Our science is now leading adoptees down a different road with some new twist and turns along the way. These adoptees are coming of age choosing to search for their beginnings. These are the first adoptees to make their way or deal with complex beginnings. These are adoptees are conceived from donated eggs or/and sperm.

Donated eggs produced a set of twin girls to the mother Carrie that carried them. The egg donor or as the twin girls call her “Egg Mom” was a strapped grad student that turned into a college teacher. They exchanged notes and gifts through the clinic anonymously. In time these two women made contact with each other. Over the next few years these mothers formed a friendship. Their families are connected by choice and feel that an open relationship works best for them and the two girls that they are connected through.

Through science and adoption choices the waters get a little murkier in adoption and with the people involved in this day and age. Someone asked me, “If children born of donated eggs and/or sperm are they considered adoptees?” Adoption is about not having a genetic connection to your birth parents, which these children do not have. These adoptees may one day feel the need to seek their genetics. Is the egg donor a birth mother?

One strange thing is that the eggs are referred to as donated, but the women receive anywhere from $4,500 up to $10,000. If you are considered an “exceptional” donor with certain criteria, agencies can pay you much more. So is this really donating? Children born of donated eggs in the United States are estimated to be 9,000 in 2005.

Do others view this type of parenting adoption? Should the people involved be given the chance of an open relationship with each other? Is the mother that gave birth the birth mother or the person that “donated” the egg?

More reading:

Frozen Egg, Frozen Sperm

A Few Good Eggs?

Like Being Half Adopted?

How Fertility Technology Muddies the Biological Parental Links