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

by Rosanna Hertz, Margaret K. Nelson

Overview

Random Families is about the unprecedented families that have grown up 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 internet, can now locate each other and make contact. Based on over 350 interviews with children (ages 10-28), their parents and related donors from all over the U.S., 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's spot on the family 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 bits of online information and shared genetic ties-are transformed into new possibilities for kinship. Random Families offers down-to-earth stories from real families to highlight just how truly distinctive these contemporary new forms of family are.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780197519981
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2020
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	554,919
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Rosanna Hertz is the 1919 50th Reunion Professor of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. She authored the widely acclaimed Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice, a path-breaking study 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 contemporary society.

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

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 Make Contact with Genetic Strangers
Chapter 4. The Surprise of donor siblings

Part II: Networks of Donor Siblings
Chapter 5. Michael's Clan: The Arrival of the Father
Chapter 6. 7008 Builders: We are Family
Chapter 7. The Tourists: Just Related Strangers
Chapter 8. Connected Soul Mates: Emotional Ties
Chapter 9. The Social Capitalists: Joining The Preschoolers Group
Chapter 10. Donor Sibling Networks: Continuity and Change
Conclusion: Choice in Donor Sibling Networks

Appendix A: Respondents
Appendix B: Interviews, Virtual Ethnography And Language In The Book
Endnotes
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"Rosanna Hertz and Margaret Nelson provide an important and significant expansion of the field [of donor kinship]. At the core of the book is a sociological investigation and analysis of whether and how strangers become relatives, and what happens to the meaning of family as these strangers who share genes manage their new relationships. Random Families is an impressive book... Ultimately, this is not a neatly tied package of family connections but instead an analysis, an attempt to create a narrative to describe these otherwise 'unscripted' relationships (p. 198) that are so different from other kinship-based bonds." — , Society

"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, CHOICE

"Hertz and Nelson's approach 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 account of the complexity, and diversity, of same-donor networks . . . What becomes of these [donor network] possibilities remains to be seen, but for bringing them to light, Random Families deserves recognition." —SCIENCE

From the Publisher