hen Alice, now 39, first started thinking about having a child solo, the idea of using a sperm bank “felt so strange”. She didn’t know how to pick from the list of potential donors, whose attributes ranged far and wide: bass players, English university majors and men with blue eyes. To Alice, choosing a close friend as a donor “felt simpler and richer”.
Today, Alice’s daughter, whose biological father is a friend Alice lived with during graduate school, is three years old. “He was the obvious choice,” Alice says of her donor. “I honestly don’t have that many cis male friends that I’m really close to.” Over brunch, she asked him if he would be open to donating his sperm, and he gamely said yes.
Alice remains in close touch with her donor and his partner, whom Alice and her own partner refer to as their daughter’s “uncle” and “aunt”. “I liked the idea of my kid getting to have some relationship with the [donor],” says California-based Alice. It also presented the “possibility for broader community and queer familial structures”.
During the past several years, the gap between LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people planning to expand their families is shrinking. According to 2018 data from the US-based LGBTQ Family Building Survey, 48% of LGBTQ millennials have made the decision to increase their family size, versus 55% of non-LGBTQ millennials. In contrast to past numbers, nearly 70% of non-LGBTQ individuals older than 55 have children, compared to just 28% of LGBTQ people in that age group.
For certain LGBTQ couples who can’t have biological children together, sperm donations have become increasingly attractive. Australian data from 2018, for example, indicates that single women and lesbian couples made up 85% of sperm donor recipients that year.
Many queer couples seeking sperm want the experience to be personal, which means choosing to know who the sperm donor is. Several reasons drive this choice, such as knowing about the future child’s biological parents, being in touch with them for medical questions and creating an extended family. While this is possible if a couple goes through a sperm bank or other type of connection service, choosing a friend or personal relation for the donation is less costly.
Regardless, these choices require a careful, deliberate thought process that involves emotional, financial and legal considerations that affect not just the lives of the parents and donors, but also those of their future children.
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Lisa Schuman says she’s been seeing “more and more” future parents opt for friend or family member donations throughout the past several years (Credit: Getty Images)
Changing shape of families
While plenty of services exist today to help LGBTQ couples conceive via sperm donation, that was not the case when Lisa Schuman, founder of the Center for Family Building, started working in the industry more than 20 years ago in New York.
Among the leading organizations at the time – like the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the American Fertility Association – there weren’t “any queer people being represented at all”, she says. Many queer couples she spoke with would consider adoption as the primary option for starting a family. “They really didn’t understand that there were many other options for them,” says Schuman.
Schuman started a workshop for LGBTQ parents looking to start families at the Gay and Lesbian Center in New York City, through which she could teach them about options other than adoption. Early on, she recalls, only about five people would show up per session. “I just kept doing it,” she says. About a decade later, a lecture she hosted for prospective lesbian parents attracted 100 people. “The legalization of gay marriage [in 2015] helped a lot,” she says. Through efforts like Schuman’s, LGBTQ families got to learn more about their family-building options.
Still, while there are anecdotal accounts of growing interest, it’s difficult to find data on how many LGBTQ couples opt to use friends or family members as donors, as opposed to donors found through sperm banks.
Laura Goldberger has spent two decades as a psychotherapist running groups for LGBTQ parents trying to conceive. Goldberger says about half the couples they speak with opt for a donor they already know, versus one found through an outside service or sperm bank – that rate has remained the same throughout their experience. Schuman, however, says she’s been seeing “more and more” future parents opt for friend or family member donations throughout the past several years.
A ‘wonderful, gentle presence’
Alice’s choice wasn’t just obvious to her because the sperm bank route felt alienating – she also knew immediately whom she would ask to donate. She and her male friend were part of the same community, having worked on a political project together and attended the same graduate school. She trusted him deeply.
Over brunch, Alice asked him if he would be open to donating his sperm, and he gamely said yes
“I knew that our community would hold us both to being responsible with the ways in which we were forming a queer family,” she says, acknowledging that their relationship did not exist in a vacuum, but rather that their mutual friends would help ensure they maintained healthy communication.
Alice and her donor friend also had numerous, lengthy conversations about their expectations, spanning his family’s medical history, what his role would and wouldn’t consist of as the donor and how his family would be involved in the child’s life. They also had a conference call with his parents and sister to help clear up misunderstandings about the donor-child relationship they’d decided on. “I was glad we had the conversation,” she says. “They’ve been a wonderful, gentle presence throughout [the child’s life].”
Navigating ‘ruthless’ conversations
Of course, even with the closest friends, unexpected problems can arise with something so sensitive and impactful as a new human life.
“Everybody thinks, we’ve got this down, everything’s going to be fine – we’re best friends,” says Schuman. “But people go into marriages with the same idea, thinking they’re going to be together forever, and it doesn’t always happen.” Schuman stresses the importance of counselling pre-donation to make sure the recipient, their partner (if they have one) and the donor are all on the same page.
Source: BBC