A look at how trans and non-binary people negotiate relationships with known donors
Men, trans/masculine, and non-binary people’s accounts of sperm donors and their relationships to children. (Riggs, 2023)
Riggs, D. W., Hines, S., Pearce, R., Pfeffer, C. A., & White, F. R. (2023). ‘Spunkles’, donors, and fathers: Men, trans/masculine, and non-binary people’s accounts of sperm donors and their relationships to children. In F. Kelly, D. Dempsey, & A. Byrt (Eds.), Donor-linked families in the digital age (pp. 234–257). Cambridge University Press.
Geographic Region: Australia, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States
Research Question: How do men, trans/masculine, and non-binary people who conceive using known donor sperm understand and navigate disclosure of donor conception to their children, and how do they negotiate relationships with donors and facilitate children’s agency in determining those relationships?
Design: A thematic analysis of qualitative data from the Trans Pregnancy Project, a large international study of men, trans/masculine, and non-binary people’s experiences with pregnancy. Data collection occurred between June 2018 and October 2019 through semi-structured interviews conducted in person or via video conference. Interviews ranged from less than 60 minutes to over 3 hours, with an average length of 100 minutes.
Sample: 9 participants from the broader study of 51 men, trans/masculine, and non-binary people. Participants in this subsample had an average age of 34 years (range 24–49) and identified as non-binary, trans male, trans man, transmasculine, or genderqueer. Most participants had one child (range 1–3). Three were single, two were in relationships with cis women, and four were in relationships with cis men. All participants in this subsample conceived using sperm from a known donor who was either a friend or an acquaintance. Participants lived in Australia, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, or the United States, though almost half the subsample was from Australia. The study does not report participants’ race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education level, or details about disclosure status, timing of disclosure to children, or whether children had identified genetic relatives.
Key Findings
Most participants were clear from the outset about what role they wanted the donor to play and used this to guide their donor search. The predominant pattern was a desire for donors to be known to the child but not to serve as co-parents. A smaller number of participants narrated a relationship in which the donor was involved in children’s lives and trusted as a father figure.
‘For me it was like, I don’t know, an act of rebellion but also solidarity, of queer solidarity. I always wanted to have an open donor, I find it very important for the kid to be afterwards able to at least see a face and reach out. I don’t want any responsibility for the other biologically involved person, but I find it’s very important for the kid to be able to at least get an impression of you.’
Some participants created kinship with donors and their families through explicit negotiation. This brought donors and their families into relationship with recipients and children while maintaining a distinction between biological relatedness and recognized social kinship. For others, the social kinship decision was made by the parents and communicated to the donor, not negotiated collaboratively.
“We spent time contracting together and figuring out what it is that felt important to us. And so, he’s the kid’s Spunkle, and in their lives as extended family. His parents are GrandSpunkle and GrandSparkle, and know the kids, and the kids know them. And that’s actually been a very rich and lovely process …”
“I mean they would only count [partner]’s parents and my parents as their grandparents. Grandspunkle and Grandsparkle are a different deal. They’re not grandparents. I don’t know. They’re grandparent-adjacent.”
Some participants emphasized the importance of allowing children to determine their own relationships with donors, though parents created conditions enabling that possibility. For example, one person initially conceived as a ‘single person with a donor’ with no explicit plan for the donor’s role in the ‘family structure.’ However, as the child entered toddlerhood and the donor became more visible in the child’s life, the parent and the donor began allowing the relationship to unfold more organically than initially envisioned. Another parent left it up to the donor to decide if he wanted to be involved or not, and for the child and donor to be able to establish their own relationships, despite harboring trust concerns about the donor in other contexts.
Limitations: The subsample is small, and demographic information is limited. The analysis focuses only on known donor conception and does not address people who conceived in other ways.
Applications: Future research should intentionally recruit men, trans/masculine, and non-binary people across the full spectrum of donor conception pathways (e.g., known, clinic-based, anonymous, identity-release).
Funding Source: Economic and Social Research Council (ES/N019067/1).
Lead Author: Damien W. Riggs is an associate professor at Flinders University (College of Education, Psychology and Social Work) in Adelaide, Australia, and is a leading scholar of LGBTQ+ reproduction, parenting, and fertility. No personal connection to donor conception was disclosed.
Regulatory Context: Varies by jurisdiction.
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> And so, he’s the kid’s Spunkle, and in their lives as extended family. His parents are GrandSpunkle and GrandSparkle
I’m speechless…