Objective: The purpose of the study is to contribute to an understanding of the cultural and normative meaning of birth motherhood and how lesbian couples decide who carries the child.

Background: The decision of who carries the child is central in lesbian family-making, carrying consequences for life after birth. Even so, it has been relatively overlooked in research. Drawing from the sociology of personal life and Park's (2013) conceptualization of monomaternalism, we study how informants consider and decide birth motherhood.

Method: Semistructured interviews with both partners in 21 pregnant lesbian couples in the Netherlands were thematically analyzed.

Results: The meaning of birth motherhood was ambivalent, linked to femininity, socially recognized motherhood, and biogenetic imaginaries. In couples where both wanted to carry, age, which carried different symbolic meanings, was a powerful tiebreaker.

Conclusion: Our study shows how the monomaternalist norm shapes conceptualizations of birth motherhood. Desires to experience pregnancy are strong for many. Referring to age can be a way for couples to defuse tension, but it can also be a resource drawn upon to close further negotiations.

Implications: Our study carries implications for policy makers, health care workers, and mothers-to-be. Scholarly, it illuminates the ways in which motherhood, in its various forms, is perceived and recognized.

With declining fertility rates, the topic of work–life balance has gained importance, not least from the perspective of what may hinder or motivate the decision to carry a child. Female same-sex couples have the unique opportunity to jointly decide which one of them will carry the costs—and blessings—associated with pregnancy and childbirth. This makes these couples an informative group to study when it comes to how aspects such as partners’ relative wages, working hours, sector, and employment in a female-dominated industry might matter for the decision as to who will carry. 

Using Linear Probability Models, we studied 1959 first births of female same-sex couples in the Netherlands between 2007 and 2016. Analyses show that the younger partner’s hourly wage is negatively associated with her chances of carrying the child. However, when household wage contributions are unequal, the chances of the younger partner carrying the child is lower when she contributes less than 40% of the joint wage, and higher when she contributes more than 60%, compared to when wage contributions are equal. This suggests that relative resources, in terms of the earnings potential vis-à-vi the partner, may play a role in decision-making, but also that factors correlated with higher wages, such as a more secure labor market position, may matter in the decision. Results also show that if the younger, but not the older, partner works part-time, the chances that the younger partner will carry the child are higher, whereas her chances of carrying the child are lower if (only) the older partner works in a female-dominated industry. 

In the Netherlands, lesbian couples have a relatively high level of agency in shaping conception, as they can choose between different donor constructions (sperm bank donor versus contact donor), high- and low-tech medical interventions, and clinical and non-clinical inseminations. This results in pluriform conceptive practices, which this paper examines through the lens of kinning, i.e. the active establishment of kinship ties. This paper aims to increase our understanding of how lesbian couples shape conception and how this is related to existing kinship discourses, particularly discourses on motherhood and the role of the donor. 48 semi-structured interviews with both partners in 24 lesbian couples expecting their first child were conducted and thematically analyzed. Analysis show that kinning intentions play an important role when lesbian couples make decisions for conception. Reaffirming the lesbian relationship and managing the relationship with the sperm donor were central concerns. I conclude that conception is a symbolically laden event in which different strategies could be employed to set the stage for desired future family relations. As such, conceptive practices provide a window into how expectant lesbian couples understand and mold existing kinship discourses to fit their families.

Informal sperm donation—i.e., sperm donation in which hopeful parents find their donors themselves, without intervention of a sperm bank—is a growing phenomenon worldwide. The practice, which has an uncertain legal embeddedness and has not been addressed appropriately by policy, poses a high stakes trust dilemma for those engaging in it, with substantial risks for prospective parents, their health, family life, and future children. This paper relies on interviews with 28 prospective mothers in 14 lesbian couples to study how they build trust with their donors and what role pre-existing institutions, structural conditions, and symbolic means of building trust play in establishing that trust. I find that couples weave together different sources of trust-building to create pockets of security that enable them to proceed to donation and to insemination with their donor. I examine the strength of weak contracts, the ambiguous role of social networks, and the role of universal and idiosyncratic trust signals in informal donation. I conclude that the meaning couples attribute to the donor’s relationship to their future family plays a role in how trust-building is achieved and in how different sources for trust building are portrayed in the interviews.