An attempt to reconstruct children's donor concept: a comparison between children's and lesbian parents' attitudes towards donor anonymity

BACKGROUND: This study investigated the donor concept of children who were born by means of donor insemination (DI), and their lesbian parents. METHOD S: A total of 41 children aged between 7 and 17 years, and 45 parents, took part in the follow-up study. In-depth topic interviews were used to recons truct how DI children and their mothers perceived the donor. Data were coll ected about the birth story, about children's conversations with their moth ers concerning donor characteristics and about children's and parents' atti tudes towards the status of the donor. RESULTS: 54% of these children prefe rred donor anonymity at this point in their life, whereas 46% wanted to kno w more about the donor. The majority of the latter group would have liked t o know the donor's identity, with boys outnumbering girls. The remaining ch ildren of this group were content with non-identifying information. Childre n wanted to know more about the donors whereas the majority of the mothers preferred the donor to remain anonymous. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest t hat among DI children in general and among members of the same family, unit opinions differ on the status of the donor. A flexible system offering dif ferent types of donors seems to be necessary in order to meet the needs of each family.