‘I don’t want us to stand out more than we already do’: Lesbian couples negotiating family connections in donor conception

Introduction

Set within the context of ongoing debates about the changing patterns of family life, this article adds to discussions about relational living in late modern society. Social theorists such as Giddens (1992) and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1995) argue that changing formations of family life are characterised by increasing individualisation and de-traditionalisation. While such assertions have been widely challenged, and their limitations and embedded gender, ethnic and class bias exposed (e.g. Adkins, 2002; Jamieson, 1999; Smart and Shipman, 2004), the ideas have also been utilised to explore what appears to be an ‘opening up’ of traditional ways of life. As such, they have influenced studies exploring the heterosexual/homosexual divide (e.g. Roseneil, 2002) and also the benchmark study of non-heterosexual intimate life by Weeks et al. (2001).

The study by Weeks et al. (2001) built on and added to conceptualisations of non-heterosexuals as forming ‘families of choice’ (Nardi, 1992; Weston, 1991). In their study, Weeks et al. positioned the intimate lives of gays and lesbians in relation to the wider social changes identified by theorists such as Giddens. Weeks et al. identified new possibilities for non-heterosexuals to live life openly, arguing that this was the result of a dual process. Partly, a new-found self-confidence among non-heterosexuals themselves, generated by growing social acceptance, produced a sense of creativity and agency in the community. Partly, these new possibilities were the result of broader social changes in intimate life generated by the decline of the traditional heterosexual family model (2001: 180). Weeks et al. argued that gays and lesbians were creating intimate lives which were characterised by creativity, negotiation, freedom and experimentation: ‘… emerging non-heterosexual ways of being can be seen as indices of something new: positive and creative responses to social and cultural change, which are genuine “experiments in living”’ (Weeks et al., 2001: 5).

According to Weeks et al. (2001: 47), the marginal social position in which gays and lesbians lived their lives, outside the legislative framework policing normative heterosexual intimate life, gave rise to a strong sense of ‘self-invention’ and a freedom to engage in experimental living ‘oppositional to the heterosexual assumption’ (Weeks et al., 2001: 198). Although they noted that this change was uneven, and that the risks related to living openly as non-heterosexuals remained, they argued that: ‘In coming out, developing and thriving in informal separatism, and directly taking on and challenging the heterosexual assumption, many non-heterosexuals create the opportunities through which the traditional ways of doing family and intimacy are turned on their heads’ (Weeks et al., 2001: 198). Same-sex intimacies were conceptualised as new relational possibilities that transformed and challenged traditional ones.

Weeks et al. conducted their interviews between 1995 and 1996 and since then the political, legal, cultural and social landscape of same-sex intimate life in the UK has changed dramatically. Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 banned the promotion of homosexuality in schools and depicted same-sex intimacies as ‘pretend family relationships’. This was repealed in 2003. Same-sex couples’ right to a family life is now protected in unprecedented ways through the Adoption and Children Act 2002, the Civil Partnership Act 2004 and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008. ¹ Moreover, same-sex couples now have increased formal access to reproductive health centres, and more and more lesbians also seek access to such centres (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, 2006). In the 1990s, lesbians’ access to clinics was more limited and harder to negotiate. ² And so the social context in which non-heterosexuals conduct their intimate lives has shifted. However, the way in which these recent socio-legal changes may have impacted on and altered same-sex couples’ perceptions of their intimate relationships has yet to be fully explored. The extent to which the conceptual framework emphasising ‘families of choice’, creativity and self-invention may still be of use in accounting for these experiences is, as yet, little investigated. Exploring ‘sexual stories’ (Plummer, 1995) and drawing on empirical data, this article explores contemporary stories of same-sex intimate lives and asks how far the conceptual framework of Weeks et al (2001) can account for narratives emerging now. In doing so, this article investigates how perceptions of intimate life among same-sex communities may have altered between the mid 1990s and the late 2000s.

My study was conducted in 2007–2008 and empirically explored lesbian couples’ pursuit of donor conception in England and Wales. Donor conception is an established part of lesbians’ reproductive practices (Donovan, 2000) and refers to the practice of non-sexual conception using donor sperm, encompassing both donor insemination outside reproductive health centres (what I call self-arranged conception) and in health centres using intrauterine insemination (IUI) but also in vitro fertilisation (IVF). Donor conception challenges assumptions about sexual conception, biogenetic linkages, and heterosexual parenthood and therefore provides opportunities for examining ideologies of intimacy and families (Hargreaves, 2006). It offers a particularly interesting view on same-sex couples’ desires and ambitions for intimate life because the reproductive process requires couples to make explicit their choices about the family they seek to become. As part of the process, the couples consider and take decisions about, for example, which donor to use, his ‘racial’ and ethnic background, issues around siblinghood, the meaning of family names, the role of marriage in reproduction, legal parenthood and what constitutes a family.

Drawing on my empirical study, I shall explore the rationale that couples use to make their reproductive decisions. I analyse, in turn, the couples’ donor selection processes and construction of ‘race’/ethnicity, their understandings of siblinghood, the meaning associated with last names and also, in the penultimate section of the article, couples’ understandings of civil partnerships. I shall argue that the couples’ donor conception processes are shaped by a desire to construct visible or otherwise tangible family connections between the mothers and their child(ren). I suggest that the couples in my study seek to link their own families to hegemonic family discourses through assembling a repertoire of family connecting practices that centre on ‘race’/ethnicity, biogenetic linkages, surnames and marriage. I demonstrate that not only under-privilege, but also privilege, weave through the couples’ accounts as they account for their desires and wishes and I argue that the ways in which the couples navigate these processes signals a need to further our conceptual understanding of same-sex intimate life.

The study

This doctoral study comprised 25 qualitative in-depth interviews with lesbian couples in England and Wales who had jointly pursued, or were pursuing, parenthood through donor conception. As noted in previous studies of non-heterosexual life experience (e.g. Weeks et al., 2001), same-sex couples constitute a ‘hidden’ population and no sampling frame exists for their recruitment. I employed purposive sampling based on self-selection through both online and offline gateways. Primarily, I recruited couples by advertising on online message boards with gay and lesbian interest. ³

The interviews were loosely structured around four overarching themes: planning conception; doing inseminations; connectedness and understandings of family and kin; and the couple relationship. I conducted couple interviews where possible, but in five instances couple interviews proved too impractical and I then conducted individual interviews. A total of 45 women took part. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim and the data were thematically analysed using a narrative-holistic approach (Lieblich et al., 1998: 13), graphically elicited through drawing event-state networks (Miles and Huberman, 1994: 115f.). Codes and analytical themes were derived from the networks. The themes that emerged from the interviews had generalisability beyond the sample from which they were drawn as the data offered in-depth understandings suggestive of the ways in which these processes may be experienced by others (Mason, 1996: 93). The study raised ethical issues around topic sensitivity and researcher’s safety in online recruitment, and ethical approval was sought and granted by the Centre for Women’s Studies Ethics Committee, University of York. Names, places and identifying details in the interview extracts have been altered to protect participants’ anonymity.

Of the couples interviewed, 52% had successfully conceived, or were trying to conceive, in reproductive health clinics (both NHS and private) and 48% pursued self-arranged conception. ⁴ There were 14 who were parents of donor conceived children, the children being between 3 months and 7 years old (an additional four couples were pregnant with their first child). In four cases the women/couples were also parents of children conceived or adopted in previous relationships.

The participants were between 23 and 56 years of age. There were 42 women who identified as white British, Welsh or English and three who identified as being of either mixed ethnic origin, Chinese British, or Black British. Following Graham (2007: 55), education was used as a measure of class linking parental social class and the respondents’ own class. Graham (2007) notes that social background (the education, occupation and income of parents during a child’s early years) has a major influence on educational trajectories, which in turn are the major determinants of occupation and income in adulthood. While 36% of respondents had left school at 18, 64% had a higher education qualification and so this appears to suggest that just more than one-third of respondents had working-class backgrounds whilst just less than two-thirds had middle-class backgrounds.

This article introduces accounts about constructing family, with civil partnerships and donor selection based on racialised reference points being key aspects. The couples viewed and spoke about their civil partnership as ‘marriage’, and I have adopted this term in the article. However, this is not to suggest that civil partnership and marriage are legally, socially and culturally interchangeable. Early on in the project, and as racial reference points emerged as shaping the donor selection process, I developed an interest in exploring how family connectedness interlinked with constructions of ‘race’. Among most couples, finding a donor whose ‘race’ was perceived to ‘match’ the mothers’, was seen as essential. However, this was presented by the couples as a taken-for-granted stance, and not commonly spontaneously articulated. The accounts introduced in the article emerged because I explicitly asked the participants about whether the donor’s ethnic or racial origin impacted on the selection process.

The findings that I present are drawn from interviews with lesbians who sought to conceive as a couple and who chose the method of donor conception to do so. To some extent their way of becoming and being family (as a couple with biogenetic offspring) mirrors the conventional family model, ⁵ and so it is perhaps not surprising that the views presented here are the dominant ones. It is not within the remit of my data to comment on how other non-heterosexual parenting communities may negotiate their intimate lives.

Linking together, constructing families

The couples who took part in my study pursued donor conception between early 2000 and 2008 (before the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 came into force) and many had been refused access to both private and NHS-funded reproductive health centres. They jointly undertook all decision making around issues of conception, perceiving that they were conceiving their child together, whilst aware that they may not be perceived or treated as equal mothers (see also Almack, 2005; Gabb, 2005). They were acutely aware that birth mother and non-birth mother accorded different legal status, as well as social and institutional recognition as parents, and many of them had undergone or were planning to undergo adoption processes to assure the non-birth mother’s legal status. ⁶ Parenthood also meant for the women that their lesbian relationship became more visible in their local communities; becoming a parent made it far less possible to ‘conceal’ a lesbian identity (see also Almack, 2006). Planning a baby thus increased the pressure to be ‘out’, and reduced the possibility of handling everyday social marginalisation felt by non-heterosexuals by non-disclosure. A key concern for the women in my study was how to negotiate the tension between this perceived visibility as lesbians and how best to protect their children from stigma and homophobia. The lesbian couples in this study thus took the decisions around parenthood in a social and legal context within which their sexuality and parenthood were ambivalently received, and it is important to remember that the socio-cultural context in which these women became parents have not necessarily kept up with the legal changes that have taken place in recent years.

Donors, ‘race’/ethnicity and family connectedness

It is established clinical practice in heterosexual couple conception to ‘match’ the physical characteristics of the donor with those of the non-genetic parent (Becker, 2000; Haimes, 1992), a pattern also found in lesbians’ conception practices (Nordqvist, 2010). This interlinks and is embedded within notions of ‘race’ (Quiroga, 2007). ‘Race’ and ethnicity represent a very complex, contested area and are of course highly contested concepts (e.g. Payne, 2000). Drawing on Quiroga (2007: 144) I shall predominantly use the concept ‘race’, understanding it as ‘a mutable social construction that has been used historically to classify and stratify people based on clusters of physical characteristics’. The socially constructed normative cultural understanding of ‘race’ holds that it can be identified through physical characteristics and that it is an inheritable category. Seeing ‘race’ not as a factual or real but a constructed category, I use it to highlight how the women referred to donor selection processes through racialised reference points, often defined as physical characteristics. The aim of this section is to tease out some of the issues and complexities emerging in the accounts, and it is not the purpose to provide an in-depth analysis of the prevailing constructions of ‘race’. However, it should be noted that the accounts also touch on issues that require further explorations to do with racism and whiteness.

I found that considerations of the donors’ racial origin were paramount in the lesbian couples’ conception processes. The majority of couples wanted a donor who they perceived shared their racial and/or ethnic background, and this was true for both couples who conceived within clinics, as well as for those who self-arranged conception. At times, the desire for a donor of a particular racial and also ethnic origin could dominate a couples’ conception process. This was the case for Jane and Frances who identified as Chinese British and white British. Frances was the birth mother of their first born, and Jane planned to ‘go second’. It was important to them to have a donor of Chinese origin for their pregnancies, and they chose their clinic based on whether it had access to donors of this origin. For most couples, concerns about racial origin were more of a background issue than it was for Jane and Frances, but it nevertheless shaped their selection process. To illustrate, Rosie and Shelly, both identifying as white British, were advised by the embryologist in their NHS-run clinic to import sperm from Denmark. At the time, they were told that there were no supplies of donor sperm from white donors available in the UK. The couples who conceived outside clinics inquired about the donors’ ethnic background at the point of contact and the accounts indicate that them choosing, or rejecting, a donor was linked to perceptions of ‘race’. Understandings and constructions of ‘race’ were thus something that fundamentally shaped the couples’ donor selection process and the following account from Hannah and Anne, who identified as white British, was typical in the sample:

It had to be a white donor. I don’t know why looking at it. I don’t know why, but that’s just the way it was. And I think if we were to do it again it would still be the same. I don’t think it would matter so much where he comes from as long as he’s Caucasian ... I think white was the only option, just because we’re both white British is the answer to that I think. (Hannah, 23, mother of one together with Anne, 34, self-arranged conception)

What meaning did these practices carry for the lesbian couples, and how did their desires for particular donors link in with their understandings of intimacy? Hannah indicates that her motivation to choose a white donor was shaped by her and her partner’s own racial identities. Her account suggests that it was important to them that there was racial similarity between the mothers and the child, realised through the donor. Anna and Sally, also identifying as white British, tried to conceive in self-arranged conception with Anna as birth mother. At one stage they had considered using the sperm of a black donor, but had decided against it.

Anna I wouldn’t mind having a lovely mixed-race child.

Sally No you don’t mind but I would. Because it would be reflective of me. I would just sit there going I’m not black.

(Anna, 32 and Sally 33)

Focusing in particular on Sally, the non-birth mother’s response, she frames her rejection of the idea of them having a mixed-race child in terms of her own ethnic identity as ‘not black’. She mobilises the idea that the child and she should display what is perceived as racial resemblance, based on an understanding of ‘race’ as based on clusters of physical characteristics and skin colour. The understandings of ‘race’ that emerged in this account, and others, comprised negotiations of two powerful traditional family defining discourses. First, children are connected to their parents through biogenetic links and these links exist between each parent (of which there are two) and the child and are visible in the child’s physical characteristics. Second, constructions of ‘race’, seen as physical, inheritable characteristics, are a criterion for differentiation of kinship. Racial characteristics are constructed as markers of likeness or difference within and between families (Frankenberg, 1993: 99f.). Therefore, the selection of a donor based on perception of ‘race’ was a practice through which Sally, a non-birth mother, sought to construct family connectedness: she consciously chose a donor who would be able to facilitate a perceived racial biogenetic link between herself and the baby. The lesbian mothers thus actively negotiated culturally dominant family and kinship discourses by mobilising conventional understandings centring on racial and biogenetic connectedness.

Well aware of the sensitivities and controversies around these choices, many considered them to be complex and difficult. It was common that they were framed in terms of precaution, an anxiety around what it might be like for a child to have lesbian mothers, and an understanding that a child with lesbian parents would need special support because of his/her lesbian parentage. Choosing a donor who was perceived to be of the same racial or ethnic background was often informed by in-depth understandings of structures of inequalities grounded in personal experience. Many white couples, like Sue and Trish (next) indicated that they avoided selecting a donor who was perceived to be of a different ethnicity because the child might then encounter racism as well as homophobia. Such perceptions of interracial conception as stigmatising relates to discourses of interracial relationships as a focus of social anxiety and disapproval (Frankenberg, 1993: 100). Sue:

[W]e have to remember we live down here and the black community is non-existent down here, which I think is bad. I am far from racist at all, not at all, but in order to be a gay couple we’d like a white baby because the child’s going to get enough stigma as it is, or some stigma, so we didn’t want to encourage that. (Sue, 34)

It is important to note that the choice of Sue and Trish, and the other white couples in the study, were taken from a position of white privilege in the sense that they, as white couples, had the option to protect their child from racism whilst also adhering to the differentiating discourse defining kinship through ‘race’. The mixed-‘race’ couples in the study did not enjoy the same privilege, and for them, the desire to create biogenetic links took precedent. Choosing the donor was experienced as a practice that enabled the mothers to create racially defined family connections and also, because of the privileges associated with whiteness, it was used among white couples in an attempt to try and negotiate the social stigma associated with lesbianism. As such it can be seen as a strategic and instrumental decision that adhered to conventional family discourse around ‘race’ and belonging. The white couples approached donor selection as a practice that could help them ‘fit in’; which could ensure that they were not made more different than they already were (as same-sex couples). Rosie and her partner identified as white British:

I just think it [having a black donor] would look, it would stand out a bit. I think people would ask questions. That is probably why I would like him to look similar. I don’t really want to stand out anymore than we already do. (Rosie, 25, expecting a baby together with Shelly, 30, both identifying as white British)

This management of looks, ‘race’ and ethnicity signals a strategic and complex engagement with ‘race’ and family discourse, and indicates that the couples’ imagined future intimate life is framed in terms of such discourses, shaping and limiting their donor selection process. Constructions of ‘race’ and belonging were ways through which lesbian couples displayed their family connections (Finch, 2007).

Conceiving siblings

Many of the couples in my study had more than one child together, or were planning to have more than one child. One of the consequences of their pursuit of a family life as a lesbian couple was that they feared that their children would not be perceived as siblings. They therefore considered, carefully, how to construct and demonstrate a sibling relationship. The issue of siblinghood particularly came to the fore among the many couples where both women wanted to give birth and were planning to take turns in becoming pregnant, meaning that their children would have different birth mothers and a different genetic make-up.

The women understood and constructed siblinghood predominantly in terms of biogenetic links. They wanted to create biogenetic linkages between their children; the dominant way through which this was negotiated was having the same donor for successive pregnancies. The rationale was that the children would then be biogenetically connected through the donor (see also Jones, 2005). The desire to have the same donor tied in with their ambition to create physical likeness among the family members (Nordqvist, 2010). Studies of heterosexual donor conception indicate similar preferences (Snowden and Snowden, 1998).

Embedded in these practices was a perception of genetic connectedness as an indicator of family relationships. Julia and her partner were planning to give birth to one child each, and Julia thought that having the same donor would ‘connect’ the children and also ‘make’ them all a family:

[T]ogether with those two babies we would be a family and it would be so good if we could have the sperm of one man, like my friend for instance … That would be fantastic, that would be really good, like sisters or brothers … Well it’s a bit more of a family rather than just being strangers, like kids that have no biological link to each other. (Julia, 27, planning future children together with partner)

Julia imagined that a lack of genetic bonds might create a disconnected relationship between the siblings, something she sought to resolve through having the same donor for both children. Interestingly, genetic connectedness is not only imagined to travel between parent and child, but also from one child to another. Frances, who together with Jane was planning to take turns to give birth, also wanted the same donor for successive pregnancies, stating that having the same donor would ‘tie the whole family together genetically’. It is worth noting that having the same donor did not necessarily mean that the donor was seen as a parent, instead, he was valued as providing the same genetic material to both children, thus linking them, and also the mothers, biogenetically.

The couples were therefore highly reflective about the construction of siblinghood, and decisions were complex, multilayered and often taken with the children in mind. Genetic connectedness was highly valued, but it was a discourse that was utilised in imaginative and instrumental ways, often in combination with socially based understandings of family relationships. This meant that conceptual biogenetic connections and interpersonal social connections were used as tools constructed to create connectedness (Strathern, 2005). Amy and her partner Rachel had a daughter to whom Rachel had given birth. They were planning for Amy to give birth to their second child and hoped to use the same donor. Amy imagined that this would be important for their children later in life:

It is for her really for our child because, you know once we are dead. If there is only two kids we don’t want them to be, because we are not gonna hide the fact that one is from Rachel and one is from me. But we don’t want our child to sort of feel that once we are dead there is no link between her and her sibling. So as long as they’ve got the same donor they can’t escape each other even if they want to. You know what I mean they are linked forever, (Amy, 28, mother of one together with Rachel, 33)

Amy’s account illustrates the complex interplay between notions of social and genetic connectedness. The social relationship is valued, but the biogenetic link is seen to tie the children together even when the social connectedness between the siblings may be weakening; it is perceived as non-negotiable. Biogenetic siblinghood was thus utilised and valued among these couples in ways which accorded with traditional family values. Hannah’s account indicated that this discourse constrained and limited her choices of becoming pregnant. Hannah had a son together with Anne (who was the birth mother) and even though Hannah would have liked to carry their second child, she hesitated because of the disruption this would pose to the biogenetic link:

I suppose it’s the biological thing and that sounds daft. I suppose if I want our child to have a sibling then I want it to be a whole sibling rather than a half … [W]e’ve got the option of using the same donor … Everybody wants the ideal family at the end of the day. So, I want my children to be biologically related. (Hannah, 23)

The understanding that biogenetic links define siblinghood clashes with an integral part of the lesbian mother family makeup, that is, both partners’ potential ability to carry the child. However, Hannah here takes decisions in a social and institutional context that she has not chosen, and in order to have what she thinks is the ‘ideal family’ she is considering not giving birth to their second child. This mother imagined intimate life in ways heavily constrained and patterned by conventional, and characteristically heterosexual, family ideals.

Naming family

In addition to practices related to racial and biogenetic connections, the couples considered the choice of surname to have important family implications (see also Almack, 2005; Suter et al., 2008). Finch (2008: 721) suggests that ‘the social act of naming… is fundamentally rooted in kinship’, arguing that surnames symbolise a social connection and ‘provide a potential set of tools with which family relationships can be constituted and managed’ (2008: 713). My findings indicate that names played an important role in constructing family relationships, providing a way of managing and displaying such relationships (Finch, 2007). In particular, the data indicate that it was utilised in cases where the mothers thought that a parent–child relationship might be in question. The mothers sought not only to manage external others’ potential questions about their family relationships, but also their own questions. Lisa and her partner were parents of a new-born baby to which Lisa had given birth. They had a complex history of trying to conceive, involving fertility problems and a miscarriage, and they had sought to conceive for a period of four years during which they had taken turns in trying to become pregnant. Lisa’s account suggests that during those years, both she and her partner had struggled to come to terms with the possibility of being a non-birth mother. Being a lesbian, and conceiving as a lesbian couple did not mean that the women found it easy to challenge prevailing biological discourses of motherhood:

We both had to reach the point where we were comfortable raising a child that wasn’t biologically our own and we both had to find a place where we felt confident that that child was our child, regardless of whether it was biologically related to us or not. I think the name played a part in that. This child was going to have my name. It might not have my genes, but it’s going to have my name. (Lisa, 29)

Drawing on Donovan and Wilson (2008: 662) the lesbian mothers renegotiated their initial desires for having a family in response to external but also internal expectations of family relationships. Sharing the same last name represented a way for Lisa to signal to herself, and to others, that family connections existed between her and the baby even if she herself had not given birth.

Last names were understood to symbolise, signal and confirm family relationships and a shared surname symbolised a connection between the family members and allowed lesbian mothers to construct themselves as family. Many of the couples in my study had changed their last names prior to, or in relation to, becoming civil partners so that when their child was born, everyone in the family would have the same last name. Caroline and Gillian conceived their first child in 2003, before the Civil Partnership Act 2004. Caroline and the child took Gillian’s last name, and they also got married when civil partnerships were made available to same-sex couples in Britain. Gillian mobilised a social discourse around names, which stipulated that family relationships may not be immediately recognisable if last names differ:

I think to take on the name so that the kids have one name for the whole family and then there’s no, well, that mummy’s called this and I’m called this, because I always think in families where that happens anyway and you’ve got a step-dad comes in and you’ve got that situation, it’s awkward. (Gillian, 56, mother of two together with Caroline, 30)

In the account she referred to a family formation (step-families), which, like her own, might give rise to questions about family connections. She imagined that having a ‘family name’ could be important for the children to display family (Finch, 2007).

Well aware that their family may not be recognised as ‘family’, institutionally or otherwise, the majority of the couples in my study wanted to have the same name for the whole family, following traditional family ideals. A ‘family’ name was seen to make the lesbian mother family recognisable as family to social institutions, e.g. schools, but also to extended family. Kim and Nicola were expecting a baby with Kim as birth mother. Nicola’s father, who Nicola described as ‘old school and traditional’, disapproved of their lesbian conception. As a result, the couple feared that he might not recognise the baby as his grandchild. The couple made the decision to give the baby Nicola’s last name, in the hope that it might soften Nicola’s dad’s feelings. This strategic utilisation of normative family discourse was used to facilitate family relationships and family recognition in older generations.

Becoming civil partners

Practices to do with names tied in with practices to do with partnership recognition. Of the 25 couples in my sample, 16 had registered, or were planning to register, a civil partnership. In the couples’ accounts about civil partnership, the concept merged with ‘marriage’ as the couples used them interchangeably. Couples often spoke of their civil partnership as an important occasion for them as a couple and also for their children. As I undertook fieldwork, I often saw photographs of the two partners on their wedding day placed centrally in the house: Rachel and Amy, for example, had artistic-looking black and white photos of themselves in white wedding dresses framed and placed decoratively in the front room.

The couples’ wedding plans were intimately linked with their plans to conceive. Many experienced it as a strategic measurement to secure the non-birth mothers’ position as a legal parent, and it was felt that civil partnerships established and also protected the family relationships. In the absence of almost any social, cultural or institutional legitimisation, many felt and recognised the need for such protection. But in addition to this legal protection, it was also felt that it could offer symbolic protection:

Interviewer What does it mean to you, being married?

Poppy [That we are] joined up in the metaphorical sense, i.e. all with same names … partly because you know many straight people have kids and don’t get married, but they are OK because they are both biologically related. Well I wouldn’t be, and nor would Emily if I gave birth. (Poppy, 32, trying to conceive together with Emily, 36)

Poppy stated that being married and sharing last names were particularly important to her as a lesbian because of the lack of biological connections in the family. Poppy might not have been aware that in legal terms, parental rights and responsibilities have only recently been extended to fathers and mothers equally among cohabiting heterosexual couples. But what she refers to here is the social affirmation that is automatically extended to both mothers and fathers regardless of their marital status. Her account indicates that as a lesbian she feels that they cannot choose not to get married and still both be recognised as parents and so she has to be extra careful to assemble family connecting practices which make them recognisable as family.

In contrast to Weeks et al’s (2001) findings, the accounts about civil partnerships, and also names, siblings and racial connections, suggest that the couples did not feel that they freely chose and created their own intimate practices, but instead they related to, and were also confined by, traditional family discourses. Some felt constrained and pressured to get a civil partnership:

Anne [Getting a civil partnership] is something that we will do. I think we feel forced into it, because of the whole …

Hannah Everybody’s doing anything you should because you’ve got a child ... And when we say we haven’t, people ask why.

(Anne, 34 and Hannah, 23)

But for most of the participants, the civil partnership was viewed as positive and important, as something they desired and which reflected how they perceived their relationship and future family life. Drawing on traditional family discourse, marriage was commonly understood as providing a ‘better’ context for children: ‘I felt that just… I don’t know… really traditional right-wing of me… that kind of it’s better for parents to be married to each other. I just kind of believe that’ (Kim, 30).

Discussion

This article has suggested that the concern to establish tangible family connections is at the forefront of the lesbian couples’ decision-making process in the context of donor conception. The lesbian couples in this study made decisions about their family life in a context of adversity and in the socio-cultural context within which they lived, and both privilege and under-privilege run through their accounts.

The accounts indicate a desire to construct normative family stories and suggest that the couples assembled a repertoire of practices which were meaningful because together they connected the lesbian mother family to hegemonic family discourse, making them recognisable as ‘ordinary’ families (Finch, 2007). The whole range of practices analysed here contributes to this in various ways by drawing on and bringing together notions of family, which build on both perceived biogenetic connectedness (through ‘race’ and siblinghood) and interpersonal connectedness (surnames and civil partnerships). And so, both biogenetic and interpersonal dimensions of kinship fold into one another as they are used as tools for constructing family (Strathern, 2005: 7). The racialised dimensions, in particular, stand out as a strong indicator of the couples’ attempts to minimise difference and deserve more attention in future studies. The desire to be ordinary that emerges from these practices works in quite complex and multilayered ways: the accounts suggest a romantic desire to resemble a conventional nuclear family; a pressure to conform to traditions; a need to make family relationships intelligible to themselves and others; and a strategic and instrumental utilisation of normative family discourses to negotiate and manage marginalisation.

Coming back to the beginning of this article, I now want to compare and contrast the stories rehearsed among these couples to the stories recorded in Weeks et al.’s study which informed the conceptualisations of non-heterosexual intimacies as creative life experiments and ‘families of choice’. The stories recorded in that study indicated a sense of freedom from traditional constraints (Weeks et al., 2001: 186) alongside the ongoing risks and limitations on living non-heterosexual lives. One of many participants who gave voice to this feeling of self-invention was Miriam who said ‘it is… about being creative and being pioneering, about not wanting to be defined… not wanting to conform in terms of what family needs to look like’ (quoted in Weeks et al., 2001: 111). The stories rehearsed in my study, conducted about 12 years later, appear to tell a different story. Whilst the couples’ parental projects can on the one hand be understood as illustrative of a growing self-confidence amongst lesbians and gays to form families outside the heterosexual family models (Donovan and Wilson, 2008: 650), and thus in some ways confirm Weeks et al’s findings, the way in which lesbian couples negotiated the process signals that the relationship between these projects and traditional notions of family is in fact far more complex. I found that the couples in my study assembled family connecting practices, which in multilayered ways mobilised conventional family discourses and asserted traditional family values. At times, the accounts suggested that the women felt constrained in their actions, and unable to be creative and innovative in their practices. But more often, the couples mobilised conventional family values to account for their own practices, ambitions and values, thus asserting traditional intimate values rather than ‘turning them on their head’ as Weeks et al suggested (2001: 198). My findings provide contrasting perspectives to Weeks et al’s study, as well as other works which tend to place gay and lesbian families at the forefront of a diversification of family patterns in late modern intimate life (e.g. Stacey and Davenport, 2002), and understandings of gay and lesbian families as per se challenging and different (e.g. Donovan, 2000; Dunne, 2000).

I argue that my findings can be understood to indicate that current ways of undertaking intimate life among co-parenting same-sex couples include normalising practices and ambitions to ‘fit in’. This would appear to signal, in some measure, a social shift from self-invention and freedom from traditions to an identification with traditional ways of doing intimacy, which also brings with it a need to extend our sociological conceptual understandings beyond the ‘families of choice’ paradigm. This shift may be explained by both transitions in same-sex relationships, as well as social, cultural and legal changes. Weeks et al. (2001: 186) noted that when it comes to non-heterosexual life, one of the areas which society remains most anxious about is the idea of parenthood. Becoming parents not only makes lesbian relationships more visible and requires women to make themselves more vulnerable to social judgement, but it also, of course, introduces a child into their relationship. It appears that when same-sex couples become parents, a pressure to fit in with conventional patterns of intimate life is keenly felt. The women’s strategic utilisation of normative family discourses and their attempts to protect their children from homophobia, are suggestive of a social context still characterised by a deeply heterosexualised, geneticised and racialised family discourse. But there are also broader social and cultural changes in political discourse and gay and lesbian politics. There are now legally sanctioned locations for conventional domestic relationships among non-heterosexuals. Based on their study conducted in the mid 1990s, Weeks et al. suggested that one of the key reasons why gays and lesbians could form creative family relationships was because they lead intimate lives ‘outside’ society. Since then, we have seen an ‘opening up’ of what it means to be ‘normal’, socially and also legally; a normalisation of (some) gay and lesbian identities (Richardson, 2004; Seidman, 2009). These new locations are likely to bring with them new subject positions in the population. Drawing on the accounts of the lesbian couples in this study, it would appear that among lesbian co-parenting communities we can currently see aspirations and practices, as well as a pressure, to ‘fit in’ and be ordinary.