Welcome! Around one-third of all DSR parents are LGBTQ! We embrace diversity, and we welcome everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity — read our Non-Discrimination Policy. The LGBTQ community is represented on our Board of Directors.

We can come to speak to your organization or have a booth or table at your event. If interested, please contact Wendy.

My Rainbow Tribe: 

Two Mothers McGill: The incredibly true tale of two women in love and expanding their family. Ashleigh lives in Arizona with her wife and their donor-conceived children. Together with the DSR, they hope to promote the importance of access to donor information by donor-conceived individuals, and educate prospective families on the choices they have to make.

August 2013: Our children's sacred story. Donor-conceived children who know the circumstances of their birth will inevitably become aware growing up that their biological linkages have a different quality from most of their peers and even from others in their family. Our job as their parents is to reflect on questions that in many ways are similar to those of all other parents: What is the best way to help my children along the path of discovering their own sacred story? What will help them build the identity that their conception story will then be a key part of? What will support them in embracing this identity as part of their path to becoming emotionally healthy adults?

It is common knowledge that the concept of "family" has a different meaning in the gay and lesbian community. There are probably many reasons for this, including, for some, the exclusion or distance from ones family of origin, and thus the need to create our own families. And since we are one of the only minority groups that does not share its otherness with our own birth families, we often congregrate in close communities of our own that we call "family." Read more.

A Meeting of 7 Families:
We just returned from a weekend gathering of donor siblings where nine of the twenty-three kids we now know about (while we were meeting, two new families posted on the DSR!) attended along with 2 SMCs, 5 lesbian couples, four grandmothers, and a grandad. The kids range in age from 8 months - 4 years. Like others, we formed a private site to share photos, etc., and have been communicating for about two years. Over the course of the past year or so, several small groups of us have met, but I must say that having such a large group was overwhelming in the best way possible.

I never could have imagined how amazing this would be. I was very hesitant to join the DSR at first for all the reasons I am sure everyone else has. However, meeting the others was not only comfortable but incredibly natural ... like we had known each other for years. The kids warmed up to one another and the other adults immediately, and the other parents seemed like old friends. Not to read too much into the genetics of it all, but there was something truly special about the way everyone interacted. I can't imagine what the future might hold, but I am confident that meeting the other donor siblings and their families was the best thing we could have done for our kids. I am grateful we had the opportunity to begin building these relationships while all of them are still so young. Great memories are being created, as is a healthy and dynamic sense of place for our kids.

Content but Curious:
My partner and I have two beautiful daughters from an anonymous donor. While we are very content with our family, we have always wanted our daughters to have the option of exploring their biological siblings/donor; plus we are so curious about traits, behaviors, and medical issues of other half-siblings out there.

This is a wonderful service that brings together a community of people that often feel stigmatized or outside of "mainstream" America. Individuals can control their anonymity and can pursue whatever level of involvement they choose and do so comfortably. It also provides people an avenue to answer and explore all those questions about the "who" and "what" that are associated with anonymous donors.

If you are already the parent of a donor-conceived person and need some guidance, please read our Counseling Page and our published research. Also, you can order our book: Finding Our Families: A First-of-Its-Kind Book for Donor-Conceived People and Their Families.

If you are a prospective parent trying to decide which sperm bank to use, check out our "Which Sperm Bank?" page, where we continue to collect DSR members' experiences to help you make a more informed decision, and the Huffington Post article "Choosing a Sperm Bank ... What to Know." You can also email Wendy for more specific advice on choosing a sperm bank.

(Based on correspondence with an LGBT mom who is also a donor-conceived person.)

One common problem that we've seen in the lesbian community (and to a lesser extent in the gay community) is the idea that if you talk about the donor, you are implicating the family in being somehow less than enough and implying that two women or two men alone do not make a family.

This is a reaction to a very serious political situation. Yes, there are also attacks on women who have children without fathers — but single female parents are also not denied any fundamental rights. They are not constantly being told that they are not a family or that one of the parents does not matter. There is no danger that their child will be taken away from them or that they would ever be denied custody.

In this context of sustained attacks, a common reaction is to assert that the family is perfect and there is no need to talk about the donor. Gay people are often very defensive about their families and thus reluctant to talk about the donor. Many people have said that they refuse to talk about the donor to anyone because they perceive doing so to be questioning the legitimacy of their family — so they refuse to engage in that conversation. Families should not be built based on fear and defensiveness. We owe more than that to our children.

Around one-third of all DSR parents and two DSR Board members are LGBTQ!

NEW! LGBTQ Family Building Survey
The LGBTQ Family Building Survey provides new insight into how many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people are interested in becoming parents, and how they are planning to do so. Most significantly, the data reveals dramatic differences in expectations around family building between LGBTQ Millennials and older generations of LGBTQ people.

Key findings include:

• 63% of LGBTQ Millennials (aged 18-35) are considering expanding their families, either becoming parents for the first time, or by having more children
• 48% of LGBTQ Millennials are actively planning to grow their families, compared to 55% of non-LGBTQ Millennials, a gap that has narrowed significantly in comparison to older generations
• 63% of LGBTQ people planning families expect to use assisted reproductive technology, foster care, or adoption to become parents, a significant shift away from older generations of LGBTQ parents for whom the majority of children were conceived through intercourse

For more interesting facts about DSR families, see the DSR's Our Members page.

Wendy Kramer's memoir! Donor Family Matters: My Story of Raising a Profoundly Gifted Donor-Conceived Child, Redefining Family, and Building the Donor Sibling Registry

Children's book! Your Family: A Donor Kid's Story

Book review in Summer 2018 Gay Parent Magazine: