The Changing Norms Around Donor-Sibling Networks

By now, it’s relatively common for people conceived through sperm donation to discover half siblings floating around in the world who they’ve never met—people who, despite being strangers socially, share half their genetic material and perhaps even look, talk, or act like them. It’s a scenario that’s formed the basis for many a human-interest story and provided the backdrop for works of fiction, like the 2011 French comedy Starbuck (and its 2013 American remake, Delivery Man).

Of course, as sperm donation has , the practices surrounding it have changed, too, trending ever more toward transparency: Today, parents of donor-conceived kids are far more likely to openly share their now opt to make their biographical details and contact information available to their donor offspring when they turn 18. In other words, sperm donation has become less of a family secret in the past few decades. In the new book , Rosanna Hertz and Margaret K. Nelson (sociologists from Wellesley and Middlebury, respectively) make the case that networks and family-like structures among genetically related donor offspring have evolved as a result.