Department of Sociology, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
Sociol Health Illn. 2019 Mar;41(3):601-615. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.12862. Epub 2019 Feb 22.
In recent decades, reproductive medicine has become a widespread global phenomenon. Within the field, donor conception, and the use of donated eggs, sperm or embryos from a third party, plays a key role. Despite the importance of those individuals who donate, there has been scant research exploring their experiences. Seeking to contribute to the growing, albeit still small, body of research on donors, this paper advocates bringing the process of donating into dialogue with a sociology of personal life. It suggests that important new insights about the donor experience can be achieved by utilising such a theoretical perspective. The paper applies a broad framework of a sociology of personal life to demonstrate that the decision to donate reverberates within donors' everyday lives and relationships, and explores, primarily theoretically, how it is that acts of donation bring such issues into play. To this end, the paper examines in detail three ways in which donating interacts with dimensions that are integral to personal life: "living" genetic connectedness, relationality and the intimate body. Ultimately, the paper suggests that a sociology of personal life shows light on new, unexplored questions for this field that demand greater scholarly attention.
近几十年来，生殖医学已成为一种广泛的全球现象。在这一领域中，供体受孕——即使用第三方捐赠的卵子、精子或胚胎——起着关键作用。尽管捐赠者非常重要，但几乎没有研究探索他们的经历。本文旨在为日益增长但仍很小的捐赠者研究领域做出贡献，倡导将捐赠过程与个人生活社会学进行对话。本文认为，通过利用这样的理论视角，可以获得关于捐赠者体验的重要新见解。本文应用个人生活社会学的广泛框架来证明，捐赠决定会在捐赠者的日常生活和人际关系中产生反响，并主要从理论上探讨捐赠行为如何使这些问题发挥作用。为此，本文详细探讨了捐赠与个人生活中不可或缺的三个方面相互作用的三种方式：“生活”遗传关联性、关系性和亲密身体。最终，本文认为，个人生活社会学为该领域的新的、未被探索的问题提供了启示，这些问题需要得到更多的学术关注。
