"LGBTQ Family Matters" - SSW InDepth

BY LAURI E LO I SEL • PHOTOS BY SHANA SUR EC K

At home with Hannah Karpman, M.S.W., Ph.D., and her family.

M o ving the Fie ld Fo r w a r d

FamÄąly Matters LGBTQ

Few areas of clinical and family social work have changed more dramatically than the theory and practice around LGBTQ people, the families they are born into, and the families they create. Yet there remain a multitude of clinical issues ripe for research and education, and plenty of uncharted territory for mental health professionals. Smith College School for Social Work community members are involved in a number of such projects, leading the way forward for clinical practice with new research and insights.

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“People were like, ‘thank God you’re doing this research, there’s nothing out there—and can you connect us with other families?’”

T

T H E K N OW N D O N O R PRO JECT

he idea for Assistant Professor Hannah Karpman’s Known Donor Project sprang out of her own experience, but its breadth has grown far beyond her personal story.

When Karpman was moving towards creating a family with her wife, Katrina Hull, she wanted to consider using a known donor rather than an anonymous sperm bank, but she didn’t know anyone who had taken that route to pregnancy.

“Then I thought, ‘I’m a researcher, I should figure out what the narrative is,’ ” she said.

She found a book that had a single chapter on known donors, but beyond that found virtually no guidance in research literature.

Meanwhile, there was plenty of sentiment within her immediate and far-flung queer community suggesting known-donor arrangements carried serious risks.

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“There was such a stigma in the lesbian community,” she said.

Despite the lack of information and the negativity, Karpman wasn’t dissuaded.

In 2012, she became pregnant with help from a childhood friend. This year, her wife gave birth to their second child— using the same donor.

Shortly after the birth of her first child, when the second-parent adoption was finalized in court, Karpman recalls making a passing comment to her attorney that it must be nice when such arrangements work out so well, given the potential for turmoil. Her lawyer surprised her by saying she’d been involved in dozens of known-donor arrangements and had only seen one problematic one in the bunch. That encounter in 2013, she said, set her on a research path she expects will go on for decades.

“I felt an obligation. I am queer. I am part of the queer community and I have these research skills,” she said.

“How can I best contribute?”

She decided to use her skills to research the ways women who use known donors create families and identify what clinical lessons can be gleaned from their experiences.

“Here is this awesome opportunity to answer a question that’s not being

answered in research literature,” said Karpman.

She and her research team conducted 134 interviews of members of 80 families in which women relied on known donors to get pregnant.

“I felt like we needed to start with the women’s narratives because we didn’t know what kind of research questions to ask—now we have 300,” she said.

When Karpman’s team reached out for study participants, the responses told them they were onto something.

“People were like, ‘thank God you’re doing this research, there’s nothing out there—and can you connect us with other families?’” Karpman said.

Her team conducted in-depth interviews with the mothers (both biological and non-biological), their donors, and, whenever possible, with the donor’s partner and parents.

The data they gathered through that research is still being mined for articles and theory development. There are plans for a longitudinal study that will follow families starting before conception to the choice of donor and through the child’s life, in order to see

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“Be very careful about your own assumptions and value judgments because what worked for you and what worked for your friends might not be right for this family.”

how the strengths and challenges within the families change over time.

Among the questions Karpman hopes to explore based on her initial research: • Are known donors a protective factor when a lesbian couple divorces? (“We heard that from parents,” Karpman said.)

• Are there personality characteristics more common in donors than the general population?

• Do women get pregnant faster with known donors?

• Are there economic advantages both at conception and over time to using known donors?

• How can the health care system better serve the needs of donor families?

• What are the differences between children from known donors and those from anonymous donors?

• Karpman finds the research fascinating on a number of levels, not the least of which is that she’s tapping into people whose experiences have not been studied closely.

“I like hearing the stories, but I also think it’s important. Same sex marriage has just been federally recognized. We are seeing and going to continue to see an increase in the

number of queer families, and we don’t know enough as mental health providers,” she said. “We don’t know enough about how to help them, we don’t even know what their common problems are.”

Her work has clear implications for clinicians, many of whom, according to those interviewed by Karpman’s team, initially seemed to focus on helping clients hammer out roles and make plans for how a donor would relate to the women.

“Turns out, that’s not helpful.

Roles change over time. Our advice it to build trust, flexibility and skills around communication and management of conflict to navigate these changes over time,” said Karpman.

Another suggestion for a clinical approach is for clinicians to be open to the variety of LGBTQ family formations.

“Be very careful about your own assumptions and value judgments, because what worked for you and what worked for your friends might not be right for this family,” said Karpman.

Karpman said her goal is not to discern whether there is a “better way” for LGBTQ people to create families.

“I’m more interested in seeing what are the differences,” she said. “My goal is for women to have as much information as they want, so they can make their own empowered and informed choices in the family formation process.”

M e e t the “Flynnla nd e r se a us.”

Kelsey Flynn and Jaime Olander are the moms. Dan Manseau is the dad. All three are legal parents of the kids, who live with Kelsey and Jaime, but see Dan every day as he lives four blocks away. The family is part of the Known Donor Project.

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