A Father and a Sperm Donor

Discover the eighth session of the 2025–2026 seminar series "Crossed Perspectives on Early Childhood": "A Father and a Sperm Donor: The Experience of a Difficult-to-Imagine Coexistence".

The seminar approaches early childhood as a social, historical, and cultural construct. Knowledge and theories relating to conception, birth, and child development are analysed in terms of the child’s interactions with their surroundings and according to gender norms. The seminar also explores the boundaries of this age category and its temporality, according to medical, international, anthropological, and historical standards.

In 2021, the revision of bioethics legislation introduced a new right: individuals conceived through gamete donation are now entitled to obtain the identity of the person who assisted their parents in conceiving them. France thereby joined a broader movement already observed in other countries, notably the United Kingdom. This presentation draws on an ethnographic study conducted with 63 adults conceived through anonymous sperm donation within heterosexual family settings between the 1940s and 1990s in France and England. It will examine how these adults experience their relationships with both the donor and their infertile father. The analysis will demonstrate that this coexistence is simultaneously self-evident and conceptually difficult to apprehend.

• Anaïs Martin: Anthropologist (PhD), Postdoctoral Researcher ANR NorPro, CNRS, LISST-CAS (Toulouse, France) EnCoRe Research Group
• Discussant: Gladys Chicharro: Anthropologist, Université Paris 8, on assignment at LESC