Contact Among Donor Insemination (DI) Families Who Share the Same Sperm Donor

Abstract

Recently, families who share the same sperm donor have started to contact each other. We examined the experience of a sample of these families to address the following questions: (i) who wants contact, (ii) what is the outcome of contact, (iii) what purposes does contact serve, and (iv) how do participants view the relationship between families? Study I: retrospective survey; Study II: cross-sectional comparison of archived data. Study I: We invited birth mothers from the first cohort of matched families (n = 23) at a DI program to complete an anonymous mail-back questionnaire about their contact experiences. Open-ended, adjective-endorsement, and 5-point rating scale questions focused on (i) family structure and demographics, (ii) contact experience, and (iii) how parents and children viewed their relationship to the other families. Study II: Family structure data (lesbian couple-, heterosexual couple-, or single woman-headed families) were available about the DI program’s families (n = 1227), as well as about the sub-sample of current participants in the program’s family matching service (n = 138). This allowed us to test whether families who wanted contact differed in structure from the DI program’s families as a whole. We used descriptive statistics and chi-square tests to analyze the data. Study I: 18 families received a questionnaire, 13 returned it. Lesbian couples headed 46% of the families, single women 46%, and heterosexual couples 8%. All families had 1 child, with median age at contact being 4 years (range: 6 mo to 9 yrs). Families lived all over the US. Most families (77%) made the initial contact by phone (remainder by email or mail), with contact always being between the parents. The overall contact experience was positive (average rating, X = 4.6, where 1 = very negative, 3 = neutral, 5 = very positive). The content of the first interaction focused mainly on comparing information about the children and discussing disclosure issues around DI use. The primary reason reported for wanting contact was to create family for the children (given by 77%) and/or address curiosity about the donor by comparing similarities in the children (31%). Most children (62%) were too young to understand that contact had occurred or who the other family was. Those 5 who could understand, however, were described as being very positive and excited (80%) or simply curious (n = 1). Parents most often described their own relationship to the matched family as acquaintances (endorsed by 39%). Slightly fewer said family (31%), friends (23%), or friends/family (8%). Parents reported that their children (7 were now old enough to respond) viewed their relationship as family (57%) or did not know how to describe it (43%). Finally, most families (85%) had ongoing contact with each other. Study II: Data from families in the family matching service indicated that they differed in structure from the DI program’s families as a whole. Families headed by single women were overrepresented in the family matching service, heterosexual couples underrepresented (X22 = 36.9; p< .001). Preliminary findings indicate that contact can be a positive experience for families who share the same donor and is reported to occur to help create extended family for the children. Single women, who usually have the smallest families, are overrepresented in the family matching service, a finding consistent with the idea of using the service to create family.