Reproducing Kinship: How Do Donor-Conceived Adults Think of Themselves and Their Family in the Age of Assisted Reproductive Technologies?

• In Event: Innovating Reproduction and (Re)Generating Parenthood Possibilities: Critical Studies of New Technologies

Abstract

Over the past forty years, assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have facilitated over 8 million births worldwide, many of which involved donated gametes. As these donor-conceived children are now coming into adulthood, my research explores how they think of themselves and their family. This project follows the 'new kinship studies', which explore how new family formations - marked by gamete donation or queer relationships - trouble traditional Euro-American kinship structures that conflate biology with social relatedness. As much as new technologies decouple genetics from kinship, there is still a tension with the social value of biology, evident in the strong activist networks advocating for the abolition of anonymous donation because of the psychological harm it has had on some donor-conceived persons. My methodology includes analysing data from online communities for donor-conceived adults and conducting interviews with a handful of these adults living in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada. During these interviews, we develop kinship diagrams to illustrate how the adults see themselves in relation to their social families and their biogenetic donors. While final research results are still being compiled at the time of writing, I theorize that this new form of kinship presents as an intersection between adoption and organ donation, where the intercorporeality of the body is demonstrated in the belief in connection between donor-conceived person and donor. This research addresses a gap in studies of new biotechnologies and ARTs, as the perspectives of donor-conceived persons have yet to be engaged in anthropological or STS literature.

Author

• Janelle Curry, York University