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
- Chapter 1 Accessing Origins Information
- Chapter 2 Recipient Parents Using Do-It-Yourself Methods to Make Early Contact with Donor Relatives
- Chapter 3 Donor-Linked Families Connecting through Social Media
- Chapter 4 The Contact Expectations of Australian Sperm Donors Who Connect with Recipients via Online Platforms
- Chapter 5 Parents’ and Offsprings’ Experience of Insemination Fraud
- Part II Children’s and Adults’ Lived Experiences in Diverse Donor-Linked Families
- Part III Institutionalised Resistance to Openness
- Index
- References
Chapter 2 - Recipient Parents Using Do-It-Yourself Methods to Make Early Contact with Donor Relatives
Is There Still a Place for Law?
from Part I - ‘DIY’ Donor Linking: Issues and Implications
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2023
By
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
- Chapter 1 Accessing Origins Information
- Chapter 2 Recipient Parents Using Do-It-Yourself Methods to Make Early Contact with Donor Relatives
- Chapter 3 Donor-Linked Families Connecting through Social Media
- Chapter 4 The Contact Expectations of Australian Sperm Donors Who Connect with Recipients via Online Platforms
- Chapter 5 Parents’ and Offsprings’ Experience of Insemination Fraud
- Part II Children’s and Adults’ Lived Experiences in Diverse Donor-Linked Families
- Part III Institutionalised Resistance to Openness
- Index
- References
Summary
Until recently, parents of donor-conceived children were told by doctors to keep their child’s conception story a secret. Over the past 20 years, however, attitudes towards openness have begun to shift. Australian law now supports identity disclosure when the child turns 18. However, only one state permits “early contact” between donors and their donor offspring. In the absence of legislative mechanisms for achieving early contact, some parents have taken donor linking into their own hands, using a variety of “do-it-yourself” techniques to identify donor relatives. Through interviews with Australian parents, this chapter explores motivations for, and the methods used by, parents to make early contact with their child’s donor relatives. It reflects on how the availability of new technologies has resulted in a relocation of power from fertility clinics to consumers, providing parents and their children with access to information to which they are not (yet) legally entitled.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Donor-Linked Families in the Digital AgeRelatedness and Regulation, pp. 33 - 48Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
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