The whole world has changed in the last fifty years or less. At one time, people just got married and had a family and that was all there was to it. Families came in all sizes, and since contraception was in its infancy, as we knew it of course, most used a bit of the rhythm method to either have babies or to not have babies along with rubbers. All of that was hit or miss at best, but once a child was born into a family it was loved and taken care of. If a woman had a baby out of wedlock, it was a shame on her whole family, and many just went away to an aunt or another relative and had the baby and gave it up for adoption. Sometimes there was someone in the family who could not conceive, and the baby was adopted within the family. And if you could not conceive within a marriage, adoption was your only recourse, and at best it was hard to do with social workers examining every aspect of your life. Many older children were simply put into orphanages if their parents divorced or one died and the family could not take care of them. It was a much simpler time even if it could be harsh and unforgiving. Many infertile couples simply longed for children they could never have.
Then oral contraception for women was finally a reality. It was only given by doctors to married women with a husbands consent at first. The first pills were very strong and would never be used now and had some side effects, but it did free couples that wanted to plan and space their families or have no more children at all. The pills did not work for all women and some could not take them because of side effects, but it was the first step in controlling pregnancy. The pills, however, did nothing to help a couple who wanted to have a family. Those couples still only had adoption as an option and in some parts of the country, babies were even sold to the highest bidder by unscrupulous doctors wanting the line their pockets with cash. In many cases, unwed mothers were kept from seeing even family members and never even told the sex of the child they had delivered. Sometimes even their signatures were forged on papers by the very same doctors who were selling the babies. In these cases, the adoptive parents had no social workers to interview them and decide on their abilities to parent. The babies had birth certificates made in the adoptive parents names without what should have been the original birth certificate even being registered with the county where the child had been born. Those children, when they were grown, had no way to find out any information on their birth parents at all, not even health questions. Many were never told they were adopted, or, in some cases, only knew from hearing a discussion among family members. Sometimes not even the parents knew anything about the birth mother.
A married couple sometimes did not know which one of them was responsible for not being able to conceive. As time went on, there were tests that could be done, mostly on the woman. It was mainly male doctors who did these tests and it could have been that they did not want a man to feel less of a man by being told he was infertile. When the male tests were used, and the man found out he was infertile, the couple did no more about having children. Next came sperm donations. Some couples used this method, and in many cases, it was just intelligent young men in college who donated sperm. The techniques were in their infancy and the sperm was just placed in a woman’s vagina when a doctor found her to be in her most fertile time. More often than not, no pregnancy resulted. They would try month after month until the woman got pregnant or the couple just got tired of trying. There was very little information given about the sperm donor, but sometimes, if a couple had enough money, certain specific traits in the donor were guaranteed so that the baby would look more like its parents.
Now the whole area of medicine is specialized. If a couple is having problems getting pregnant, the man is usually the first one tested because the test is so easy. If he is fertile, then further testing is done on the wife. Even if he is infertile or has lazy sperm or a low sperm count, a husbands own sperm can now be used after his wife has undergone several months of medication for her to ripen as many eggs as is possible. The lab then picks out the best sperm and injects it into an egg. No longer is just a petri dish used for fertilization. If enough eggs become fertilized, several are put into the wife’s uterus at the same time, as some may not attach in the right way and be lost. This whole procedure has made many families happy. Now there are even ways for young women, many who need money for college, to donate eggs through egg donor agencies. Usually in this case, a couple will use the father’s sperm and employ a surrogate to carry the child to term. There are more serious legal ramifications of this process, but in many cases it works to everyone’s satisfaction. There is a health history taken and given to the parents for the child to have, or barring that, the information is available if needed for the future. In some cases, children born with the same sperm donor have found each other on line and have met. And some of the fathers have met their offspring also. But if they have requested that their names never be known, their privacy is closely guarded and the children are only given a number assigned by the sperm donor bank. It really is a brave new world.
