Susan Golombok – We Are Family: What Really Matters for Parents and Children – Keynote at Treoir AGM

| Treoir AGM | June 24th 2023 | 

Treoir’s keynote speaker in 2023 was Dr. Susan Golombok, Professor Emerita of Family Research and former Director of the Centre for Family Research UK at the University of Cambridge and author of ‘We Are Family: What Really Matters for Parents and Children”. Her research examines the impact of new family forms on parenting and child development, specifically lesbian mother families, gay father families, single mothers by choice, and families created by assisted reproductive technologies including in vitro fertilization (IVF), donor insemination, egg donation and surrogacy. Her research has not only challenged commonly held assumptions about these families but also has contested widely held theories of child development by demonstrating that structural aspects of the family, such as the number, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and genetic relatedness of parents, is less important for children’s psychological wellbeing than the quality of family relationships.