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Strollerderby
Yes, Mothers Matter. Eggs Don’t
What makes a woman a mother? It's not her eggs.
I’ll never forget the moments I became a mother. Yes, moments. The first time each of my baby daughters was laid into my arms, just after their births. Hearing them, months later, say “Mama” for the first time in their tiny baby voices. The moment my stepson awkwardly called me “Mom” by mistake. The Valentine card he made for me in 3rd grade. The day he told me how happy he is I’m one of his parents.
Becoming a mother is a process, something that happens day after day. You know what does not make the list of memorable moments in motherhood? Ovulation.
Every month like clockwork, my body produces an egg. Most of them, all but two, have been flushed through my reproductive system and out again with my monthly cycle. Producing eggs doesn’t make me a mother. It just means I have ovaries that function normally.
This seems to be something Elizabeth Marquardt is confused about. In an essay for The Atlantic, Marquardt tries to make the case that children conceived through egg donation are somehow being deprived of their mothers.
For some reason, The Atlantic ran this piece in their health section, rather than as opinion or fiction.
Yet fiction it pretty clearly is. Marquardt is using pseudo-science and misdirection to prop up a political agenda that opposes single parenting and same-sex couples’ parenting rights. She frames the issue of egg donation and surrogacy in stark and frankly weird terms, writing that:
Children have been denied their mothers because of class biases (see, poor); racial and ethnic biases (Indian, Aborigine); as part of severe civil conflict (Argentina, Dirty War); amid widespread, institutionalized human rights abuses (slavery); or because their mothers were rightly or wrongly perceived to be unfit (see: history of adoption, good, bad, and ugly).
Yet even as the broad history of helping ourselves to other people’s children continues to be probed and largely condemned (except in the case of adoption, where most reasonable people agree that such an institution must exist in order to find loving homes for children in need of them), a newer and notably deliberate form of mother loss has sprung up, one that receives relatively little debate and is often presented as benign or even good, without question. I am referring, of course, to the practices of surrogacy and egg donation.
Comparing children conceived through egg donation to those displaced and orphaned by the Dirty War seems deliberately obtuse. Does Marquardt really imagine that a child born into a loving home through the benefit of fertility assistance technologies is suffering the same kind of trauma as a child whose world has been ripped apart by a civil war?
I don’t think so. I think she’s playing a deceptive game with her readers, trying to introduce concerns about parental loss into the already complicated enough conversation about family diversity and fertility assistance. It’s an ugly trick, one that cheapens the real grief suffered by those who’ve lost a parent.
Children born through egg donation or surrogacy may well have questions about their origins. They may, as Marquardt claims children born through sperm donation do, wonder about the person who donated to make their life possible. They are not, however, victims of violence and loss in the way that children orphaned through war and death are.
I find Marquardt’s framing of this issue as one of children “conceived never to know their mothers” patently offensive. If I chose to donate eggs or carry a surrogate pregnancy, I wouldn’t be the mother of that child. The child’s parents would be the people who raised and nurtured her, who got up in the night to care for her when she had a nightmare and struggled with her homework night after night. It’s not the birth that makes me a mom, and it certainly isn’t the ability to produce a healthy egg. It’s everything that comes after.
Photo: dimnikolov
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18 Comments
KeAnne commented on Feb 14 12 at 9:38 amI read that article yesterday & had a lot of the same reactions you did. I agree that her real agenda is about male homosexuals having children either alone or as part of a couple. I do think she does raise an important question about what a mother is. We have legal definitions, biological definitions and cultural definitions and many don’t keep up w/ scientific advancements. I had my son via surrogacy, so it will be interesting to see how the concept of “mother” may change.
LS commented on Feb 14 12 at 9:41 amThank you for your powerful words.
Stephanie Blessing commented on Feb 14 12 at 9:58 am“I find Marquardt’s framing of this issue as one of children ‘conceived never to know their mothers’ patently offensive.”
While it may be the case that you are patently offended by Ms. Marquardt’s framing of the issue, it doesn’t change the fact that it is true.
The eggs that a woman has (just like the sperm that men have) are unique in their DNA and where they came from. I’ve used this illustration before – you can buy a Dr. Pepper at a McDonald’s in California or in Florida and it will be pretty much the same, but gametes are not a uniform product that can be gotten from just any source. Any DNA test will tell you who a person’s biological parent is.
I’m not denying that the person who raises the child isn’t a parent. What I’m denying is the idea that they are the ONLY parent.
These donors are called “donors” by the industry so that people don’t think about it any deeper and discover what they really are; mothers and fathers who have sold their gametes.
Btw, I am one of those children who was created to never know my biological father and half of my extended family. I have a dad who raised me and I love him very much. Yet I also have an anonymous father, who, in an act of what I can only assume was misguided altruism, sold his sperm to a couple for them to raise his child.
So that leaves me with three parents; my mother, my dad, and my biological father.
Jay Jonson commented on Feb 14 12 at 11:07 amThank you for your excellent column. You are precisely right that Marquardt’s article is fiction. She and her colleagues as the Institute for American Values are ideologues who assemble right-wing opinion and try to pass it off as social science. It is not. Like her boss David Blankenhorn who fraudulently tries to pass himself off as an expert on marriage, so Marquardt has no qualifications for her claims to be an expert on nontraditional families.
Rachel commented on Feb 14 12 at 11:12 amIn order to be human, you must fit into the definition of a human being.
Part of that means having one mother and one father- genetically speaking.Abandoning your genetic child to strangers doesn’t have to draw blood for it to be violent. The emotional struggle it causes for the child can be violent enough.
KateThree commented on Feb 14 12 at 11:50 amThat’s great Stephanie. My grandfather split after my father was conceived but before he was born. My grandmother never told him the identity of his father, but instead raised him with the belief that his step-dad was his biological father. My dad did not know about any of this until he was in his 50s. It’s not just science which “creates” children with a variety of familial situations, you know. And frankly, do most people even care how other people were born?
renee commented on Feb 14 12 at 11:54 amIt is absolutely true that egg and sperm “donors” (they are paid) are not mothers or fathers, and I think the donors know that. It is also true that the children conceived with donated gametes may have parents to whom they are not related (I say “may” because it’s not the case when a single woman has a child with donated sperm) and definitely have other people to whom they are related. I think it’s the child’s right to know that, and to get as much information as their parents have about their history and biological relatives. I say this as an adoptive mom in an open adoption–it drives me bats that we’ve gotten past the era of secrecy and lies in adoption, but seem to think it’s ok in the case of egg donation.
CW commented on Feb 14 12 at 3:34 pmI worry about the exploitation of young women, who don’t necessarily understand the risks of the powerful chemicals that are used to harvest the eggs. Back when I was a college student, there would be advertisements in the college’s newspaper offering $10,000, $25,000, even $50,000 for egg donors. That is a lot of money for a broke college student. A friend of mine was going to do it to pay her tuition but then when she started researching the risks, she found out that the hormones given to stimulate the egg harvesting were linked to an increased cancer risk. Yikes!
Stephanie Blessing commented on Feb 14 12 at 4:05 pmKatethree, You are right; it isn’t just science that creates families that aren’t the traditional bio-mother/bio-father/child family…but in the case where a child is created to be PURPOSEFULLY denied half (or all in the case of egg and sperm donor conceived people!) of their bio family is ethically incomprehensible.
Renee, if egg and sperm donors are not mothers and fathers, why should a child have a right to know “their history and biological relatives”? Biological relatives are only related because of mothers and fathers.
You are right that it doesn’t make sense that cases of adoption are no longer shrouded in secrecy and lies (for the most part) where gamete donation is still in the dark. But it’s the denial that “donors” are mothers and fathers that keep us from having full access to our genetic ties and histories!
Diera commented on Feb 14 12 at 6:25 pmEggs (or sperm) can matter. Not necessarily more than anything else, I know several people who strongly prefer the loving step-parents who raised them to the biological parents who contributed their genetic material and then left, but I also know adoptive children who felt an instant sense of kinship with their biological families when they finally met them. I think a child who is raised never knowing anyone to whom they are biologically related IS missing something. Maybe not something essential, and there are certainly worse lives than being raised by loving adoptive parents, but something.
Mark Diebel commented on Feb 15 12 at 8:46 amThank you for affirming that in adoption there is loss and grief! Many say that adoptees should simply be grateful and be glad they weren’t discarded to a dumpster, or left in an orphanage or in a war torn country. It is good when someone has insights and shares them. Way to go!
Jesi commented on Feb 29 12 at 11:38 pmWow n so just leave the women who can’t conceive children on their own childless??? I think helping families have children who other wise couldn’t without sum1 else’s egg is beautiful.. I would do it :)
Jessica commented on Mar 01 12 at 12:15 amBy this logic babies born through sperm donations must ne missing their fathers as well!!
betz commented on Mar 01 12 at 12:34 amWhile i understand your point, and i totally agree that nurturing a child certainly makes a woman her/his mother, I cannot agree to your last paragraph. That was really an emotional and shallow statement.
-
- If a birth makes a child, then that makes a mother too.
- If a healthy egg makes a child, then producing the egg makes a mother too.
-I found “246,000,000 results” when I google for “looking for real mother” and “206,000,000 results” when I google for “looking for real parents”. So your words, “It’s not the birth that makes me a mom, and it certainly isn’t the ability to produce a healthy egg. It’s everything that comes after.” are only valid if they were uttered by the children who were conceived through egg donation etc (not “mothers” like us, because we’ll never understand their situation and their feeling, please respect their rights and their feeling)
Candace commented on Mar 01 12 at 12:37 amI haven’t read the article, all I know is that I couldn’t give my eggs to someone else, I’ve considered it because the money is good, but to me that’s my blood, now I really considered it when my aunt couldn’t conceive and was told she had a 2% chance of reaching a full time pregnancy. She had a baby of her own though just two days ago. I’m a very sentimental person, and I truly believe to each his or her own. I don’t understand the point of bashing someone else’s opinion, this woman obviously didn’t change your mind, I highly doubt she’ll change anyone else’s. Is what you’re doing going to have a positive outcome? It sounds to me like as a writer you are using your judgmental attitude to make a name for yourself. If you want to give away your eggs, do it. Don’t bash others who don’t have the same opinion as you, it’s ugly.
Crystal commented on Mar 01 12 at 1:35 amI really don’t understand why the writer, or anyone feels they need to pick on something amazing, like egg donation or surrogacy.
Beckie commented on Mar 01 12 at 2:37 amI am the grandchild of an adopted woman. She was not abandoned perse, but the adoption was closed, with no contact of the woman that gave birth to her. My grandparents picked Mom up from the hospital the night that she was born.
When I was thirteen or so, one of the daughters of that woman found mom, and it was one of those situations where we had wished that they had stayed anonymous.
While this may not be true of every situation with families made through adoption or donation, it is true of mine. Nonnie is my grandmother. Grandpa was my grandfather. They are the ones that are my mom’s parents, and they are the ones that are family. Those people that share a genetic link with mom simply are no family, and that woman was not a mother until she had her own children, not the one that she had given away for whatever reason that she did.
This was made painfully clear the year that contact with the genetic sharers were made. It wasn’t that the meeting didn’t end well, or that they or us had issue with each other… they just were not our family, nor were we theirs, and after the meeting we merely went our separate ways.
Mom as far as I know still has their contact information, and I know that they have ours. None of us even put the other on a Christmas card list.
Geneva commented on Mar 01 12 at 3:30 amI think a child should know about their genetic mother, especially as they get older because of those rare instances when genetics plays a part in some health issues. Yes, it is who raises them that matters the most. But sometimes it is a good idea to just know your genetics.
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