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Chapter 8 - ‘It’s All on Their Terms’

Donors Navigating Relationships with Recipient Families in an Age of Openness

from Part II - Children’s and Adults’ Lived Experiences in Diverse Donor-Linked Families

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2023

By
Leah Gilman  and
Petra Nordqvist
Edited by
Fiona Kelly ,
Deborah Dempsey  and
Adrienne Byrt
Fiona Kelly
Affiliation:
La Trobe University, Victoria
Deborah Dempsey
Affiliation:
Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria
Adrienne Byrt
Affiliation:
Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria
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Summary

In recent decades, a number of jurisdictions have moved towards more open practices in donor conception, including legislating for the rights of donor-conceived people to trace their donor. In such contexts, the donor’s role is ambivalent. They are not expected to enact a parental role in relation to people conceived from their donation. However, they are expected to ‘be available’ for some form of relationship. Our UK-based research found that donors typically navigate these dual obligations by articulating a moral commitment to ‘following the lead’ of the families they help to create and particularly the people conceived from their donation. In this chapter, we illustrate how sperm and egg donors imagine and enact this commitment but also show that it is easier to say than to do. The embedded nature of donors’ personal lives and relationships create challenges in letting others decide their role in relation to recipient families.

Keywords

opennesspolicy‘good donors’sperm donoregg donorauthorityrelationalityembeddedpersonal liferelational networks
Type
Chapter
Information
Donor-Linked Families in the Digital Age
Relatedness and Regulation
 , pp. 138 - 153
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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