Book contents
- Donor-Linked Families in the Digital Age
- Donor-Linked Families in the Digital Age
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Donor-Conceived Families
- Part I ‘DIY’ Donor Linking: Issues and Implications
- Part II Children’s and Adults’ Lived Experiences in Diverse Donor-Linked Families
- Chapter 6 The Importance of Donor Siblings to Teens and Young Adults
- Chapter 7 The Experiences of Donor-Conceived People Making Contact with Same-Donor Offspring through Fiom’s Group Meetings
- Chapter 8 ‘It’s All on Their Terms’
- Chapter 9 On Familial Haunting
- Chapter 10 Assisted Reproduction and Making Kin Connections between Māori and Pākehā in Aotearoa New Zealand
- Chapter 11 ‘Spunkles’, Donors, and Fathers
- Part III Institutionalised Resistance to Openness
- Index
- References
Chapter 9 - On Familial Haunting
Donor-Conceived People’s Experiences of Living with Anonymity and Absence
from Part II - Children’s and Adults’ Lived Experiences in Diverse Donor-Linked Families
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2023
- Donor-Linked Families in the Digital Age
- Donor-Linked Families in the Digital Age
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Donor-Conceived Families
- Part I ‘DIY’ Donor Linking: Issues and Implications
- Part II Children’s and Adults’ Lived Experiences in Diverse Donor-Linked Families
- Chapter 6 The Importance of Donor Siblings to Teens and Young Adults
- Chapter 7 The Experiences of Donor-Conceived People Making Contact with Same-Donor Offspring through Fiom’s Group Meetings
- Chapter 8 ‘It’s All on Their Terms’
- Chapter 9 On Familial Haunting
- Chapter 10 Assisted Reproduction and Making Kin Connections between Māori and Pākehā in Aotearoa New Zealand
- Chapter 11 ‘Spunkles’, Donors, and Fathers
- Part III Institutionalised Resistance to Openness
- Index
- References
Summary
Over the last two decades, researchers have sought to understand whether and to what extent donor-conceived people are motivated to seek contact with donors and donor siblings. This chapter contributes to this literature by focusing on donor-conceived adults’ everyday experiences living with anonymity and absence across the life course. Drawing on the concept of ‘haunting’ and combining reflexive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with Australian donor-conceived adults (N = 28) and vignettes of personal experience, I elucidate how anonymity and absence reshape flows between past, present and future, altering personhood and relationality. I argue that framing anonymity as an issue of the past (re)produces ongoing haunting and that reform without concomitant processes of truth-telling and redress represent an injustice to those who continue to live with the lingering impacts of such past conditions. More broadly, this work expands sociological conceptualisations of family by attending to how familial (non-)relationships shape belonging.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Donor-Linked Families in the Digital AgeRelatedness and Regulation, pp. 154 - 173Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
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