Chapter 8: Single Mothers’ Accounts of Assisted Reproduction, Relationality, and Intimacy in Aotearoa New Zealand

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing international debate relating to formal and informal practices of donor-linking in the context of assisted reproduction. In Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa), openness and identifiability regarding donor information for children conceived with the aid of donor-assisted technologies were made law in 2004. As well as acknowledging psychological and emotional well-being for donor-conceived children, the rationale for the ethic of openness in legislation, policy, and practice recognizes the importance of tracing genealogy, whakapapa, and the exchange of information about genetic origins. This chapter draws on semi-structured interviews from a qualitative study conducted during 2020 and 2021 with 20 single cisgender women residing in Aotearoa who have used assisted reproduction donation to build families. The aim of the chapter is to illuminate diverse ways study participants who utilize fertility procedures and treatments imagine and practice relatedness as part of their personal lives. In doing so, it puts Eva Illouz’s “cold intimacies” thesis to the empirical test to examine how single mothers in Aotearoa make decisions about donor choice and how they navigate biogenetic connections and kinship affinities with donors and extended donor networks in the process of making families.