Divorce Discourse as a Kinship Resource in Lesbian Known Donor Reproduction: “The Dad has Bubba on the Weekend”

Abstract

Assisted conception practices contribute to an increasingly complex relational landscape. This article draws from a qualitative study that investigated narratives about the negotiation of relatedness in lesbian known donor reproduction in Aotearoa New Zealand. Twenty-six interviews, with 60 adults, across 21 lesbian known donor familial configurations at different stages of forming family through known donor insemination were conducted. The article demonstrates how parties using this form of insemination – lesbian couples, known donors and known donor partners – invoke divorce discourse as a kinship resource. The families these women and men were creating or had already established were the product of deliberate pre-conception planning rather than the result of separation or divorce following the breakdown of an intimate relationship. Nevertheless, divorce discourse supported them to make sense of possibilities for the kin status and place of known donors and their partners within the kinship structures put around children given they have no obvious place within these structures. The article argues the use of divorce conventions serves to both disrupt and uphold traditional parenting discourses and practices.