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Love and truth: What really matters for parents and children in new family forms
22 March 2022, 6:30 pm–8:30 pm
Join the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) annual lecture with a book launch by Susan Golombok.
This event is free.
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Cost
- Free
Organiser
-
Marta Wasik
Location
-
British Academy10-11 Carlton House TerraceLondonSW1Y 5AH
Our understanding of what makes a family has changed dramatically in recent decades due to advances in reproductive technologies accompanied by changing social attitudes. But what has the impact been on children?
This lecture will present a summary of research on families with lesbian mothers, gay fathers, single mothers by choice and transgender parents, as well as families created by egg donation, sperm donation, embryo donation and surrogacy.
The findings show that these new family forms are just as likely to flourish as traditional families, and sometimes more so, although the children sometimes face prejudiced attitudes from others.
It is concluded that warm and supportive relationships between parents and their children, openness about the children’s origins, and acceptance of their family in the wider social world matter more for children's psychological wellbeing than the number, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or biological relatedness of their parents.
This event will be particularly useful for those interested in research on families with lesbian mothers, gay fathers, single mothers by choice and transgender parents, as well as families created by egg donation, sperm donation, embryo donation and surrogacy.
Related links
About the Speaker
Professor Susan Golombok FBA (Fellow of the British Academy)
Professor Emerita of Family Research and former director at Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge
Professor Golombok has pioneered research on lesbian mother families, gay father families, families with transgender parents, families formed by single mothers by choice, and families created by assisted reproductive technologies including in vitro fertilisation (IVF), donor insemination, egg donation and surrogacy. Her research has challenged commonly held assumptions about these families as well as widely held theories of child development, and it has contributed to policy and legislation on the family both nationally and internationally.
She was a member of the UK government’s surrogacy review committee in the late 1990s, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics Working Party on Donor Conception in 2012-13, and the International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing in 2019-20.
Her most recent book is 'We Are Family: What Really Matters for Parents and Children'.