Many LGBTQ couples are choosing to start families with donations from friends or acquaintances, which is redefining modern family structures.
The idea of using a sperm bank “felt so strange” to Alice, now 39, when she first considered having a child on her own. She had no idea how to choose from the list of potential donors, whose characteristics ranged from bass players to English university majors to men with blue eyes. Choosing a close friend as a donor “felt simpler and richer” to Alice.
Alice’s daughter is now three years old, and her biological father is a friend Alice lived with during graduate school. “He was the obvious choice,” says Alice of her donor. “I honestly don’t have many cis male friends with whom I’m close.” She asked him over brunch if he would be willing to donate his sperm, and he enthusiastically agreed. 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 child having some relationship with the [donor],” Alice, who lives in California, says. It also presented the “possibility for broader community and queer familial structures”.
The gap between LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ people planning to expand their families has narrowed in recent years. According to the 2018 LGBTQ Family Building Survey, 48% of LGBTQ millennials have decided to increase their family size, compared to 55% of non-LGBTQ millennials. In contrast to previous statistics, nearly 70% of non-LGBTQ people over the age of 55 have children, compared to only 28% of LGBTQ people in that age group.
Sperm donations have become increasingly appealing for certain LGBTQ couples who are unable to have biological children together. According to Australian data from 2018, single women and lesbian couples accounted for 85% of sperm donor recipients that year.
Many queer couples looking for sperm want a personalised experience. which implies deciding to find out who the sperm donor is. Several factors influence this decision, including knowing the biological parents of the future child, communicating with them for medical questions, and creating an extended family. While this is possible if a couple uses a sperm bank or other type of connection service, donating to a friend or personal relation is less expensive.
Regardless, these decisions necessitate a careful, deliberate thought process that includes emotional, financial, and legal considerations that affect not only the parents’ and donors’ lives, but also the lives of their future children.
Changing shape of families
While there are many services available today to assist LGBTQ couples in conceiving through sperm donation, this was not the case when Lisa Schuman, founder of the Center for Family Building, began working in the industry in New York more than 20 years ago.
She claims that there were no “queer people being represented at all” among the leading organisations at the time, such as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the American Fertility Association. Many of the queer couples she spoke with would prefer to start a family through adoption. “They really didn’t realise there were so many other options for them,” Schuman says.
At the Gay and Lesbian Center in New York City, Schuman launched a workshop for LGBTQ parents looking to start families. She could use this to teach them about alternatives to adoption. Initially, she recalls, only about five people would attend each session. “I just continued doing it,” she says. A decade later, she hosted a lecture for prospective lesbian parents that drew 100 people. “The legalisation of gay marriage [in 2015] was extremely beneficial,” she says. LGBTQ families learned more about their family-building options thanks to efforts like Schuman’s.
While there are anecdotal reports of increased interest, it’s difficult to find data on how many LGBTQ couples choose to use friends or family members as donors rather than sperm banks.
Laura Goldberger has spent the last two decades as a psychotherapist leading support groups for LGBTQ parents who are trying to conceive. According to Goldberger, approximately half of the couples they speak with prefer a donor they already know over one found through an outside service or sperm bank – a rate that has remained consistent throughout their experience. Schuman, on the other hand, says she’s seen “more and more” future parents opt for friend or family member donations in recent years.
A ‘wonderful, gentle presence’
Alice’s decision was not only obvious because the sperm bank route felt alienating to her; she also knew right away who she would ask to donate. She and her male friend shared a community, having worked on a political project and attending the same graduate school. She had complete faith in him.
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 accountable for how we were forming a queer family,” she says, acknowledging that their relationship did not exist in a vacuum and that their mutual friends would help ensure they maintained healthy communication.
Alice and her donor friend also had several lengthy discussions about their expectations, covering his family’s medical history, what his role as the donor would and would not entail, and how his family would be involved in the child’s life. They also held a conference call with his parents and sister to clear up any confusion about the donor-child relationship they’d chosen. “I’m glad we talked about it,” she says. “They’ve been wonderful and gentle.”
Navigating ‘ruthless’ conversations
Of course, even with the closest of friends, unexpected problems can arise when dealing with something as delicate and life-changing as a new human life.
“Everyone thinks, we’ve got this down, everything’ll be fine – we’re best friends,” Schuman says. “However, people enter marriage with the expectation that they will be together forever, which does not always happen.” Schuman emphasises the importance of pre-donation counselling to ensure that the recipient, their partner (if they have one), and the donor are all on the same page.
Erika Tranfield, 41, founder and director of Pride Angel, a service based in the Northwest UK that connects recipients with sperm donors they don’t already know, agrees.
but would like to meet and speak with before proceeding with the donation process. Tranfield says it can be difficult to ask “ruthless” and uncomfortable questions, such as religious beliefs and child discipline, to a potential donor when that donor is already a friend. Tranfield founded Pride Angel in 2009 to avoid those difficult conversations with friends, as well as to find her own donor with her now ex-wife. Pride Angel is now used by approximately 25,000 sperm recipients in the UK, US, and Europe.