Abstract

Assisted conception practices contribute to an increasingly complex relational landscape. This article draws from a qualitative study that investigated narratives about the negotiation of relatedness in lesbian known donor reproduction in Aotearoa New Zealand. Twenty-six interviews, with 60 adults, across 21 lesbian known donor familial configurations at different stages of forming family through known donor insemination were conducted. The article demonstrates how parties using this form of insemination – lesbian couples, known donors and known donor partners – invoke divorce discourse as a kinship resource. The families these women and men were creating or had already established were the product of deliberate pre-conception planning rather than the result of separation or divorce following the breakdown of an intimate relationship. Nevertheless, divorce discourse supported them to make sense of possibilities for the kin status and place of known donors and their partners within the kinship structures put around children given they have no obvious place within these structures. The article argues the use of divorce conventions serves to both disrupt and uphold traditional parenting discourses and practices.

摘要

辅助受孕实践导致日益复杂的关系格局。本文源自一项定性研究，该研究调查了新西兰 Aotearoa 已知女同性恋捐赠者生殖相关性谈判的叙述。进行了 26 次访谈，涉及 60 名成年人，涉及 21 个已知的女同性恋捐赠者家庭结构，这些家庭结构处于通过已知的捐赠者授精形成家庭的不同阶段。这篇文章展示了使用这种授精形式的各方——女同性恋夫妇、已知的捐赠者和已知的捐赠伙伴——如何将离婚话语作为一种亲属资源。这些妇女和男子正在建立或已经建立的家庭是深思熟虑的先入为主计划的产物，而不是亲密关系破裂后分居或离婚的结果。尽管如此，离婚讨论支持他们了解已知捐助者及其伴侣在围绕儿童的亲属关系结构中的亲属地位和地位的可能性，因为他们在这些结构中没有明显的地位。文章认为，使用离婚公约既可以破坏也可以维护传统的育儿话语和做法。