Since I watched the 2010 movie ‘The Kids Are All
Right’, I have not been able to stop thinking about it. It is a unusual film
with an uncommon theme and a different script but the questions which it left
in my mind about family, parenting, genealogy and heredity are ubiquitous,
especially with growing single-parent families, homosexual-parents families and
increase in number of children born through Assisted Reproductive Technologies
(ARTs).
The film’s story is fairly straightforward when
viewed from a very cursory standpoint. A lesbian couple bears babies from the
sperms of the same donor. When the kids grow up, they try to find their
sperm-donor-father. Once they meet him, they start building an attachment with
him. This bond of affection between the sperm-donor and the children is
disliked by one of the mothers and leads to entanglements and later conflicts
with the donor. While at one point of the time it looked as if the kinship
would crumble because of the presence of this ‘external yet close’ man,
relations garnered over the course of over 15 years triumph and the family
stays together with this ‘extra-family’ man being shown the exit door.
However this simple-looking story poses many
questions, some even on the ethics of the use of science in human lives. While
the two children (a girl and a boy) got somewhat close to their biological
father, I wonder if it would have been the case had they been raised by a
straight couple. Was it the lack of a male parent which led to immediate
affection with an ‘outsider’? in the movie, we see that the two mothers were
also comfortable with the kids spending ‘quality’ time with their biological
dad, could a straight couple ever accept this?
The movie also got me perplexed at how human
relations are shaped by the socio-political and legal conditions. Despite the
fact that the sperm-donor was indeed the biological and ‘real’ father of the
kids, he was completely treated as an outsider, initially by one of the mother
and later by the entire family. This might look quite logical to anyone as
someone who was not present in the lives of the kids for 18 and 15 years of
their lives respectively and has no legal ties with them cannot be their
‘father’. However, this does not change the genealogy and hereditary facts.
While society and law might take away the fatherhood or motherhood rights from
a person based on particular socio-political constructs, for genealogy and
heredity, parenthood is ascribed only to those who egg or sperm was involved in
the reproduction of the child. While it is easy for heredity or law to ascribe
parenthood to a person, it makes me thinking whether the same ease lies for a
child who was adopted by her legal parents from the real ones.
While dealing with these entanglements in the
domains of legality, genealogy, heredity, parenting and family, questions about
the ethics of ARTs also come into the limelight. During the first ‘extended’
family meetings with the biological father of her kids, one of the mothers
asks, “I remember when I was reading your file, back when we were looking for
you know, sperm... Anyway, you said that you were studying international
relations.” after being told that he worked in the food services industry.
While it might look pretty ‘normal’ for a lady to go through the file of the
sperm donor, moral questions start arising when the selection is made on the
bases of the credentials of the donor. While it might somewhat look like
natural selection, the differences are quite stark. And these issues take center
stage when parents start selecting particular attribute not to mention the
commodification of gametes which is underlying here.
As the movie progresses, relationships grow stronger
between the sperm-donor dad and the family. Not only the kids start getting
attached to their biological father, one of their mothers gets close to him and
ends up having intimate encounters. And when the family becomes aware of these
sexual intercourses, tension develops leaving to a situation where it looked
that the family would be shattered. But the bonds of love and belonging triumph
over the biological kinship and the children unite with their mothers leaving
behind their biological father.
