The formation of single-parent families through medically assisted procreation and gamete donation in France – MumSolo

Context: Since 2021, France’s bioethics law has authorized female couples and single women to access assisted reproductive technology (ART). Within hospitals, reproductive medicine and biology services have since seen a sharp increase in the requests they receive. Half of these come from women wishing to have a child as part of a single-parent family project.
Objectives: This sociological research program aims to deepen our understanding of single-parent family formation through ART and gamete donation in France. It intends to provide a better overview of contemporary family structures, tackling the articulation between medicine and society. Developed through exploratory research, the program pursues the five following objectives : (1) To analyze the debates on “ART for all” which preceded the revision of the bioethics law, and identify the positions and rhetoric deployed in the public space and in the political arena concerning single-parent families access to ART; (2) To study the stakes surrounding single women access to ART, specifically for the reproductive medicine and biology services of French healthcare facilities (access to care, care relationship, social representations, construction of medical decisions); (3) To describe the social space for resorting to “solo ART” in France; (4) To analyze, as their child(ren) advance(s) in age, ART single-parent family futures and women life courses, and their specificities; (5) And to study the family structure representations of children conceived by solo ART.
Methodology: Through mixed methods design, the program combines several data collection techniques: archival research and analysis (parliamentary debates) from the years preceding the promulgation of the so-called “ART for all”; the treatment of a previously compiled database (N=725) based on a survey questionnaire administered to (future) single mothers by choice; participant observation in the biology and reproductive medicine services of five healthcare facilities across various regions of the country, and interviews with the professionals of the facilities; and a survey involving interviews with single women who had or wishing to have their child(ren) through ART; and focus groups with children aged 6 years old and above conceived by solo ART.
Expected results: At the crossroads of the sociology of the family, the sociology of medicine, the sociology of life courses, and the sociology of public policies, the project is expected to contribute to a renewed understanding of family reconfigurations (prolonged celibacy, single parenthood, representations of kinship), addressing how these shape in return public policies and reproductive laws (construction of categories, creation of the “ART for all” law, access to reproductive medicine).