Parents in law: subjective impacts and status implications around the use of licensed donor insemination

Jones, Caroline (2006) Parents in law: subjective impacts and status implications around the use of licensed donor insemination. In, Diduck, Alison and O'Donovan, Katherine (eds.) Feminist Perspectives on Family Law. (Feminist Perspectives) Oxford, GB. Routledge-Cavendish, pp. 75-99.

Abstract

The focus of this chapter is the significance of the legal ascription of parenthood, in the context of donor insemination, as a mechanism of the social management of family formation. Identifying a particular person as a legal parent, or excluding another from parental status, can clearly both affect and reflect societal attitudes to parenting and transgressive familial forms. At the outset I consider the authority of legal discourse to confer legal parenthood, and through the analysis of interview accounts of lesbian couples and heterosexual couples, go on to examine the kinship terminology used in both heterosexual and lesbian families with children conceived by donation. This analysis facilitates an understanding of the subjective impact of the legal ascription of parenthood, or lack thereof, for some people using donor insemination to create their families. I conclude by addressing three interrelated questions: whether Anglo-Welsh family law has the necessary mechanisms for recognising the parental role of co-mothers; whether 'parenthood' is an appropriate status to reflect the role of co-mothers; and the ways in which lesbian co-motherhood might be accommodated under the current law relating to parenthood.

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