Reproductive technologies

In order to address the psychosocial development of children born in assisted reproduction families, research has mainly focused on parent-child relationships in IVF families, investigating maternal skills in comparison with naturally conceived children and examining relationships in unorthodox family groups (e.g. lesbian couples). The impact of these factors must be considered separately from impacts of the reproductive procedures per se.

• There is a higher incidence of multiple births, preterm births and low-birth-weight infants following IVF and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), in which a single sperm is injected directly into the egg to create an embryo.
• Mothers of IVF children are generally older than mothers who have given birth naturally.

Existing research in this area has various methodological limitations, such as the use of cross-sectional research design, with a few longitudinal investigations coming up lately, the focus being mainly on mothers. More medically vulnerable children, including those born prematurely, tend to be excluded from sample studies. Research results show:

• no evidence of cognitive impairment in singleton IVF
• no differences between the two groups at age one for social development or test-taking behaviour
• IVF children having secure attachment relationships with their mothers (at 12 months)
• children from “gamete donation” (donor insemination and egg donation) to be above average in terms of psychomotor and intellectual development (two studies) and more advanced in psychomotor and language development (one study)
• no evidence of emotional or behavioural problems in early studies of the socio-emotional development of donor-insemination children, with egg-donation parents less likely than IVF parents to express concern about their children’s behaviour.