Anna

[INTERVIEWER]: So just to start off with, tell me a little bit about your family background and how you grew up.

[ANNA]: I was raised in Los Angeles, California with two moms and a younger sister. My parents used a sperm donor for both me and my sister and one of my parents carried each of us, so I guess technically we're half siblings, but I’ve always kind of hated that term. I'm fortunate that I grew up in a community that had a lot of other gay families. I remember the day that I learned that not everyone had two moms, but I don't remember learning that I didn't have a dad or something like that. I've gone through an evolution of understanding what type of donor my parents used and how it fits into the way that it's talked about now, because I always thought growing up that I had what would be called an open at 18 donor. I've talked to my mom about it since then, and it turns out that she's not even sure where I got that idea from because they were always open with us about like the details that they had to a certain extent, but I’ve found out that they could have had more information than they gave us because our donor was not really a bank donor, so they weren't tied by contract the way that you might be with a bank donor. I’ve never sought out our donor, my sister connected with him. She took a DNA test even though my mom had the information, so she didn't need to do that. But my sister connected with him, met him once and wasn’t interested in pursuing further contact. I haven’t reached out, I kind of wish my sister had looped me in when she reached out because I would have probably done it with her, but I haven't been all that interested in doing it on my own. I've seen like child pictures because when my sister started talking about interest, I looked a little bit.

[INTERVIEWER]: On that topic, do you have any thoughts about what type of donor your parents chose? known vs unknown, sperm bank vs personal connection etc…

[ANNA]: So I've talked to my mom about this a lot because I am in some of the donor conception groups and I've I've learned a lot. I'm also probably going to have to use a donor when I want to have kids in the future, so I've done a lot of thinking about this and given what they knew at the time, I don't think my parents did anything wrong. I especially appreciate how they talked to us in an age appropriate way about what is necessary to make a baby. I remember in third grade explaining that I didn't have a dad, I had a sperm donor and how that works is XYZ. But I've talked to my mom about this and what I think, in hindsight, they could have done differently is because they had the information that they had, I wish that they had been more active about offering information about the donor. They were taking an approach, which I think in donor conception circles would be called more child led, meaning they waited for us to ask questions in order for them to gauge if we were interested. I wish they had taken a slightly more parent-led approach and made it more clear to me that there was more information available if I wanted to seek it out, because that would have made it feel like less of a big deal to seek out that information. It always felt like I had to wait until I was 18 even though maybe that wasn't true. I've always felt like it was some switch that I had to flip on or off, finding out who this person was. And I think, and while I don't feel like I missed out on anything, I think that the one thing that I would do differently for my own kids would be to make it more clear that like, oh yeah, if you want to know who this person is or want to meet them, we can try to make that happen.

[INTERVIEWER]: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

[ANNA]: On the topic of the bank donor versus the personal connection, I don't know why my parents didn't go with a personal connection, but I, this is my personal opinion. I'm not going to say anybody does anything wrong, but I think it might have muddied the waters a little bit if they had gone with like, I think my uncle offered to be a donor at one point. I'm not sure how I would have felt about that. A friend maybe would have been great. I know they did try with like your traditional bank donor and my mom just couldn't get pregnant. So then they went a different route. And I know that we're a Jewish family and I know that they were adamant of finding actually a non-Jewish donor just to kind of spread the gene pool out a little bit for like health risks and that kind of thing, especially because this was before sperm donors were commonly genetically tested. The story my mom has told is that he came to their house. It was much more informal than you get these days. One more interesting thing about my story that I should add is technically I actually have met my donor because he did give my parents a third donation. They were trying to have a third kid, so I think he came to our house when I was very, very young, but I have no memory of it because I was like three. It's like harder to characterize than people who know, oh, I had a bank donor or it was my mom's friend because it's like some guy who I don't know, but not as cut and dry as like buying a file.

[INTERVIEWER]: When did your parents have the family structure conversation with you? Parents often guess that going to school with children who mostly have opposite-sex parents, you're going to get asked questions about having same-sex parents. When did they explain to you that other families might have a mom and a dad, yours has two moms, and talk about how you got here.?

[ANNA]: Yeah. I don't remember that conversation, which tells me it must have taken place when I was very, very small. One of my moms is a psychologist who works in the LGBTQ and reproductive field, so she knew how to approach it with us. I don't remember having a conversation with my parents, but I do remember having similar conversations in first or second grade with some of my peers.

[INTERVIEWER]: When the subject came up with your peers growing up, how did it make you feel and how did you tend to respond?

[ANNA]: I was never the only kid with LGBTQ parents at school. There was always at least one other kid with two moms. I don't know if there was a kid with two dads, but there was always another kid with two moms. And I definitely remember like vividly having a conversation on the playground in maybe second grade explaining, no I don't have a dad, I have a sperm donor. I got the response from this kid, ‘You mean your mom had to have sex with a stranger?’ I just said no and explained the situation, so that was sort of that conversation. That was the only time I really remember it happening. Most of the kids I went to elementary school with I had known since when we were very young, so they just knew my parents because they were always around the classroom, but if a new kid would enter the grade, then I would have that conversation with them. The only time I remember someone not being very nice about it was one kid at camp, and that was less about being donor conceived and more about having two moms.

[INTERVIEWER]: The next question is straight parents tend to divide up parenting obligations along gender lines, but for gay couples, there's a lot more variation. How did your parents tend to divide that up?

[ANNA]: Oh, interesting. I never really thought of it that way. One of my mom's is the main breadwinner, but she's also the more nurturing one. My other mom does the cooking and household stuff, but also had a bunch of jobs while we were growing up and tends to be the more masculine one in terms of presenting and dress and that sort of thing and like sportiness. So I don't know. I don't think my parents fit cleanly into that divide at all. My mom who does more of the household stuff and cooking isn’t the one we would go to to talk about our feelings. I feel like most people, if they're honest with themselves about their strengths, wouldn't fall directly along those lines.

[INTERVIEWER]: Often couples going into the donor-conception process are anxious about whether the nonbiological parent is going to have a more difficult time bonding with the child. Did you ever feel like it was a different or more difficult experience bonding with one parent versus the other?

[ANNA]: I wouldn’t say it was any more or less difficult, but it was different, mostly just because they're different people. I have a lot of similarities with my bio-mom, and we get along really well because of those similarities but we also clash because of those similarities. So it's nice that there's someone else who I'm very close with in different ways. I don't know. I feel like I'm very, very close with both my parents. Yeah, I don't know. Sorry, I don't have a good answer for this question because I think I'm very close to both of my parents.

[INTERVIEWER]: No, that's a great answer. Growing up, were your grandparents on either side in the picture?

[ANNA]: Yeah, grandmothers on both sides. One of my grandfather's passed away while my mom was pregnant with me so I didn't meet him. My other grandfather passed away when I was very small, when I was about 5, so I do have like some memories with him, but my grandmas on both sides are still alive today. I’m very close with my biological grandmother, although I don't really think of her in that term, but just to differentiate it for you. She used to pick us up from school like once a week and take care of us. My other mom's mom, I'm actually a lot closer with now than I used to be. She's kind of mellowed out as she's gotten older. When my sister was born, my nonbio-grandmother, my sister's bio-grandmother, said to my bio-grandmother, “now we each have one.” And that was hurtful to my one of my moms at the time, but like I said, she's mellowed out a lot and we go and see her and have a better relationship now.

[INTERVIEWER]: How does it make you feel when people ask which mom you're biologically related to?

[ANNA]: I'm not sure if I feel like that's something I care about when people ask. I mean, assuming it's someone I know relatively well, I'll just tell them. I like to make it visible because I like to make it something normalized, talking about our kinds of families, if that makes sense. I also look a lot like my bio mom, so anyone who's met my parents doesn’t usually need to ask because I don't look like my non-bio mom at all. I wonder if you would get a more interesting answer from my sister because she looks like none of the three of us. She's like the outlier. She looks like my grandma, like the grandparents, but she doesn't look like either of our moms or really the donor. Apparently, I look a lot like the donor. I'm not sure I see it though. I saw children's pictures. I don't know if I saw the resemblance, but I always thought I looked like my bio mom. I've been told I have the look, but my sister doesn't. I don't know. My sister is also blonde, so she looks very different from the rest of the family.

[INTERVIEWER]: Did you feel like there were any particular difficulties for your parents that they had to put in extra work to overcome that straight parents didn't? Was there anything that just wasn't optimized for them and, if so, how did they overcome it?

[ANNA]: So I can give you one answer about when they were having me and one answer about a repercussion from it that even I sort of dealt with. When they were having me, they had to go through second parent adoption and have a home study. I don't know if it's because they were both women or just because they used a donor. I'm not positive if that's a thing that parents still have to do. I know a two-mom family who are having kids now and they did do some sort of maybe it was a pre-birth judgment or something different but they still had to do something like that. Getting back to the story, my non-bio mom was born and grew up in a non-US country and I wanted to pursue citizenship of that non-US country. I did actually successfully get my citizenship but because she had adopted me but not in that country and because I wasn't her biological kid I didn't fit neatly into the pre-existing paths to citizenship. They had like two paths to citizenship one via adoption and one via birth and I didn't fit neatly into either one and I had to endure several phone calls from like citizenship investigators. I know that's not the term but they were basically grilling me about my relationship with my mom and they wanted like proof that she had been part of my conception story, which would have been easier if I had been born through surrogacy or something like that because there would be contracts and stuff that would prove that but because of the way that sperm donation worked for my family there wasn't like paper proof so we kept submitting like photos of the two of them while my mom was pregnant and they were like that's not a document that's not proof that she was part of the conception so that was a pain.

[INTERVIEWER]: And then so the last one is if you had one piece of advice to share with same-sex couples going into the process of having kids to gamete donation what would it be?

[ANNA]: Well I definitely say do it but make sure you can figure out your insecurities about the process before you go through it. Know that your kids will love you and don’t let your insecurities color that process. For example, a story from my childhood my parents tell me is that I said to my mom once “oh I really wish I had a dad.” Being a psychologist, she didn't get upset but she asked me “okay, why do you wish that?” and my answer was because if I had a dad he'd play sports with me, so she said okay we can play sports with you. If she had reacted differently to that question it could have been hard but it was just an innocuous question.