Sprouting sideways: queer temporalities and kinship in donor conception.

Abstract

Temporal constructs are central to reproduction and kinship, as epitomised by the pervasive concept of the biological clock within public imaginaries. While queer scholarship has problematised linear models of kinship and reproductive temporality, the specific temporalities associated with donor-conceived families have received less scholarly attention, despite the increasing prevalence of these family structures. In this article, we explore the question: how does donor conception reconfigure temporal logics. More specifically, we ask how does donor conception challenge (hetero)normative temporalities and kinship organisations. We examine donor conception through narratives of the embodied and intimate experiences of key stakeholders in the form of clinical staff, parents and donor-conceived adults, across case studies conducted in Denmark, Sweden and Australia. Our analysis illuminates distinct temporal perspectives: for clinic staff, donors exist in a static present; for recipient parents, the donor's past is integrated into the present; and for donor-conceived adults, the donor is embedded within fragile futurities. We propose the concept of sideways temporalities to capture the queering of temporal logics in donor conception, characterised by non-normative scale (e.g. extensive sibling networks) and velocity (e.g. immediate matching via DNA testing).