Random Families: Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin

Random Families

Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin

Rosanna Hertz and Margaret K. Nelson

• Includes over 350 interviews from donors and both parents and children in the aforementioned families
• Sheds light on disquisitional processes like choosing a donor amongst parents and the evolution of identity among children with an unknown donor
• Chronicles the choices couples and unmarried moms make, from conceiving, to accepting donors into their families, to discovering that other children share their child's Dna
• Explores how children at different ages understand their relationships with their donor and donor siblings
• Describes what happens when people are brought together by shared genes, what they say about family resemblances, and how they work through the ways donor siblings go kin

Random Families

Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Cosmos of New Kin

Rosanna Hertz and Margaret K. Nelson

Description

Random Families is about the unprecedented families that accept grown upwards at the intersection of new reproductive technologies, social media, and the human desire for belonging. Children of the same donor and their families, with the help of the cyberspace, can now locate each other and make contact. Based on over 350 interviews with children (ages x-28), their parents and related donors from all over the U.Due south., Random Families chronicles the chain of choices that couples and single mothers make from what donor to use to how to participate (or not) in donor sibling networks. Children reveal their understanding of a donor, the donor'southward spot on the family unit tree and the meaning of their donor siblings. Through rich first-person accounts of network membership, the book illustrates how these extraordinary relationships-woven from $.25 of online information and shared genetic ties-are transformed into new possibilities for kinship. Random Families offers down-to-earth stories from existent families to highlight simply how truly distinctive these gimmicky new forms of family are.

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Random Families

Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin

Rosanna Hertz and Margaret K. Nelson

Table of Contents

Introduction: Unprecedented Relationships

Part I: Making Sense of the Donor and Donor Siblings
Chapter 1. Choosing Donors
Chapter 2. Inventing the Donor / Inventing the Self
Chapter 3. Parents Brand Contact with Genetic Strangers
Chapter 4. The Surprise of donor siblings

Office II: Networks of Donor Siblings
Chapter 5. Michael'due south Clan: The Arrival of the Father
Chapter 6. 7008 Builders: Nosotros are Family
Affiliate 7. The Tourists: Just Related Strangers
Affiliate 8. Connected Soul Mates: Emotional Ties
Chapter nine. The Social Capitalists: Joining The Preschoolers Group
Chapter 10. Donor Sibling Networks: Continuity and Change
Determination: Choice in Donor Sibling Networks

Appendix A: Respondents
Appendix B: Interviews, Virtual Ethnography And Linguistic communication In The Volume
Endnotes
Bibliography

Random Families

Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Cosmos of New Kin

Rosanna Hertz and Margaret K. Nelson

Author Information

Rosanna Hertz is the 1919 50th Reunion Professor of Sociology and Women'due south and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. She authored the widely acclaimed Unmarried by Chance, Mothers by Option, a path-breaking written report of women who choose parenthood without marriage. She is frequently sought out by national media on issues related to women, work and changing families in gimmicky guild.

Margaret K. Nelson is the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Sociology Emerita at Middlebury Higher where she taught for four decades. Her books include Working Hard and Making Do: Surviving in Small Boondocks America (with Joan Smith), and Parenting Out of Control: Broken-hearted Parents in Uncertain Times.

Random Families

Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin

Rosanna Hertz and Margaret K. Nelson

Reviews and Awards

"Rosanna Hertz and Margaret Nelson provide an important and significant expansion of the field [of donor kinship]. At the core of the volume is a sociological investigation and analysis of whether and how strangers get relatives, and what happens to the meaning of family every bit these strangers who share genes manage their new relationships. Random Families is an impressive bookâ Ultimately, this is non a neatly tied package of family connections but instead an assay, an attempt to create a narrative to describe these otherwise âunscriptedâ relationships (p. 198) that are so different from other kinship-based bonds." -- , Gild

"add[s] substantially to the literature on Americans' changing families, family values, and behaviors. This clearly written and organized text ... [is] a groundbreaking and illuminating study ... Highly recommended." -- W. Feigelman, Pick

"Hertz and Nelson's arroyo is a welcome addition to the scholarship on searching for genetic relations among donor-conceived people and their parents . . . Random Families is an intellectually honest business relationship of the complexity, and diversity, of same-donor networks . . . What becomes of these [donor network] possibilities remains to be seen, merely for bringing them to low-cal, Random Families deserves recognition." --SCIENCE

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