include families created by artificial reproductive technologies, families with same sex parents, families headed by single mothers by choice and more recently, families headed by single fathers. Things started changing with the growth of the gay rights and women’s liberation movements in the 1970s; at that time there were also developments in reproductive technologies. The first IVF baby Louise Brown was born in 1978 – this marked the first time a child was conceived outside of the body globally. This, in turn, led to other technological developments, for example children are now being born as a result of donated eggs and embryos.

3. When did donor insemination become popular and accessible for gay, lesbian and single parents?

Although people typically tend to think of ‘high tech’ reproductive techniques such as IVF, donor insemination isn’t high tech. In fact it has been around for long time, with the first reported case happening in France in 1884. In comparison, egg donation didn’t become possible until 100 years later in 1984. Originally, donor insemination was used by married couples where the male partner was infertile. The process used to be very secretive, for example couples were advised not to talk publicly about it and were encouraged to have sex around the same time as the donor insemination so that they wouldn’t know for certain whether the baby was genetically theirs or not.

Later on, donor insemination became more widely used in conjunction with other reproductive technologies. It began to be used by lesbian women in the late1970’s. In this country, the first reported case of a baby born via donor insemination occurred in1978. The mother was exposed by a London evening newspaper and the news caused a huge public outcry about lesbian women having children by donor insemination. It wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s that clinics began offering it more widely to lesbian women.

4. Presumably IVF/donor insemination is now widely accepted as a means of becoming a parent?

Yes, this is certainly true for IVF, as so many children have been born via IVF these days. Conception via donor insemination is more difficult – there is still some stigma attached which is one reason why many parents still don’t tell their children about their donor conception. As there is more and more public conversation about these issues, donor insemination is becoming more widely accepted but it is slow progress.

After the millennium, the law changed so that children conceived through donated egg, sperm or embryos and who were born after April 2005 are now legally entitled to request identity of donor when they become adults. The first of these children haven’t yet become 18, so it is too early to tell whether these children will choose to find out the identity of their donor or not.

5. Do children need both a mother and a father?

It used to be thought that they did. But studies of families where children have only mothers or only fathers have shown that it’s not necessary to have a parent of each gender. So children who grow up in 2 parent lesbian mother families or 2 parent gay father families seem to function equally well. The idea that children need a parent of each gender isn’t really borne out by the research evidence.

6. Does the quality of parenting differ between modern families and traditional nuclear families?

Everyone assumed this would differ and with negative impact i.e. the more the family structure differs from the traditional nuclear family, the greater the risk that children would suffer psychologically. In fact, the opposite is true. Where there are differences, these are shown to consist of more positive parent-child relationships in the new family forms. This might seem surprising but these are all families who have had to go to great lengths to have children. These children were not born through chance, their conception was carefully planned by parents who very much wanted to start a family. Not surprisingly, our research shows they are very committed and involved parents. Others who weren’t so committed to parenting probably dropped out along the way, perhaps after one or more IVF failures for example.

7. Are children in modern families at greater risk of developing psychological problems?

No. Generally children of modern families are no different from any other children.

8. Has research shown if children of modern families experience issues or difficulties growing up due to their family/parental structure?

These children don’t typically have problems within the family but they do sometimes experience difficulties outside of the family. Although less severe than it was a few decades ago, one issue that still remains is that children in modern families may still experience stigmatisation at school. They sometimes have to deal with people not really understanding about their family, having to constantly explain about their own family set-up or other people making negative comments about their family.

9. How easy/difficult is it for children to talk about their family structure to peers/others?

It really depends. Some schools are great at this and they are very inclusive of all family types in terms of their lessons, the books they read, the films they show. They acknowledge in different ways that different kinds of families exist. Other schools are much less understanding and even insensitive. Across schools, there is a huge variation.

10. When and how should parents ideally talk to their children about their family set up?

We found that the earlier, the better. This certainly resonates with research on adoption where the earlier that parents begin to talk to children about being adopted, the more accepting children are of this news, the more able they feel to ask questions and the more comfortable they are about being ‘different’ in that way. The same is true of children born via egg/sperm donation or surrogacy. Our longitudinal research has shown that when parents talk with their children about their conception at an early age, e.g. 3 or 4 years old, those children typically have better relationships with their parents during the teenage years. Therefore openness in the family appears to be beneficial. Many parents quite naturally worry about talking to their children about donor conception, out of fear that this disclosure will have a negative impact on the family. But parents who have told their children don’t say ‘I wish I hadn’t done it’ – on the contrary, they are generally relieved that they don’t have to worry about keeping a secret in their family any longer.

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More information about Professor Susan Golombok’s recent book ‘Modern Families’ can be found here. In addition to academic papers she is also the author of “Parenting: What really counts”? and co-author of “Bottling it Up”, “Gender Development”, and “Growing up in a Lesbian Family”.

The Centre for Family Research has a worldwide reputation for innovative research that increases understanding of children, parents and family relationships.