Adults with LGBTQ parents have been in the media lately talking about the varied meanings of genetic connections and donor kin, facing discrimination, the pressure to conform, finding community, and advocating for themselves and their families. Take a look at these good reads!
- Jordan Budd, executive director of COLAGE, the organization for people with LGBTQ parents, spoke with Amy Dockser Marcus of the Wall Street Journal about the unintended consequences that laws requiring gamete donor disclosure can have for people with LGBTQ parents. The experiences of “people whose [straight, cisgender] parents kept their origins a secret,” he said, “are different from the experiences of people in LGBTQ families who relied on egg and sperm donors and who tell their children they are donor-conceived.” For LGBTQ families, having a donor in the picture may present legal hurdles. (As a recent report from the Movement Advancement Project, COLAGE, and other organizations makes clear, several states have recently taken parentage away from a nongenetic parent in a same-sex couple and given it to the donor.) COLAGE is working with the U.S. Donor Conceived Council, many of whose members have non-LGBTQ parents who hid their donor conception from them, to “find common ground” regarding donor disclosure legislation. (Free account required to view.)
- “‘We do feel like family. We are also kind of strangers.’ When children of queer parents discover their DNA,” by Emily St. James at LGBTQ Nation, profiles Sofia Carianna, who has two moms and two dads, and found genetic siblings via 23andMe when she turned 18. The article also interviews Ember Carianna, Sofia’s birth mother; psychiatry professor and queer mom Dr. Susan Vaughan, who started her family via donor conception; Savvy Vaughan-Wasser, her oldest daughter; and several other health care professionals, who speak about some of the issues that may come up for children of LGBTQ parents meeting donor kin.
- If you’re interested in this topic and want more perspectives, I highly recommend Random Families: Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin, by Rosanna Hertz and Margaret K. Nelson, which thoughfully explores how donor kin networks have evolved and the benefits and challenges for children and parents in them. It is based upon interviews with 212 parents and 154 of their donor-conceived children, and looks at how the parents chose donors, how they and/or their children chose to connect with donor siblings, and how the children within a donor network made sense of their donor and each other.
- Reina Gattuso of Rewire News Group spoke with Jordan Budd of COLAGE and other adult children and grandchildren of LGBTQ people “to hear their experiences of family, discrimination, and care.” The first part of this two-part series “looks at who LGBTQ+ families are, and how histories of institutional racism shape today’s anti-trans and queer legislation.” The second part “examine[s] how discrimination shapes queer and trans families’ daily lives, and how the children of LGBTQ+ people support one another as they advocate for a more liberated world.” Both parts are worth a read.
- Finally, a resource that I’ve written about before but is always worth a mention: COLAGE’s “Donor Conceived: A Guide for People Who Have LGBTQ+ Parents and Were Born via Donor Conception and/or Surrogacy” is invaluable for donor-conceived youth and adults—but also feels critical for parents and others supporting them.