Genetic Knowledge and Family Identity: Managing Gamete Donation in Britain and Germany

Reproductive technologies involving donated eggs or sperm continue to elicit questions regarding family identity and the accessibility of genetic information in Europe. Both policy-makers and affected parents are faced with decisions about how to manage donor-data. Using ethnographic findings and policy analysis, this article compares modes of regulation in Germany and Britain, which variously authorise actors to manage kinship information and family formation. I consider the role of interest groups for affected parents and analyse how they contribute to a moral framing of the decision – if, when and how to tell a child about the donor. This 'moralisation', reflecting wider contemporary endorsement of information sharing within family life, tends to encourage early disclosure practices among so-called families-by-donation. German parents expressed greater anxiety about disclosure than British parents, which I attribute to greater regulatory uncertainty and to tensions between clinical pressures of secrecy and the moral pressure for information sharing.