Being an egg or sperm donor
Exploring the impact of donating on the everyday lives of donors, their partners and their parents.
This project will contribute to our understanding of relationships between donors and donor offspring, and of how donation is experienced in wider family networks. It will be the first major study of this topic since the move towards identity-release donation. Our research will be based on in-depth interviews with:
- egg and sperm donors
- partners and parents of donors
- counsellors and staff working with donors in fertility clinics.
With an increase in the number of children born from egg and sperm donation, some research has been done about the experiences of these children and their parents (including our earlier project!). Very little research has been done about the experiences of identity-release and known donors, or about how donating impacts on their everyday lives and experiences. Even less is known about the experiences of parents and partners of donors.
Our progress so far
We have now finished all our research interviews with donors, family members of donors, and counsellors. Thanks to our participants, we now have a large data collection and the next step is to analyse the data.
We will also be busy sharing our research in academic articles and in articles, information leaflets and other resources for donors, family members and counsellors, or anybody else with a personal or professional interest on being an egg or sperm donor. If you would like to know more about these publications and resources as we produce them, you can bookmark this page, follow @morgancentre on twitter or email hazel.burke@manchester.ac.uk to say you are interested in updates from this project.