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By Patricia Sarles, MA, MLS
If a person walked into a library and asked a librarian for help finding a novel about someone who is the child of a deaf, blind or disabled parent, the child of a psychotherapist, rabbi or sharecropper, the child of a prisoner, a prostitute or a schizophrenic, or the child of military personnel in Turkey, minorities in Denmark or Nomads in Mali, the librarian would be able to point him or her to what he/she is looking for with no problem. You would think that some of these unusual topics would be hard to find, but they are actually easy. That is because there are words called “subject headings,” a controlled vocabulary, that was created by the Library of Congress (http://catalog.loc.gov) , the main repository of books in the United States, to help librarians help people find what they are looking for. But look for books on children of surrogate mothers, gestational carriers, sperm or egg donors? Forget it. There are no such children, at least according to the Library of Congress.
In 2003 I read a book review in Booklist, one of my trade publications (I am a librarian with a Master’s Degree in Library Science and another in Anthropology) about a boy who did not know who his dad was because his mom conceived him with the help of a sperm bank. Although not central to the plot of the novel, it is part of the main character’s back story:

“Sometimes I try to imagine what my own father looks like. We have never met him. He just … well … provided the ingredients. I don’t know how to talk about this to people who don’t already know. Some people think a child who is the product of a mom and a sperm donor is just plain weird. If only they knew—there are millions of us in schools across “America!” from Donutheart, Sue Stauffacher (Knopf, 2006)

When I read the review for this book, it was the first time I had come across a character in a novel written for teens or tweens (this one is recommended for children ages 9-12) who was the product of a sperm donor. Coincidentally I had also just begun seeing Patricia Mendell, LCSW (http://www.patriciamendell.com/about.htm), fertility counselor and AFA Board Member, as my partner had just undergone IUI and we were in the process of hopefully becoming pregnant. Sperm was on my mind, so this review jumped out at me. I mentioned it to Patricia and she asked me, “Can you find other books like that?” I thought, sure I could. I’m a librarian. I can find anything. And I set out on my search. After all, there are subject headings for “Children of abused wives,” “Children of agricultural laborers,” “Children of AIDS patients,” “Children of air pilots,” “Children of alcoholics,” “Children of authors,” “Children of celebrities,” “Children of clergy,” and on down the alphabet, but there are no subject headings for children of gamete donors, and so it turned out, not to be easy at all.
I wrote to the Library of Congress about this and asked them why this was. They wrote back and told me that it was because they had never catalogued a book about donor offspring. A check back at their catalog indicated that they did own one book, Caroline Lorbach’s Experiences of donor conception : parents, offspring, and donors through the years, but I could see why they didn’t need to create a new subject heading for a book that included everyone else’s experiences as well. I was determined to give them a reason to create a subject heading for donor offspring though, and to prove to them that they did own books about donor offspring, albeit fiction books, but still, these were books that might be of interest to donor offspring adolescents as these were young adult books with main characters who were conceived via sperm donation.
What would it take to get the Library of Congress to create a subject heading for donor offspring? I understood from a cataloging class in library school that it generally takes 5 books on a single topic in order for the Library of Congress to create a new subject heading. Well, I had identified over 40 children’s and young adult books which I compiled on two different lists on the web, http://booksfordonoroffspring.blogspot.com, whose purpose was either to teach donor offspring about their origins, and http://YAbooksfordonoroffspring.blogspot.com, which is a compilation of young adult novels with donor offspring as main characters. Would these lists convince the Library of Congress to create a subject heading for donor offspring? After all, the Library of Congress has just one book each of “Children of football players” and “Children of ex-Jews.” I wrote back and explained to them that at least two of the young adult novels that they had catalogued were about teenage girls who were conceived via donor sperm and had actually gone to the Donor Sibling Registry to find their half-siblings. The Library of Congress has even catalogued a book of short stories with the very obvious title, The Sperm Donor’s Daughter and Other Tales of Modern Family, which is indeed about a donor conceived woman. This did not convince them however, and as of this writing, the Library of Congress is not budging.
In the meantime, this leaves librarians unable to help these donor offspring patrons find information on donor offspring or to read about donor offspring characters in fiction if they wanted to. Without subject headings, librarians are forced to resort to crude searches using key words, which any librarian will tell you, is not the most efficient way to search. After all, we are trained to use a controlled vocabulary to find what we are looking for. But things are the same across the English-speaking world. I have checked the British Library (http://www.bl.uk), the National Library of Australia,  (http://www.nla.gov.au), the National Library of New Zealand (http://www.natlib.govt.nz/) and the Library and Archives of Canada (http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca) and they too do not have subject headings for donor offspring.
Things are the same in the academic literature. If you wanted to find the scholarly literature on donor offspring, or you wanted to write a scholarly article and needed to see what had been written before, it too is very hard to find. Again, a librarian helping a patron in a library would be forced to resort to a key word search as there are no “subject terms” (what subjects are called in scholarly databases) for donor offspring there either.
What you will find though are plenty of subject terms and headings related to the parents of donor offspring: the gamete donors and the gamete recipients. Very little has been written about the offspring themselves.  A search of the web though does produce newspaper, magazine and blog articles written by and about donor conceived people and as they become more and more visible and vocal, I predict that things will change in the library world and that sooner or later, there will be subject terms and headings for librarians to search under when trying to help a patron do serious research on the topic of donor offspring. A memoir or two or three by donor offspring are bound to come out as well, which should also change things, at least as far as the Library of Congress is concerned.
As I have not had the benefit of searching for books using the standard Library of Congress subject headings (the librarian’s secret ingredient for performing her searching magic), I had to take a circuitous route to find books with donor offspring characters, like Donuthead mentioned above. There are a few non-fiction titles, as well as theses and dissertations which I will mention here in chronological order of publication if it would be helpful, and which were fairly easy to find since they mention donor offspring:

In the interests of donor offspring
By Jennifer Harvey; Fertility Society of Australia. Scientific Meeting
Published by [Adelaide, S. Australia] : Dept. of Human Services, 1997
Paper presented at the Fertility Society of Australia XVI Annual Scientific Meeting, Adelaide, December 1997. Symposium: Donation and Beyond.

Let the Offspring Speak: Discussions on Donor Conception
By Donor Conception Support Group, Donor Conception Support Group of Australia, Donor Conception Support Group
Published by The Donor Conception Support Group of Australia, 1997
ISBN 0646324942, 9780646324944
182 pages

Truth and the child 10 years on: 10 Years on
By Eric Blythe, Marilyn Crawshaw, Jennifer Speirs
Published by British Association of Social Workers, 1998
ISBN 1861780281, 9781861780287
83 pages

What is the experience of confronting the reality of being a donor offspring ?
By Lynne W. Spencer
Published by Michigan School of Professional Psychology, formerly Center for Humanistic Studies Graduate School.
Thesis/Dissertation

A portfolio of academic, therapeutic practice and research work : including an investigation of ‘What does it mean to be a donor offspring? The identity experiences of adults conceived by donor insemination and the implications for counselling psychology’.
By Amanda J. Turner
Published by s.n., 2001
Thesis/Dissertation

Missing Links: Exploration Into the Identity Issues of People Conceived Via Donor Insemination
By Geraldine Hewitt
Published by s.n., 2001

Experiences of donor conception: parents, offspring, and donors through the years
By Caroline Lorbach, Eric Blyth
Contributor Eric Blyth
Edition: illustrated
Published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2003
ISBN 184310122X, 9781843101222
208 pages

Demons at My Doorstep: The Search for My Donor Father…
By Katherine Marsh, Greg Wiatt
Contributor Greg Wiatt
Published by iUniverse, 2004
ISBN 0595320007, 9780595320004
260 pages

The only memoir that I could find about being a donor offspring.

Conceived via anonymous donor insemination : understanding what it means to be a donor offspring
By Parrish Anne Protheroe
Published by University of Connecticut, Dept. of Educational Psychology, 2005
Thesis/Dissertation

Voices of Donor Conception: Behind Closed Doors: Moving Beyond Secrecy and Shame
By Mikki Morrissette, Donor Sibling Registry
Published by Be-Mondo Publishing, 2006
ISBN 0977204219, 9780977204212

Who Am I?: Experiences of Donor Conception
By Alexina McWhinnie
Published by Idreos Education Trust, 2006
ISBN 0955403103, 9780955403101
72 pages

Sperm Donor Offspring: Identity and Other Experiences
By Lynne W. Spencer
Published by Booksurge, 2007
ISBN 1419672614, 9781419672613
150 pages

Swedish donor offspring : and their legal right to information
By Jane Stoll
Published by Uppsala : Uppsala Universitet, 2008
Thesis/Dissertation

but it was the fiction list which was the harder to compile. Below are 14 novels and 1 novella that I was able to find. This list was compiled for two purposes: one, for donor offspring, in particular teenagers, wanting to read books with major or minor characters conceived via donor sperm (there are none yet about offspring conceived through donor egg) and two, for librarians who would like to develop collections on this topic for their libraries. The following booklist includes very brief synopses:

The Sperm Donor’s Daughter & Other Tales of Modern Family
By Kathryn Trueblood
Published by Permanent Press, 1998
ISBN 157962006X, 9781579620066
166 pages

The main character, aged 20, discovers she is the daughter of a sperm donor and sets out to find him.

Donuthead
By Sue Stauffacher
Published by Distributed by Random House, 2003
ISBN 0375824685, 9780375824685
160 pages

The main character, 11, is the son of an anonymous sperm donor and although this fact is part of his psychological make-up, it is not central to the plot of the book.

Singing the Dogstar Blues
By Alison Goodman
Published by Viking, 2003
ISBN 0670036102, 9780670036103
261 pages

The main character, 17, is the daughter of an anonymous sperm donor. The only science fiction book I included on the list.

Donorboy: A Novel
By Brendan Halpin
Published by Villard, 2004
ISBN 1400062772, 9781400062775
209 pages

The main character, 14, is the daughter of lesbian parents and a known sperm donor. This fact is central to the plot and to the character’s psychological development in the novel.

Brave New Wanda
By Lynda Rutledge, Lynda Rutledge Stephenson
Published by WordFarm, 2004
ISBN 0974342750, 9780974342757
191 pages

When her mother dies, 13 year old Wanda learns that she was conceived via donor sperm and goes in search of her sperm donor father.

Donutheart
By Sue Stauffacher
Published by Random House Children’s Books, 2006
ISBN 0375832750, 9780375832758
160 pages

The sequel to Donuthead, the main character is the son of an anonymous sperm donor and although this fact is part of his psychological make-up, it is not central to the plot of the book.

Headlock
By Joyce Sweeney
Published by Macmillan, 2006
ISBN 080508018X, 9780805080186
214 pages

The main character, 17, was conceived via sperm donor and is being raised by his grandmother.

Goddess Games
By Niki Burnham
Published by Simon and Schuster, 2007
ISBN 141692700X, 9781416927006
282 pages

One of three main characters is the daughter of a celebrity whose mother conceived her via anonymous sperm donor. This is not central to the plot, just part of the character’s back story.

The Other Half of Me
By Emily Franklin
Published by Delacorte Press, 2007
ISBN 038573445X, 9780385734455
256 pages

The main character, 16, is the daughter of an anonymous sperm donor and registers with the Donor Sibling Registry to search for any half-siblings she may have. When she finds and meets a half-sister, things do not turn out as she had hoped.

Perfect Girl
By Mary Hogan
Published by HarperCollins Publishers, 2007
ISBN 0060841087, 9780060841089
196 pages

The main character, 17,  is the daughter of an anonymous sperm donor. This fact is central to her psychological development in the novel.

Go Figure
By Jo Edwards
Contributor Tamaye Perry
Published by Simon and Schuster, 2007
ISBN 1416924922, 9781416924920
271 pages

The main character is the daughter of an anonymous sperm donor. This fact is central to her psychological development.

My So-Called Family
By Courtney Sheinmel
Published by Simon and Schuster, 2008
ISBN 1416957855, 9781416957850
208 pages

The main character is the daughter of an anonymous sperm donor and this fact is central to the plot of the novel.

Feathered
By Laura Kasischke
Published by HarperCollins, 2008
ISBN 0060813180, 9780060813185
272 pages

One of the two main characters is the daughter of an anonymous sperm donor. This is not central to the plot, just part of the character’s backstory.

Between Mom and Jo
By Julie Anne Peters
Edition: reprint
Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2008
ISBN 0316067105, 9780316067102
240 pages

The main character, 14, was conceived via donor sperm and raised by his two moms who are about to separate.

In Your Room
By Jordanna Fraiberg
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated, 2008
ISBN 1595141936, 9781595141934
203 pages

One of the two main characters was conceived via donor sperm and is being raised by his two moms.

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