Pride and concern: differences between sperm and egg donors with respect to responsibility for their donor-conceived offspring

Abstract

Comparative research on sperm donors and egg donors in the United States suggests that while men view themselves as fathers of their offspring, women do not view themselves as mothers. Comparative research suggests as well that men and women are equally interested in contact with offspring, equally curious about them, and equally likely to hold themselves responsible for those offspring. This paper re-examines these differences and similarities using data from a survey of donors who registered on a third-party website with hopes of having some contact with their genetic offspring. Our findings suggest that women and men offer similar reasons for donating and similar assessments of the experience. Yet, the two groups have developed quite different patterns of interest in their offspring. The men create a sense of “prideful lineage” rather than fatherhood. The women create a pattern of feeling that involves “concerned responsibility” rather than motherhood.

Keywords:

• sperm donors
• egg donors
• gender

Introduction

As numerous scholars have noted, new reproductive technologies carry with them the potential for new forms of relatedness. The question of whether or not these forms of relatedness resemble existing understandings of kinship fascinates both theoretical and empirical investigations of these issues (Edwards 2000, 2013; Franklin and McKinnon 2001; Carsten 2004; Strathern 2005; Hertz and Mattes 2011; Franklin 2013; Goldberg and Scheib 2016; Hertz, Nelson, and Kramer 2017). In the case of the two common technologies of sperm donation and egg donation, biogenetic connections exist among individuals who may never have any social connection at all.¹ The question of what attitudes toward donor-conceived offspring gamete donors graft on to a desired social connection is at the heart of this analysis.

In her recent foray into this issue, Almeling (2014) draws on interviews with current and former donors to ascertain how both sperm and egg donors make social meaning from a genetic contribution to donor-conceived offspring. Her conclusion is that egg donors do not view themselves as the mothers of the children born of their eggs although sperm donors do view themselves as fathers of their offspring. In her analysis of this finding, Almeling (2014, 148) suggests that these differences emerge from “gendered expectations about women’s and men’s connections to offspring and recipients.” More specifically, she notes that each donor makes a different kind of distinction between biological and social parenthood. In turn, she traces these different distinctions to the organizational practices of egg agencies and sperm banks as well as to the “broader cultural norms around procreation” that identify “the male role in reproduction as primary” (Almeling 2014, 148–149).

Almeling conducted her research in the United States where both anonymity and identity-release (when a donor-conceived offspring turns 18) are now possibilities for donors.² However, regardless of the initial form of donation, both egg and sperm donors in the United States are able to sign onto the Donor Sibling Registry (DSR), an independent nonprofit registry that matches parents, offspring, and donors with each other. That is, donors can use their unique donor number as means of indicating that they are open to making contact with genetic relatives. (Neither the donors nor the offspring can be assured that the other party will respond to their offer of contact.) In the context of these parallel possibilities for egg and sperm donors, Almeling (2014, 156) finds parallel interests: “egg and sperm donors alike were willing to meet with those who requested it.” Moreover, she reported that most sperm and egg donors were curious about the children and “about 40 per cent of the women and men … said they felt some sense of responsibility to offspring” (156). Almeling thus finds differences between sperm and egg donors (i.e. whether or not they define themselves as a parent) as well as some similarities (i.e. a willingness to meet, curiosity, and sense of responsibility).

Almeling’s research is relatively unusual in its comparison of the different attitudes of sperm and egg donors in a single study. Another study by Kirkman et al. (2014) that also included both sperm and egg donors found that the only difference between the two groups was that none of the egg donors rejected outright the recommendation in Victoria, Australia of a mandatory loss of anonymity with retrospective effect. Jadva et al. (2010b) reported from a survey to which 62 sperm donors and 11 egg donors responded. They found no differences between sperm and egg donors with respect to motivations for donating (3). They found also that more of the sperm donors than egg donors expressed concerns about having been a donor and that the sperm donors were slightly more concerned about not knowing their offspring and about possible legal or financial concerns. The small sample size for egg donors precludes the authors from making definitive conclusions about similarities and differences. Freeman et al. (2015) also report on donors’ interests in learning about offspring through applications to the Voluntary Register in Australia. They do not distinguish between sperm and egg donors.

Studies that look at egg donors and sperm donors separately help identify the ways in which each defines relatedness to their offspring. Some of these studies are also attentive to the specific context within which donation occurs (Adrian 2010). Mohr’s (2015, 471) study argues, “Danish sperm donors make sense of these connections differently than do their American counterparts” because the sperm banks in Denmark mark the “connections between sperm donors and donor-conceived individuals as unimportant.” These donors, Mohr suggests, act in a way that they believe represents responsibility to their offspring. However, they understand themselves to have the responsibility of being sperm donors but not fathers. They are, Mohr explains, creating a new kind of relatedness that involves interplay between the social and the biological without mimicking pre-existing kinship categories. Moreover Mohr suggests, both anonymity and non-anonymity can serve the purpose of enabling them to believe that they are good fathers to the children they are rising while having a different sense of being related to their donor-conceived offspring.

Kirkman (2003) has explored a similar issue of how egg donors and embryo donors view their donations vis-à-vis a notion of motherhood. Kirkman finds that these donors believe that they are creating motherhood for some other woman and that they remain concerned about the welfare of their offspring. She found also that embryo donors expressed a stronger maternal connection to their offspring than did egg donors. Even so, both of them were able to distinguish between the motherhood they enacted with the children they were raising and the motherhood some other woman achieved through their donation.

Drawing on data collected from 15 “known” (rather than anonymous) egg donors (12 of whom were interviewed within four years after donation), Blyth (2011) reports that the egg donors did not make claims on offspring. However, he also notes that although the egg donors’ “relationship to any child born as a result of their donation was invariably defined in terms of their relationship with the recipient,” the donors did show signs of “moral responsibility for their oocytes.” He adds that the donors viewed embryos created through their donations “as their ‘virtual’ or ‘potential’ children to whom they and their own children are genetically related” (1138). Curtis (2010) suggests as well that egg donors are “careful to say that they do not view the child as theirs” (92). Orobitg and Salazar (2005, 43) also focus on egg donors who, they argue, insist that what they are doing is helping another woman to become a mother and that in the process they “devalue genes so that their eggs can never be seen as creating bonds.” Drawing on Zelizer’s (2007) concept of relational work, Haylett (2012, 237) similarly observes that, for egg donors, pregnancy becomes the marker of motherhood and that they can believe that they are not mothers because they “did not carry the fetuses to term and give birth to the children” (see also Kirkman 2003; Almeling 2011; Johnson 2013) These various studies thus conclude that egg donors believe parenthood not to be in the gamete itself but to be located in pregnancy, birth, love, and care.

The numerous studies that focus on the attitudes of donors toward their offspring do not resolve the questions of whether a sense of responsibility for offspring differs between egg and sperm donors and whether either group of donors defines themselves in kinship terms. Our data drawn from survey responses reveal many similarities between egg and sperm donors with respect to their retrospective views on their motivations for becoming a donor, interest in having contact with donor-conceived offspring, curiosity about offspring, and attitudes toward the parents raising offspring. They also share some views on the imagined characteristics of their offspring and beliefs in genetic determination. Even so, the two groups of donors imagine their offspring differently and show quite different patterns of interest in, and concern about, those offspring: we call the man’s pattern “prideful lineage” and the woman’s pattern “concerned responsibility.” Like Mohr (2015) rather than Almeling (2014), we suggest that the pre-existing notion of fatherhood does not adequately describe the attitude of sperm donors toward their offspring. At the same time, we suggest that gendered notions of what it means to be a father to a child remain relevant to how men construct their understanding of their role vis-à-vis their offspring, especially because the men are unlikely to know whether their donations were purchased and used. We agree with the various scholars who have argued that egg donors do not view themselves as mothers of their offspring. At the same time, we suggest that gendered ideas of the responsibilities of motherhood shape the attitudes of egg donors.

Gender, gamete donation, and parenting

In order to provide the context for our study, we begin with an overview of research demonstrating that the process of donating differs for men and women. We then review the literature on the organizational practices of sperm banks and egg clinics. Finally, we provide an overview of the scholarship about the gendered ideals about women and men as parents because we believe that these ideals help shape donors’ imagined relationships to the offspring produced from their reproductive gametes.

The process of gamete donation

Bodily and organizational practices of gamete donation are very different for women and men (Almeling 2006, 2007, 2011). Egg donors give on average two or three times in their lives because egg donation is a far more complex process than sperm donation, involving preparation with hormone injections followed by a surgical procedure to harvest the eggs. Egg donors often know that they are chosen by an individual/family because egg donation has been a two-stage process: first, the clinic decided to market an individual donor before harvesting the donor’s eggs and then a particular donor was selected by a particular person(s). Women are compensated for their eggs, at a flat rate no matter how many eggs are harvested; egg donors may be paid more or less depending on the personal characteristics they bring (though the American Society for Reproductive Medicine [ASRM] discourages this).³ For women, the compensation ranges from $4000 to $100,000 for a completed egg donation cycle (Egg Donor America 2016). Donation might have serious medical repercussions including problems with subsequent fertility (Felmayer 2009).

By way of contrast, sperm donation is a simple bodily process: donors are asked to refrain from sex for 48 hours before ejaculating into a cup. Sperm donors are repeat performers, often giving several times a week for at least a year. Men who donate usually have no idea who chooses their gametes or if they are ever used at all. Men are compensated per donation deemed acceptable; currently, it is possible to earn as much as $1500 per month (spermbank.com 2016). Men are unlikely to have any physical or medical repercussions from having donated and their own fertility is not affected.⁴

Organizational effects

Almeling (2011, 82) argues that, in the United States, the fertility industry has framed the act of donation by men and women in different ways: “both egg agencies and sperm banks place advertisements listing biological requirements (e.g. age) but egg agencies emphasize the opportunity to help and sperm banks portray donation as a job.”⁵ Drawing on a content analysis of organizational materials from fertility clinics, egg donation agencies and sperm banks in the United States, Johnson (2013) explores how after recruitment family boundaries are constructed as major organizational strategies to ensure that offspring are viewed as belonging to the intended parents and not the donor. She argues that more effort was put into boundaries when egg donation was involved than when sperm donation was involved, reflecting the belief on the part of clinic staff that the women would have more investment in their “gametes as potential children.” Taken as whole, scholars who study both egg and sperm donors argue that the former are subject to more surveillance of, and more control over, their physical and emotional states.

Gendered notions of parenting and change over time

Studies suggest that the fertility industry constitutes a social context within which assumptions about gender differences are both drawn on and manipulated (Connell 1987; Ferree 2010).⁶ Decades of gender research have argued that a broad variety of material and ideological factors have created a discourse around motherhood (Miller 2007) that propels women to desire motherhood, to form deep connections to their children, and to believe themselves to be responsible for them. The same body of research suggests that men are left with weaker desires, weaker connections, and a weaker sense of obligation (Thorne and Yalom 1982; Katz-Rothman 1986; Chodorow 1999).⁷ Studies also document the different degree to which women and men feel responsibility for the health and well-being of their children, especially in an era of “intensive motherhood” (Hays 1996; Blum 2007; Villalobos 2015). At the same time, as LaRossa (2015, 3) and others (Wall and Arnold 2007; Raley, Bianchi, and Wang 2012; Kaufman 2013) note, the culture and conduct surrounding fatherhood changed at the end of the twentieth century and more men have come to place considerable value on their parental role. As we show below, both these profoundly gendered attitudes – and, perhaps, some recent convergence – extend outward to shape attitudes to donor-conceived offspring among donors.

Methods

Data collection and analysis

We sent invitations to participate in a survey via email to egg and sperm donors who are members of the DSR. The invitations included a link to the survey; the survey, which allowed for absolute anonymity, was online for three months (12 May 2014 to 15 August 2014). Approval for this study was obtained from the Institutional Review Boards of the authors.

According to the DSR, 536 individuals opened the email of whom 60% (N = 322) clicked on to the survey; 73% (N = 234) of those who clicked on to the survey completed any portion of the survey; this final number represented approximately 12% of the total email invitations sent out to donors. These response rates indicate relatively high levels of interest among respondents who opened the email from the DSR rather than ignoring it altogether.⁸

The survey consisted of just over 100 questions covering background information, the experience of donating, activities and interests since donating, possible connections with donor offspring, and relationships with friends and families. We designed the survey to have the same questions for egg and sperm donors, although we included some questions that were applicable only for one or the other. Some of the questions had previously been used in other studies (Jadva et al. 2010a); all of the questions were pretested. The majority of the questions were closed-ended. A number of open-ended questions created opportunities for sperm and egg donors to express themselves more fully. We developed codes for these open-ended questions using a traditional grounded theory approach (Glaser and Strauss 1969). To insure inter-coder reliability, two individuals coded these questions separately; when there was disagreement about the coding, the responses were coded as “other.” We report tests of significance, as they are appropriate given the form of data.

We draw on a broad variety of responses in these surveys to explore the similarities and differences between sperm donors and egg donors with respect to the key issue of how they understand their responsibility toward their offspring. Follow-up questions asked respondents to explain answers to forced-choice questions. For example, we asked them to expand on their answers to a question, which asked them whether they ever thought about the children conceived from their gametes. We also asked respondents who contacted a clinic after donating why they had done so and we asked donors to define the relationship between themselves and any offspring with whom they had had contact. Finally, at the end of the survey, respondents were asked, “What would you like other people considering being donors to know that you have learned?” This question led many respondents to reflect on how they felt about having donated gametes and the degree to which they now felt responsible for their offspring.

Participants

By virtue of signing up for the DSR, the respondents in this study indicate that they have some interest either in knowing about, having contact with, or making information about themselves available to, their offspring. We acknowledge that our respondents may well be a very unusual group of donors. As such, the data cannot be used to explore such issues as what proportion of donors might eventually want to be available to their offspring through a registry that allows for the possibility of contact or whether in the broader population of donors, sperm donors or egg donors are more interested in that availability. Future research might involve sperm banks and egg clinics that follow up with their donors and investigate how they view their donations years after donating.

Table 1 provides demographic data on the two groups of donors. Both sperm donors and egg donors, donated only for few years, and were young when they started. Sperm and egg donors were also similar in their employment status when they donated, although more women were employed full-time or part-time and more men were students. At the time of the survey, the men were considerably older than the egg donors were and the number of years that had elapsed since donating was, on average, over twice as long. The men were also better educated and somewhat more likely to be single. In other ways, the two were similar. Equal proportions of sperm and egg donors were listed as anonymous donors at the time they donated. Equal proportions also reported that they had not been given a choice about what kind of donor to be. Finally, the vast majority identified as being heterosexual and Caucasian; a majority of each presently had children of their own.

Table 1. Demographic characteristics.

	Egg donors (N = 113)	Sperm donors (N = 121)
1A. At the time of donation
Average age when started	25	26
Average age when stopped^†	27	30
Average number of years of donating^†	2.1	3.6
Employment status (respondents could check more than one response so totals do not add up to 100%)
Employed full-time*	55%	41%
Employed part-time*	33%	22%
Full-time student*	35%	47%
Part-time student	9%	12%
Stay-at-home mother*	5%	1%
Unemployed	0%	3%
Percent not given a choice of what kind of donor to be	64%	74%
Kind of donor
Anonymous	60%	65%
Identity release when child reached age 18	25%	29%
Other/Unclear	15%	8%
Total	100%	100%
1B. At the time of the survey
Average age^†	36	51
Highest level of education*
BA or less	66%	44%
>BA	33%	56%
Total	99%	100%
Marital status
Single/never married	15%	19%
Living with/married to partner of same sex	5%	11%
Living with/married to partner of other sex	68%	53%
Single/previous partner other sex	4%	3%
Single/previous partner same sex	8%	14%
Total	100%	100%
Percent heterosexual	88%	83%
Percent Caucasian	96%	89%
Percent with own children	59%	60%
Number of years since last donated^†	9.1	21.5

^†T-test significant at ≤.05.

*Chi-square significant at ≤.05.

Findings

Retrospective discussions in the process of donation

When asked to recall their motivations for having become donors, women and men were equally likely to give compensation as one of the reasons they donated and equally likely to say it was the most important reason (Table 2 A). However, more women than men indicate they were motivated to help someone else both as a reason for donating and as the primary reason for donating. As one woman said, “The idea of helping others achieve what they could not on their own was very rewarding!” By way of contrast, men are more likely to say they donated to pass on their genes both as a reason for donating and as the primary reason for doing so. One man was explicit: “Because of a blood type mismatch my first wife and I only had one natural child and adopted two. I have high self-esteem and think that my genetic heritage will be valuable to propagate.”

Table 2. Donation variables.

	Egg donors (N = 113) (%)	Sperm donors (N = 121) (%)
2A. Recalled motivations
Financial compensation as reason	78	75
Financial compensation as primary reason	26	28
Help families as reason*	86	69
Help families as primary reason*	56	26
Pass along genes as reason*	32	62
Pass along genes as primary reason*	3	23
Two reasons: financial compensation and help families*	67	50
Two reasons: financial compensation and pass along genes*	26	47
2B. Why they believe they were chosen
Physical appearance	21	21
Genes, health, medical history	19	15
Intelligence*	16	27
2C. Experience of donation
Thought about how becoming a donor might affect future ability to have children*	45	4
Thought about possible offspring at time of donation*	92	83
Had eggs set aside for themselves	21	Does Not Apply
Felt like a job	35	35
Concerned about quality of gametes	11	10

*Chi-square significant at ≤.05.

We asked donors to indicate (in an open-ended question) why they thought they were selected to be donors. Men and women are equally likely to say that they think they were chosen because of their physical appearance and their health: men are more likely than women to say that they think they were chosen because of their intelligence (Table 2 B).

Ten times as many women as men said that they had thought about their own future fertility at the time of donation; more women than men also said that they thought about possible offspring at the time of donation. (Table 2 C) In addition, in response to a question asked only of egg donors, a fifth said that they had eggs set aside for them. These findings show that when they are donating, egg donors are conscious of the fact that their eggs will produce children. Sperm donors, on the other hand, may donate in an entirely unthinking manner. As one sperm donor wrote, “I didn’t think about it then. I only half believed that they were actually selling the sperm to potential parents.” In other ways, men and women describe the process similarly. They were equally likely to report being concerned about the quality of their gametes and equally likely to recall having felt that donating felt like a job.

Knowledge of gamete use

As Table 3 A shows, more sperm than egg donors know that all of their gametes were used, although the majority of neither men nor women have that information. Very few sperm donors report that they know how many individuals purchased vials of their sperm. Almost two-fifths of egg donors, by way of contrast, indicate that they know how many individuals used their eggs. Among those who know if all their gametes were used, more egg donors than sperm donors know how many offspring were conceived. We found the same difference among those who do not know if all their gametes were used, although the percentages are considerably lower. That is, although more sperm donors than egg donors know that all their gametes were used, information about the number of resulting offspring is greater among the egg donors.

Table 3. Knowledge, wondering, threats, and desired contact.

	Egg donors	Sperm donors
3A. Knowledge of gamete use and contact with offspring
Percent saying they know if all their sperm/eggs were used*	7% (111)	29% (117)
Percent saying they were told how many individuals purchased their sperm (sperm donors) Percent saying they know how many individuals used their eggs (egg donors)*	38% (111)	8% (117)
Percent of those who know if all gametes were used who know how many offspring were conceived*	100% (8)	21% (33)
Percent of those who do not know if all gametes were used who know how many offspring were conceived*	34% (102)	2% (84)
Contacted clinic to find out how many offspring (if did not know already)*	25% (68)	42% (108)
3B. Curiosity and wondering about offspring
Began to wonder after having own children	16% (78)	9% (96)
Thinks it “natural” that donor would wonder	6% (78)	15% (96)
Wonder if offspring want to meet them	22% (78)	24% (96)
Hope offspring have a good life*	27% (78)	13% (96)
Wonder if offspring think about them*	75% (113)	86% (121)
Assume offspring must be curious*	20% (25)	46% (24)
3C. Threats and displacement
Feel displaced by the parent of the same gender	8% (113)	4% (121)
Feel they are a threat to the parent of the same gender*	23% (113)	40% (121)
Ambivalence (claiming and not claiming)*	25% (40)	4% (39)
3D. Desired contact among those with no contact
Communicate with offspring	98% (89)	95% (69)
Meet in person once	89% (89)	95% (69)
Communicate over email or text*	87% (89)	96% (69)
Phone or Skype*	81% (89)	92% (69)
Spend time together*	70% (89)	87% (69)
Be part of offspring’s daily life	33% (89)	35% (69)
Help offspring make decisions	22% (89)	31% (69)
Help offspring with finances	19% (89)	24% (69)

*Chi-square significant at ≤.05.

Curiosity and wonder

The data in Table 3 B show that when asked to reflect on the offspring their donations produced (in response to an open-ended question where we coded for multiple answers), some men and some women indicated that they began to wonder about their offspring after having children of their own. Others simply responded that they thought it was “natural” to wonder about their offspring. In addition, both some egg and some sperm donors wonder if their offspring will want to meet them. Egg donors and sperm donors differ subtly on this issue. Egg donors are more likely to mention spontaneously that they hope that their offspring have a good life, thus conveying a distant, but intense sense of responsibility: “I worry about whether they are loved. [I worry] whether they feel a part of them is missing in not knowing me.”

The vast majority of both sperm and egg donors wonder if their offspring wonder about them, although somewhat more sperm donors than egg donors express that curiosity. In addition, other differences emerged in open-ended comments. Twice as many sperm donors as egg donors simply assumed that their offspring would be curious about them: “I’d be curious if I was a donor offspring”; “I’m sure if they know they were donor conceived then they must wonder about me, about their genetic history, about all kinds of things. It would only be natural.” For sperm donors, curiosity on the part of their offspring is as “natural” as is their own curiosity about them. It is also desirable: they want their offspring to want to know them. Many donors, in both groups, added comments, indicating that it troubled them that they had not been told what had happened to their donations. With hindsight, some feel they got a bad deal: “I do not know anything about what happened with my eggs, and it bothers me a great deal not to know and not to have the option to know (Egg donor)”; “There was no option other than to be an anonymous donor. Had I been given the choice I would have opted to be known when the child reached age 18 (Sperm donor).”

Attitudes toward intended parents

We asked two questions to assess the degree to which sperm and egg donors think that they offer a threat to the intended parents and the degree to which they “ever feel displaced” by the same-sex parent of their donor-conceived offspring. Both men and women overwhelmingly responded “No” to this second question, indicating that they did not view themselves as a parent of that child. However, the responses to the first question gleaned more differentiated responses (Table 3 C). Twice as many sperm donors answered that they thought the male parent would be threatened by their existence than egg donors who indicated that they thought the same would be true of the female parent. Open-ended comments make clear that the sperm donors who answered affirmatively did so because in their imagination the recipient family has an infertile father (a response that is interesting given how often sperm donation is relied on by lesbians and single mothers). These donors wrote about the uneasiness those fathers might feel in a manner that suggests they equate fertility with masculinity (Adrian 2010) and view a genetic bond as at least one component of fatherhood (Almeling 2014):

It must be hard to want children but not be able to conceive. Having raised kids, it would be hard for me, especially in the beginning years, to raise a child who was not from me.

I have a family of my own now. There is no denying that a man’s identity is tied up in the identity of his father, and his paternal lineage.

Overall, egg donors do not see themselves as threats to mothers. Rather than creating lineage, egg donors believe that they are creating other mothers (Collins 2002; Kirkman 2003; Johnson 2013) and some feel a deep connection to the woman who used those eggs. They comment on the satisfaction that accompanies the tokens they received from the intended mothers: “The first cycle recipient sent me a card to thank me, made me so happy.” In addition, a fifth of the women spontaneously suggested that they entirely believe that the child produced through their donation “belongs” to the intended parents. Others added comments that quite simply said that it was not their place to think about themselves as a source of displacement or threat: “I define ‘parents’ as the primary caregivers of a child – I was merely a donor. I do not hold any claim on my eggs after I donated them.”

However, some egg donors express far more ambivalence or tension. These women appear to be simultaneously linking the notion that they are not the parent of the offspring with their own expression of interest in those offspring, an interest generated, in part at least, by their attachment to the children they are raising:

I believe that the child that could have been conceived through my eggs belongs to the mother who gave birth to him or her. I am curious, though, about the potential child, and I became even more interested after the birth of my own daughter 3 years ago. … [S]eeing how much my little girl looks like me made me think that there could be another little girl or boy out there who is similarly mine, but not mine. I wish it would be possible to know or to have a relationship [with] the child.

The statement of “mine, but not mine” represents well the two feelings egg donors balance as they reflect on their relationship to the children produced from their donor gametes.

Desired contact

Regardless of other attitudes, the sperm and the egg donors included in this study want some form of contact with their offspring and they are alike in making a sharp distinction between seeing and knowing offspring, on the one hand, and assuming an ongoing role in the lives of those offspring, on the other (Table 3 D). This is the case even though relative to egg donors, sperm donors fantasize about contact that is more intimate with offspring on an ongoing basis (i.e. they want more communication and have a greater interest in spending time together).

Imagining offspring and the donor’s influence

Both men and women imagine their offspring in a positive light, attributing to them good looks, talents, engaging personalities, a sense of humor, sensitivity, and warmth (Table 4 A). Differences emerge as well. Sperm donors are more likely than are egg donors to imagine their offspring as being talented; egg donors are more likely to imagine their offspring as young, sensitive, and warm (and, to some extent, good looking).

Table 4. Imagining offspring and influence.

	Egg donors (N = 113)	Sperm donors (N = 121)
4A. Percent saying offspring have attribute
Talented*	51	63
Good-looking*	61	52
Generous	43	40
Someone I would like	69	65
Funny/Good sense of humor	62	59
Sensitive*	68	55
Warm*	59	47
4B. Percent saying genes are “very important”
Physical illness*	53	36
Mental illness*	55	31
Overall personality	18	24
Intelligence*	30	51
Success in life	9	8
Mathematics ability*	17	36
Athletic ability*	21	45
Artistic ability*	20	32

*Chi-square significant at ≤.05.

In answer to a series of questions about the influence of genes on traits (Shostak et al. 2009), significant differences emerged between the two groups of donors: men are more likely than women to say that genes are “very important” determinants of overall intelligence, mathematical ability, artistic ability, and athletic ability; women more strongly than men believe that genes determine both mental and physical health (Table 4 B). One woman tacked on a comment about the relevance her genes might have for her offspring’s well-being to her assertion that the intended parents were the parents of the child produced from her gametes: “My biology plays a role in the possibility of disease and likelihood of various phenotypes, but does not make me a ‘mother.’” In short, although the majority of donors do not think that genes are “very important” for most outcomes, men and women differed in their assessments of how genes mattered: women worried about disease; men focused on abilities.

Discussion

We acknowledge that we base our findings on evidence from a distinctive population of sperm and egg donors. We do not know how many donors, as is the case for those who signed on to the DSR and responded to our survey, are interested in contact with their offspring. We also have no way of knowing how norms associated with a particular social class, educational status, sexual orientation, and racial/ethnic identity shape the attitudes of either egg or sperm donors.⁹ Moreover, because we have data at only one point in time we have no way of knowing how changing social norms (e.g. those associated with how family “secrets” concerning reliance on donors and adoption are handled) shaped the donors since they donated. With those provisos in mind, we suggest our findings add depth to the issue of the meaning of “responsibility” for sperm and egg donors.

In the years following donation, the majority of sperm and egg donors said that they were motivated by an interest in financial compensation and a desire to help families. Sperm and egg donors were also equally likely to say that they believed their physical appearance and health were reasons for their having been chosen, that they worried about the quality of their gametes, and that donating had felt like a job. Moreover, the majority of both also now wonder if their offspring think about them, would like to have some kind of personal interaction with their offspring, and attribute positive attributes to those offspring. Yet, even if they answer similarly on some questions, they reveal differences. The two groups of egg and sperm donors, if not located at distinctly different points along a continuum, have developed quite different patterns of interest in, and responsibility toward, their offspring. The man’s pattern shows evidence of what we call “prideful lineage”; the women’s pattern shows evidence of what appears to be a deep-seated sense of what we call “concerned responsibility.”

Prideful lineage

In some aspects, the men’s pattern we observed is consistent with some of what prior research has shown to be the case in terms of sperm donor attitudes toward donor-conceived offspring. As Almeling (2011, 2014) reported from her interviews and observations, men experience a “defining connection to offspring” because they have given genetic material. Although almost none of the sperm donors we interviewed responded that they felt displaced by the male parent of their offspring (recognizing that a social father has pride of place), sperm donors were more likely than egg donors to believe they constituted a threat to the parent of their gender.

In addition, among those who have not had any contact with offspring, sperm donors desire more contact with their offspring on a regular basis than do egg donors, although they are no more interested in offering emotional or financial support. Finally, more sperm than egg donors believe that they themselves were chosen for their superior intelligence; more sperm than egg donors believe that their offspring have significant talents; and more sperm than egg donors believe that their genes determine the talents of their offspring.

Three factors seem relevant to understanding this pattern of responses among sperm donors. One of these has to do with the organization of sperm donation in the United States. Each time they donate sperm, donors have the opportunity to renew their belief that their genes are valued. That is, if they believe that they were chosen by a sperm bank because of their superiority to the average Joe (and they are more likely than egg donors to believe that their intelligence is relevant to the selection process), that belief might well be reinforced on each occasion of donation. A second factor has to do with the greater uncertainty about what happened to their donations. Sperm donors are more likely than egg donors to know that all of their donations were used but less likely to know how many intending parents used those donations and how many offspring were conceived. In the absence of concrete knowledge, the men might draw on a traditional discourse that allows them to view themselves as having fulfilled some significant role in procreation simply by virtue of having contributed their (superior) sperm (Almeling 2014). Third, since Almeling (2011) conducted her interviews over a decade ago, the context for sperm donation has changed in two ways: increasing numbers of single mothers and same-sex couples now rely on donor conception, and more banks now offer identity-release donors (Mamo and Alston-Stepnitz 2015). In this new context, new understanding of the donor might emerge that do not involve the concept of the donor as a “father” to his offspring. Even so, specific aspects of the ways in which men imagine their offspring and envision their procreative role need further explanation.

Concerned responsibility

The egg donor pattern we found diverges more from what other research identified (Kirkman 2003; Johnson 2013; Almeling 2014) insofar as responses offered some years after donation indicate acknowledgement that donating was motivated by financial concerns and felt like a job. We found also that egg donors imagine offspring in their own image: their offspring are gendered insofar as they have traits encouraged among women (e.g. warmth, good looks, and sensitivity). They also view their offspring as being vulnerable (e.g. youth and sensitivity) and therefore, perhaps, in need of some kind of protection. The egg donors, more often than the sperm donors, spontaneously indicated that they hoped that their offspring had a good life. The sense of ambivalence more than a quarter of the egg donors express (“mine but not mine”) indicates also that they both feel strongly about the well-being of their offspring and that they do not think they should intrude to ensure that well-being. They remain concerned and powerless. Finally, the egg donors hold themselves responsible for these gendered and vulnerable beings differently than do men. In comparison with sperm donors, they are more likely to believe that genes are “very important” as determinants of physical and mental illness; they are, on the other hand, less likely to believe that genes determine intelligence or specialized abilities. In short, as donors, the women are anxious not about what can go right (i.e. talents), but about what could go wrong (i.e. physical and mental health) in the lives of their offspring. They fear that they might already have harmed them with an imperfect genetic imprint.

Filling the gaps

Most of the sperm and egg donors we interviewed did not know with any precision what had happened to their gametes and most had not had contact with any offspring. We suggest that the gap in knowledge is filled with gendered assumptions. As Martin (1991) demonstrated years ago, gametes are embedded in culture and even scientific texts “gender” them, depicting sperm as acting in stereotypical masculine ways (proactive, strong, and brave) and eggs as being stereotypically feminine (passive, weak, and timid). (see also Campo-Engelstein and Johnson 2014). In this social context, it is not very surprising to find that women and men think about the offspring produced from their reproductive gametes through similarly gendered lenses, with men imagining talents and women imagining youth, sensitivity, warmth, and good looks. Moreover, whatever their own actual experiences of parenting might be (and almost two-thirds of the egg donors and sperm donors were parents), in the absence of any public discourse about how they should feel about offspring they are not raising, each set of donors falls back on the popular discourse. In contemporary times, that popular discourse holds women more fully responsible for the health and well-being of their children (Hays 1996; Blum 2007; Macdonald 2011). Thus, much as the men and women we studied exist on a continuum with considerable overlap with respect to an expressed interest in, and attitudes toward, the offspring produced through their donated gametes, subtle differences remain. The long reach of gendered ideology extends from individual men and women to shape how they define responsibility for the children created with the help of those cells.

Having said as much, however, we find little evidence that sperm donors and egg donors view themselves as the parents (fathers and mothers, respectively) of the children conceived with their donations. The men might view their existence as a threat to the fathers of their offspring but they do not feel displaced. They want to be recognized by the offspring and they want contact with them, but they do not want to be part of their daily lives. The egg donors are equally unlikely to feel displaced and even less likely to view themselves as a threat to the social parent. Like the sperm donors, they want to be recognized by their offspring and to have limited contact with them. Sperm donors feel more pride; egg donors feel more responsibility. However, as Mohr (2015) suggests of sperm donors, the sense of relatedness cannot easily be mapped on to existing notions of parenthood. Indeed, the attitudes of each might be unique to the situation in which participants have to discover for themselves the meaning of biogenetic relatedness.

Conclusion

Our data suggest that men and women who donate gametes may be affected emotionally in different ways. The men who responded to the survey seemed to experience pride with respect to children raised by someone else, even as these men yearned to have contact with them. The egg donors who responded were left with niggling concerns about how their contributions played out in terms of both physical and mental health; they too yearned for contact, not only for reasons of curiosity but perhaps also to assure themselves that the child is “alright.”

In the future, more contact between donors and their offspring is likely in the United Sates. Not only is identity-release donation becoming more commonplace, but also registries like the DSR and technological sleuthing make identification easier. To date, consumers have largely driven these changes. The data in this study suggest that some donors want to learn more about their offspring and thus might become active players who request more openness.

Taken as a whole, our findings indicate that donors might want the fertility industry to take some action that would, at the very least, satisfy their curiosity and that would, at the very most, facilitate interaction between donors and their offspring.¹⁰ Meeting these demands would mean that that the clinics and banks would have to keep records of all births and be willing to release some of that information to donors. Scholars have begun to explore the contours of contact among those who have biogenetic links as they include parents and offspring linked through shared donors (Scheib and Ruby 2008; Jadva et al. 2010a; Hertz and Mattes 2011; Edwards 2013, 2015; Goldberg and Scheib 2015; Goldberg and Scheib 2016; Hertz, Nelson, and Kramer 2016; Klotz 2016). As creating these modern forms of relatedness becomes more commonplace, donors might want to have a significant voice in defining just what that relatedness might mean.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences [SES-1355726, SES-1355740].

Notes

1. Embryo donation and surrogacy create some of the same issues; they are not under consideration here.

2. Most sperm banks now offer identity-release sperm. The Sperm Bank of California (TSBC) started this practice in 1983 (Scheib, Riordan, and Rubin 2003). Donors at TSBC (and at other banks with similar programs) can sign a contract that authorizes the bank to reveal their identity only to a donor-conceived individual who is at least 18 years old and has requested the donor’s identifying information in writing. Even then, the information is not automatically released: the donor is requested to fill out an updated profile and to specify his preferred form of contact. If donors cannot be found, no contact will be initiated. Thus, among those who are identity-release donors, social connections might occur if the donor-conceived child pursues that possibility once he or she has turned 18. For those who are anonymous donors, social connections are unlikely unless the donor decides to come forward or the donor-conceived child uses one of the new technologies of identifying the origins of one’s DNA such as Family Tree DNA (https://www.familytreedna.com/) or 23AndMe (https://www.23Andme.com). For an argument that anonymity of donors is no longer possible, see Harper, Kennett, and Reisel (2016).

3. Until recently, the ASRM provided guidelines for how much egg donors should be paid (The Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine 2007); these “caps” have been found illegal (Gershman 2016). Concerns about “unethical” recruitment (Keehn et al. 2012; Rettner 2012) and commercialization are common (Holster 2008; Ikemoto 2009; Krawiec 2009, 2015).

4. While much is changing in the world of gamete donation (Scheib and Cushing 2007) including recent reliance on frozen eggs harvested in advance of the selection by a particular family (eliminating the need to synchronize two women’s cycles) (Robertson 2013), the scenarios outlined above are the ones experienced by the vast majority of respondents in our study.

5. For similar arguments, see Haylett (2012) and Pollock (2003). For discussions of framing in other countries, see Adrian (2010) and Graham, Mohr, and Bourne (2016). For discussions of how egg donors who travel for the purpose of egg donation frame their experiences, see Kroløkke (2015).

6. The recruitment process itself advantages only those men who are privileged in a world of “hegemonic masculinity” (white, young, tall, and highly educated) and only those women who conform to “emphasized femininity” (young, good-looking, and required to have a specific Body Mass Index no higher than 28) (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). See, for instance, California Cryobank’s page “Choosing a Sperm Donor” which lists the basic requirements including “legally allowed to work in the US” (California Cryobank 2016); see also the egg donor requirements at Circle Egg Donation which is one of the largest egg donor sites in the US (Circle Egg Donation 2016).

7. Indeed, studies document persistent differences between mothers and fathers, for example, not only in how they think about their role in reproduction (Doucet 2013; Marsiglio, Lohan, and Culley 2013; Doucet and Lee 2014), but in how they prepare for parenthood (Bass 2015), and attend to details as parents (Walzer 1996; Pedersen 2012).

8. In fact, as a rule, web surveys generally have relatively low response rates (Monroe and Adams 2012); we weigh our concerns about response rates against the advantages of trying to reach generally hard-to-reach populations such as gamete donors.

9. We do not have a sufficient number of donors to divide our population along these lines. We note that white donors might not have the same concerns about the safety of their children, as might be the case for African-American or Latino/Latina donors (Uttal 1996; Collins 2002; Elliott and Aseltine 2013).

10. This kind of contact might be facilitated but cannot be legislated or required, especially for those who donated before “identity-release” was even an option. Of course, the problem remains that while donors might want this contact, parents and offspring might not.