For more information about this study, or to schedule an interview with Elizabeth Marquardt or Karen Clark, please call 212-246-3942 or email info@americanvalues.org.
About Elizabeth Marquardt
Full Bio | CV | High Res Photo | Contact Elizabeth
Elizabeth Marquardt is editor of FamilyScholars.org, where she also blogs. She is vice president for family studies and director of the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values.
Marquardt is the co-investigator most recently of My Daddy’s Name is Donor, which examines the identity and kinship experiences of adults conceived through sperm donation and is based on a new representative sample. The study was the subject of reporting and commentary in the publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Slate, and abroad in outlets including Le Monde and the Irish Times. Marquardt is author of Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce (Crown, 2005). Based on the first nationally-representative study of grown children of divorce in the U.S., she argues that while an amicable divorce is better than a bitter one, even amicable divorces profoundly shape the inner lives of children. She is also co-principal investigator of a national study, Hooking Up, Hanging Out, and Hoping for Mr. Right: College Women on Dating and Mating Today.
Marquardt has appeared often on NBC’s Today Show as well as on broadcast news programs on CNN, ABC, FOX, CBS, and PBS and scores of radio programs including BBC World News and national and local NPR stations. Her writings have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Slate, and elsewhere. She is a frequent presenter to academic and professional groups in the U.S. and internationally and her work has been covered widely.
She holds a Master’s in Divinity and an M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in history and women’s studies from Wake Forest University.
About Norval D. Glenn
Full BioUntil shortly before his death on February 15, 2011, Norval D. Glenn was the Ashbel Smith Professor in Sociology and Stiles Professor in American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He was a former editor of Contemporary Sociology and the Journal of Family Issues and served on the editorial boards of such journals as the American Sociological Review, Public Opinion Quarterly, Journal of Marriage and Family, Demography, and Social Science Research. He was a beloved and generous colleague and is missed by us all.
About Karen Clark
Karen Clark found out at 18, after her dad had passed away, that she had been conceived through anonymous sperm donation in 1966. However, it wasn’t until after she had children of her own and realized that her donor-conceived status affects them as well, that she began to actively pursue more information about her biological father’s identity. Karen has been active in donor conception advocacy issues for the past 4 years by encouraging openness and identity release but acknowledges the inherent emotional, social, and ethical difficulties and challenges involved with the practice of donor conception.
Her story was published in the American Adoption Congress Newsletter (The Decree—vol. 23, no. 3, 2007) and she has written 2 essays for Voices of Donor Conception: Behind Closed Doors—Moving Beyond Secrecy and Shame. Karen spoke at the 11th Annual Institute for American Values Symposium (2006) at The New York City Bar Association in response to Elizabeth Marquardt’s study, The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children’s Needs; The World Youth Alliance Symposium on Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Human Person (2008) at the United Nations, New York City; The Infertility Network’s seminar “Getting It Right: Putting Ethics at the Core of Gamete Donation Practice” (2008) in Toronto, Canada and the “Families Created through Donor and Surrogacy, Conversations for Parents” workshop in November 2009 in New York City.
Karen is a co-investigator, with Elizabeth Marquardt and Norval Glenn, of the My Daddy’s Name is Donor study (a representative, comparative study of young adults conceived through sperm donation) through the Institute for American Values.
About the Commission on Parenthood’s Future
The Commission on Parenthood’s Future is an independent, nonpartisan group of scholars and leaders who have come together to investigate the status of parenthood as a legal, ethical, social, and scientific category in contemporary societies and to make recommendations for the future.
Commission members convene scholarly conferences; produce books, reports, and public statements; write for popular and scholarly publications; and engage in public speaking. Its members include the following:
David Blankenhorn, Institute for American Values
Don Browning, University of Chicago Divinity School (Emeritus)
Daniel Cere, McGill University (Canada)
Karen Clark, FamilyScholars.org, co-investigator
Jean Bethke Elshtain, University of Chicago Divinity School
Maggie Gallagher, Institute for Marriage and Public Policy
Norval D. Glenn, University of Texas at Austin, co-investigator
Robert P. George, Princeton University
Amy Laura Hall, Duke University
Timothy P. Jackson, Emory University
Kathleen Kovner Kline, University of Colorado School of Medicine
Suzy Yehl Marta, Rainbows Inc.
Elizabeth Marquardt, Institute for American Values, co-investigator
Mitchell B. Pearlstein, Center of the American Experiment
David Popenoe, Rutgers University (Emeritus)
Stephen G. Post, Center for Medical Humanities, Compassionate Care, and Bioethics at Stony Brook University
Dave Quist, Institute of Marriage and Family Canada
Luis Tellez, Witherspoon Institute
David Quinn, Iona Institute (Ireland)
Amy Wax, University of Pennsylvania Law School
W. Bradford Wilcox, University of Virginia
John Witte, Jr., Emory University
Peter Wood, National Association of Scholars
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Comments (27)
[...] Douthat’s column, “The Birds and the Bees (via the Fertility Clinic)” about our new report, one reader left the following comment at nytimes.com: For possibly the first and last time, Mr. [...]
It is no surprise that these findings are very similar to those who were adopted. We want to know why we are the way we are by looking at those who procreated us. If one of those two is changed, we can’t help but wonder. We are almost compelled to ask because half of the equation is gone. I wonder if the decision to conceive by donor, at any given time, had been replaced by a decision to adopt a child, how different would our society be? Or would it be different with so many less children in need? Our society would span even more ethnic backgrounds and races.
But those conceived deserve the life that was given them through no choice of their own, like all other people previously existing in history.
[...] today’s release of “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation,” the fertility industry and the physicians who claim to abide by a code of ethics should be [...]
And now…. Please do a study of the IVF babies and include in it a true representation of the outcomes; i.e. – multiples, high infant mortality rate, birth defects, etc
Thank you.
[...] throat-clearing, Mindy Jacobs of the Calgary Sun gives her readers a pretty decent wrap-up of our report. Nevertheless, the concerns expressed by the donor kids surveyed reflect genuine anxiety over how [...]
[...] of the nineteen recommendations in our report is this:Â ”Recognize that reproductive technologies create people, not just [...]
[...] is most emphatically not the way the Commission on Parenthood’s Future promoted their recent report on a study of adults conceived through sperm donation. It’s not the angle that Ross Douthat focused on in his op-ed for the New York Times [...]
[...] is most emphatically not the way the Commission on Parenthood’s Future promoted their recent report on a study of adults conceived through sperm donation. It’s not the angle that Ross Douthat focused on in his op-ed for the New York Times yesterday, [...]
[...] just want to note that one way of looking at the My Daddy’s Name is Donor study is as a study of three groups: The first completely one hundred percent wanted and intended [...]
[...] reproductive marketplace that made their existence possible. Their inner lives are the subject of a fascinating study from the Institute for American Values, based on a survey of younger adults, ages 18 to 45, who [...]
Please click on “bioethics” in my website:http://www.csus.edu/indiv/d/dundons/index.htm and then on bioethics and read the article on the “Precautionary Principle” dealing with ART and especially PGD. Note how my concerns were recently confirmed by the research of Prof. Sapienza on the unusual methylation patterns in the IVF babies’ genomes. It strikes me that the workers in IVF are treating 10 million years of evolution as if nothing of significance was accomplished in all that time in the design of human mating, fertility and child rearing.
[...] Institute for American Values has just published a new study, My Daddy’s Name is Donor, of how donor conceived persons are doing in comparison with those who were born and raised by [...]
[...] week “My Daddy’s Name is Donor” was released. This report, which was put together by the Institute for American Values, [...]
[...] him. A few organizations have coordinated studies provide a bit more information on the topic. A study, released by the Commission on Parenthood’s Future, focused on how young-adult donor offspring—compared to those raised in adoptive or biological [...]
[...] a 2010 report, “My Daddy’s Name Is Donor,” from the Institute for American Values, Elizabeth Marquardt, Norval Glenn and Karen Clark note that [...]
[...] a 2010 report, “My Daddy’s Name Is Donor,” from the Institute for American Values, Elizabeth Marquardt, Norval Glenn and Karen Clark note that [...]
[...] del rapporto FamilyScholars.org e coautrice, insieme a Norval D. Guenn e Karen Clark, dello studio My Daddy’s Name is Donor, ovvero “Mio papà si chiama donatore”, condotto su un campione di 485 adulti di età compresa [...]
[...] del rapporto FamilyScholars.org e coautrice, insieme a Norval D. Guenn e Karen Clark, dello studio My Daddy’s Name is Donor, ovvero “Mio papà si chiama donatore”, condotto su un campione di 485 adulti di età compresa [...]
[...] http://familyscholars.org/my-daddys-name-is-donor-2/ [...]
[...] “A few organizations have coordinated studies provide a bit more information on the topic. A study, released by the Commission on Parenthood’s Future, focused on how young-adult donor offspring—compared to those raised in adoptive or biological [...]
[...] the genetic father of the specific child, but he is usually not planned to be the legal father.Sperm donation is a process by which a man donates his sperm in the direction of impregnating a lad… WordPress › Error html { background: #f9f9f9; } body { background: #fff; color: #333; [...]
[...] and a team of family scholars produced a deeply disturbing 140-page report entitled “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived through Sperm Donation.” According to the report, [...]
[...] much talked about report of hers was “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A New Study of Young Adults Conceived Through Sperm Donation&… which concludes: …on average, young adults conceived through sperm donation are hurting [...]
What a clever title!
Sudhanwa, Our website runs on the open srucoe BlogEngine.net software, which is a .Net application.The design and hosting for our website was donated to us by a very generous company that happens to be a Windows shop.We welcome involvement and contributions from whomever is willing, even if it involves the use of proprietary software.
Studies like this bring up some great discussions. Looking forward to more articles like this.
Has anyone here been in the situation of being conceived via a donor?
I wonder what ultimate role that the genetics of IVF play int he passing on of neurological disorders. Maybe there should start to be a ASD test of IVF donors prior to donation because IF autism spectrum disorders turn out to be genetic it should definitely be a disclosed test for IVF recipients.