Law, Blood, and Custody: Sexual Minority Mothers and Heteronormativity.

This article analyzes how couples made up of two mothers redefine their roles when they break up as well as how legal professionals frame the custodial arrangements of these former same-sex couples. To do so, we focus on the case of Quebec, Canada, where parentage equality between mothers was attained as early as in 2002. We rely on individual semi-structured interviews with mothers' (N = 17) and legal professionals' accounts (N = 23) as well as on court records regarding physical custody arrangements. We find that the legal recognition of both mothers favors coparenting practices, and especially joint physical custody. However, the heteronormative frame of custody arrangements lingers. Sexual minority mothers struggle with the valorization of birth motherhood and with the standard of gendered parental complementarity. Indeed, professionals can still fall back on heteronormative norms, notably by assigning to non-birth mothers a "paternal" role. In the end, the inexperience of many professionals on LGBTQ+ issues, the embeddedness of heteronormativity in day-to-day relations, as well as the permanence of heteronormative legal categories and professional practices are all factors that set these families apart.

'Once you open that Pandora's box, you cannot close it': a qualitative study on family relationships following insemination fraud.

RESEARCH QUESTION: Insemination fraud occurs when the spermatozoa intended for insemination have been intentionally swapped for another person's without the knowledge of the intended family. In what ways is this experienced by recipient parents and their offspring? DESIGN: This was a qualitative study involving semi-structured interviews with 15 participants (seven parents and eight donor-conceived individuals) affected by insemination fraud involving the same doctor in Canada. RESULTS: This study documents how insemination fraud is experienced by recipient parents and (their) offspring at the personal and relational levels. At the personal level, insemination fraud can induce a sense of agency loss for the recipient parents and a (temporary) sense of identity realignment for the offspring. At the relational level, it can lead to a reshuffling of genetic ties through the new genetic mapping it involves. This reshuffling can, in turn, disrupt kinship ties, leaving a deep imprint that some families struggle to overcome. Experiences differ depending on whether or not the progenitor is known, and when he is known, on whether it is another donor or the doctor himself. CONCLUSIONS: Given the significant challenges that insemination fraud poses to the families who experience it, it is important that this practice be subjected to the medical, legal and social scrutiny it deserves.