A 20 year study has found that parenting and child adjustment did not differ among children from gamete-donation and natural conception families from ages 3 to 20. The absence of a biological link between children and their parents appears not to affect mother–child relationships or psychological adjustment in young adulthood.

A  study which has followed 65 families with children born from ART,  22 by surrogacy, 17 by egg donation and 26 by sperm donation – from infancy through to early adulthood has found that at age 20 there was no difference in psychological well-being or quality of family relationships between the children born by ART and those born naturally. However, the study’s findings do suggest that telling children about their biological origins early on – before they start school – can be advantageous for family relationships and healthy adjustment. Specifically, young adults who learned about their biological origins before age 7 had fewer negative relationships with their mothers, and their mothers showed lower levels of anxiety and depression.

This longitudinal study, say the authors, is the first to examine the long-term effects of different types of third-party ART on parenting and child adjustment, as well as the first to investigate prospectively the effect of the age at which children were told that they were conceived by egg donation, sperm donation or surrogacy. ifferent types of third-party ART on parenting and child adjustment, as well as the first to investigate prospectively the effect of the age at which children were told that they were conceived by egg donation, sperm donation or surrogacy.

Read more - https://www.focusonreproduction.eu/article/News-in-Reproduction-Third-party-donation