In October 2022, research was presented at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine Conference: Psychosocial Outcomes of Children Born via Embryo Donation.

The objective of the study was to assess parents’ perception of the psychosocial adjustment of their children born via embryo donation and their relationships.

The hypotheses of the study were:

  • Donor-conceived children born via embryo donation are psychosocially well-adjusted
  • Parents perceive good relationships with their children born via embryo donation

While the conclusion of this research is objectively positive, what makes it even better is that a large number of the interviewees were parents who received their embryos through the Snowflakes Embryo Adoption Program. This was not just a study on embryo donation, but a study largely compromised of parents who adopted through Snowflakes. These families are reporting that their embryo-adopted children are psychosocially well adjusted and they have positive relationships with them.

One finding to note is that not only are embryo-adopted children adjusting well, but that their PARQ results are higher than children born through natural conception! To understand this let us explore what PARQ results represent.

PARQ stands for Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire. The Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences defines PARQ as follows:

“The Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ) is a self-report questionnaire designed to assess children’s current perceptions and adults’ retrospective remembrances of the degree to which they experienced parental (maternal and paternal) acceptance or rejection in childhood. The measure consists of four scales:

  • warmth and affection (or coldness and lack of affection, when reverse scored),
  • hostility and aggression,
  • indifference and neglect, and
  • undifferentiated rejection. Undifferentiated rejection refers to individuals’ feelings that the parent does not really love them, want them, appreciate them, or care about them in some other way without necessarily having any objective indicator that the parent is cold, aggressive, or…”[1]

The Psychosocial Outcomes of Children Born via Embryo Donation study reported that a great PARQ score is typically 24. The parents whose children were born from embryo adoption reported an average of 27.4—3.4 points higher! What a positive assurance that children born from embryo adoption are able to adjust to their origin story just as well, if not better, than their peers conceived naturally.

If you are interested in adopting embryos or donating your remaining embryos through the Snowflakes Adoption Program, please contact us at info@snowflakes.org.

To learn more about embryo adoption or donation, visit EmbryoAdoption.org.

[1] Rohner, R.P., Ali, S. (2020). Parental Acceptance-Rejection Questionnaire (PARQ). In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_56
Loading...