With reproductive medical technologies becoming more accessible, assisted donor conception is raising new and important questions about family life. Using in-depth interviews the authors explore the lived reality of donor conception and offer insights into the complexities of these new family relationships.

Introduction 1. Proper Families? Cultural Expectations and Donor Conception 2. Uncharted Territories: Donor Conception in Personal Life 3. Ripples Through the Family 4. Keeping it Close: Sensitivities and Secrecy 5. Opening Up: Negotiating Disclosure 6. Donors: Strangers, Boundaries and Tantalising Knowledge 7. (Not) One of Us: Genes and Belonging in Family Life 8. Relative Strangers and the Paradoxes of Genetic Kinship

Petra Nordqvist is Lecturer in Sociology in the Morgan Centre for the Study of Relationships and Personal Life at the University of Manchester, UK.

Carol Smart is Professor of Sociology in the Morgan Centre for the Study of Relationships and Personal Life at the University of Manchester, UK. Her recent publications include Personal Life and Same Sex Marriages (with B. Heaphy and A. Einarsdottir).