Adults with lesbian parents “generally felt positive about their donor conception, realizing that it enabled them to be born into a loving family that very much wanted them,” according to recent findings from the longest-running study of lesbian families.
A New Study from the NLLFS
The results come from a new paper by the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), which has focused on the same group of subjects since 1986, when the researchers began interviewing the inseminating or pregnant parents. Previous NLLFS papers have found, among other things, that the offspring, now in their early 30s, were generally satisfied with the amount of contact they have with their donors, whether or not they know them, and that they were generally satisfied with their knowledge of and contact level with their donor siblings. The current study built on those, looking at the offsprings’ general feelings about being donor conceived.
The researchers say this is the first qualitative study focusing on “feelings about DI [donor insemination] among established [not young] adult offspring of lesbian parents” and the first to look at “what it meant to be donor conceived in the era of direct-to-consumer DNA testing, based on reflections by established adults.”
The study included 75 adult offspring from the original 84 families, an impressive 90% family retention rate. One-third of the offspring have known their donors since childhood; roughly another third have open-identity donors (who agreed to contact when the child turned 18), and another third have unknown donors. Of the 24 offspring (32%) with open-identity donors, nine (38%) had contacted their donor since age 18, and 15 (63%) had not. Just over half of the total offspring had located donor siblings.
Key Findings
Most agreed that their nontraditional conception had influenced their concept of family, even positively affecting their own ability to parent.
The findings show that the offspring “were grateful that the technology existed to allow parents with minoritized sexual identities to have children back in the 1980s,” and that, “Most agreed that their nontraditional conception had influenced their concept of family, even positively affecting their own ability to parent.” Many also said they were willing to be gamete donors themselves. (Those who weren’t mentioned the relative difficulty of donating eggs versus sperm, personal health reasons, and the inability to stay emotionally unattached.)
These findings contrast with those of many previous studies of donor conceived people (DCPs), which have focused on those with heterosexual parents. The NLLFS researchers explain that “Heterosexual parents who use DI often keep this information from their children due to societal stigma or the shame of male infertility.” In one 2000 study of DCPs with heterosexual parents, for example, “Many participants wrote that they felt shock, confusion and challenges to their identity upon learning of their DI. This discovery disrupted their relationship with their parents and also resulted in some attempts to search for their sperm donor as a way of making a genetic connection.”
Because the offspring knew of their DI from an early age, they did not perceive this information as a threat to their personal or family identity.
The NLLFS offspring, however, “grew up among other families with parents with minoritized sexual identities, where the presence of sperm donors and donor siblings was not as unusual as it might have been in heterosexual-parent families,” the paper stated. It found that “Because the offspring knew of their DI from an early age, they did not perceive this information as a threat to their personal or family identity.” As one respondent said:
I am grateful for the two amazing moms that raised me, and I wouldn’t trade the family I am from for a more ‘conventional’ family. Having two moms has made ME. And, having a donor is an integral part of that, even though he is not a part of my life. I couldn’t be here without him.
The researchers note, too, that some of the NLLFS offspring had never thought about their donor conception or donor siblings, or knew they had no donor siblings. Most prior studies of DCPs, however, “used respondents recruited via DI banks or registries, particularly the Donor Sibling Registry…. This might have biased the results in the direction of offspring who wanted to find their donor, donor siblings or other genetic relatives.”
This means, the researchers say, that “the NLLFS offspring, with a diversity of sperm donor types, are a better indicator of the general population of offspring born to parents with minoritized sexual identities than are offspring using donor registries in order to find donor relatives.”
Some of the offspring did describe difficulties such as childhood challenges with feeling different, challenges with the donor himself, or a lack of medical information about him. At least one said they were teased about having two moms or were questioned about how they were created, but one tempered this by noting, “I wouldn’t say it was terribly challenging, just a point of confusion for some people.”
Further Takeaways
This study is important because of the light it sheds on DCPs with queer parents—DCPs whose views on DI may differ from those of DCPs with heterosexual, cisgender parents.
They admit that the NLLFS has some limitations, however, notably that “the offspring and parents are overwhelmingly White and well educated.” They call for future research on adult DCPs “who are more diverse in terms of race, ethnicity and socioeconomic class.”
I’ll add that it is important to understand how both DCPs with LGBTQ parents and those with heterosexual, cisgender parents feel about being DCPs because many government entities are considering donor-identity release legislation and other bills impacting assisted reproduction and reproductive rights. Not all DCPs feel the same about their experience of being DCPs, and we need to make sure a wide range of voices are heard as this legislation is shaped. The NLLFS findings can contribute to that.
The full paper is: “Adult Offspring of Lesbian Parents Reflect on Having Been Donor Conceived: Feelings About Their Sperm Donor and Donor Siblings,” by Esther D. Rothblum, Henny M. W. Bos, Audrey S. Koh, Nicola Carone, and Nanette K. Gartrell. Couple and Family Psychology: Research and Practice. Advance online publication.
In Addition
I’ve written many more posts about previous NLLFS findings. One of my favorites is about a 2019 paper on what the NLLFS parents said were the best and most challenging parts of 25 years of parenthood. I’ve also had the pleasure of interviewing founder and lead researcher Dr. Nanette Gartrell twice, once in 2008 when the offspring were teens, and once in 2018 when they were 25.
Want more on talking with kids about donor conception?
- For young children: The picture books from my Database of LGBTQ Family Books tagged “Sperm donor” and “Assisted reproduction.”
- For middle-grade readers: Roads to Family: All the Ways We Come to Be, but please read my review at the link for one major error.
- For older youth and adults: COLAGE’s “Donor Conceived: A Guide for People Who Have LGBTQ+ Parents and Were Born via Donor Conception and/or Surrogacy.”
- For adults: LGBTQ Family Building, Your Future Family, and Building Your Family each offer useful advice on talking with kids about donor conception, but again, see my reviews for some errors and shortcomings. Random Families: Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin is a more academic but still very readable book about donor kin networks in both queer and non-queer families.