Random Families
This is a book about unprecedented families—networks of strangers linked by genes, medical technology, and the human desire for affinity and identity. It chronicles the chain of choices that couples and single mothers make—how to conceive, how to place sperm donors in their family tree, and what to do when it suddenly becomes clear that there are children out there that share half their child’s DNA. Do shared genes make you family? Do children find anything in common? What becomes of the random networks that arise once the members of the families of donor siblings find one another? Based on over 350 interviews with children and parents from all over the United States, Hertz and Nelson explore what it means to children to be a donor sibling and what it’s like to be a parent who discovers four, six, or even a dozen children who share half the DNA of one’s own child. At the heart of their investigation are remarkable relationships woven from tenuous bits of information and fueled by intense curiosity. The authors suggest that donor siblings are expanding the possibilities for extended kinship in the United States.