Imagination and integrity: decision-making among lesbian couples to use medically provided donor insemination

This paper reports findings from a pilot study of lesbian parents in the UK who used medicalised donor insemination (DI) with unknown donors. It focuses on decision-making processes in family construction: this includes lesbian parents' experiences with clinicians and their family stories as told to clinicians and to their young children. Findings reveal that parents' understanding of family, particularly the centrality of the lesbian couple as the key parenting relationship, is crucial. We suggest that this group of parents make considered decisions about how their family might be created. It is their perception of what family means and their desire to protect the integrity of their family that leads them to negotiate social questions, particularly in relation to the presence of a 'father' and the familial role/relationship of the non-biological parent. The study calls attention to the process of respondents' reflexivity about family and their 'doing' of family and highlights the integrity and imagination central to becoming lesbian parents.