Over the past two decades, there has been increasing demand for openness in policy and practice relating to donor-conceived families. With the benefits of openness now widely discussed, and often legally mandated, it is timely to explore the challenges families face in enacting openness when donor assisted conception is still a complex legal and social issue. Our premise is that the difficulties associated with enacting openness should be subject to at least as much scrutiny as the secrecy of past practices. To make our case, we draw on qualitative, socio-legal and sociological research with same-sex, sole parent and heterosexual donor-conceived families in the UK and Australia. We argue that exhortations to openness about donor conception ignore important relational considerations of families if they rely on a moral discourse that being open is the right thing to do, devoid of any context about how, when and by whom this is achieved. Demands for openness need to take into account the situated care relationships of family members, the timing of and manner in which information is imparted, and the fact that this information can fundamentally disrupt or transform the family lives of those to whom it is revealed.

在过去的二十年中，对与捐助者构想的家庭有关的政策和实践的开放性需求不断增加。由于开放性的好处现在已经得到广泛讨论，并且通常是法律规定的，因此当捐助者协助的受孕仍然是一个复杂的法律和社会问题时，就应该探究家庭在实行开放性方面面临的挑战。我们的前提是，与实行开放有关的困难至少应与过去做法的保密性一样严格地进行审查。为了说明这一点，我们对英国和澳大利亚的同性，单亲和异性恋捐助者构想的家庭进行了定性，社会法律和社会学研究。我们认为，如果捐赠者的观念依赖开放性是正确的事情，而没有关于如何，何时和由谁实现的任何上下文，那么对捐赠者观念的开放性的劝告会忽略家庭的重要关系考虑。对公开性的需求需要考虑到家庭成员之间的就座关怀关系，传递信息的时间和方式，以及该信息从根本上可以扰乱或改变被告知对象的家庭生活这一事实。