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.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) DNA testing has had a major impact on people affected by donor conception, including donor-conceived people, their parents, and donors. It has enabled people to discover their conception status and to identify the donor. Donors who were assured of anonymity and their extended families are being contacted by their donor offspring and recipient parents. Consequently, it is now impossible to assure donors they will be anonymous, and parents can no longer consider that nondisclosure of donor treatment to their children is a viable option. Fertility counselors need to prepare their clients for the implications of DTC DNA testing, be fully informed of the repercussions faced by donor-conceived adults, especially those finding out their conception status past childhood, and also to have donor-linking skills as part of their counseling tool kit.