Finding Our Families
Finding Our Families

Author: Wendy Kramer

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2013-12-03

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1101612479

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The first comprehensive book that offers invaluable step-by-step advice for families with donor-conceived children. Wendy Kramer, founder and director of the Donor Sibling Registry, and Naomi Cahn, family and reproductive law professor, have compiled a comprehensive and thorough guide for the growing community of families with donor-conceived children. Kramer and Cahn believe that all donor-conceived children’s desire to know their genetic family must be honored, and in Finding Our Families, they offer advice on how to foster healthy relationships within immediate families and their larger donor family networks based on openness and acceptance. With honesty and compassion, the authors offer thoughtful strategies and inspirational stories to help parents answer their own, and their children’s, questions and concerns that will surely arise, including: How to support your children’s curiosity and desire to know about their ancestry and genetic and medical background. How to help children integrate their birth story into a healthy self-image. How to help your children search for their donor or half siblings if and when they express interest in doing so. Finding Our Families opens up the lives of donor-conceived people who may be coping with uncertainty, thriving despite it, and finding novel ways to connect in this uncharted territory as they navigate the challenges and rewards of the world of donor conception.

Donor Family Matters
Donor Family Matters

Author: Wendy Kramer

Publisher:

Published: 2020-01-30

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 9780578633374

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This is the story of Wendy Kramer and her donor-conceived child, Ryan, who eventually found his biological father and 19 half-siblings. Wendy and Ryan created the Donor Sibling Registry, the world's largest platform for mutual-consent contact of sperm, egg, and embryo donors, donor-conceived children and adults, and their parents.

Your Family
Your Family

Author: Wendy Kramer

Publisher:

Published: 2018-05-06

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 9780692106938

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A sweet and light-hearted picture book for donor-conceived children that answers the question "where did I come from?" and then gently introduces the concepts of half siblings and donors in an open and honest way. For ages 2-8.

We Are Family
We Are Family

Author: Susan Golombok

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1541758633

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From one of the world's leading experts, this absorbing narrative history of the changing structure of modern families shows how children can flourish in any kind of loving home. The past few decades have seen extraordinary change in the idea of a family. The unit once understood to include two straight parents and their biological children has expanded vastly—same-sex marriage, adoption, IVF, sperm donation, and other forces have enabled new forms to take shape. This has resulted in enormous upheaval and controversy, but as Susan Golombok shows in this compelling and important book, it has also meant the health and happiness of parents and children alike. Golombok's stories, drawn from decades of research, are compelling and dramatic: family secrets kept for years and then inadvertently revealed; children reunited with their biological parents or half siblings they never knew existed; and painful legal battles to determine who is worthy of parenting their own children. Golombok explores the novel moral questions that changing families create, and ultimately makes a powerful argument that the bond between family members, rather than any biological or cultural factor, is what ensures a safe and happy future. We Are Family is unique, authoritative, and deeply humane. It makes an important case for all families—old, new, and yet unimagined.

Random Families
Random Families

Author: Rosanna Hertz

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 019088827X

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The ready availability of donated sperm and eggs has made possible an entirely new form of family. Children of the same donor and their families, with the help of the internet, can now locate each other and make contact. Sometimes this network of families form meaningful connections that blossom into longstanding groups, and close friendships. This book is about unprecedented families that have grown up at the intersection of new reproductive technologies, social media and the human desire for belonging. Random Families asks: Do shared genes make you a family? What do couples do when they discover that their children shares half their DNA with a dozen or more other offspring from the same sperm donor? What do kids find in common with their donor siblings? What becomes of these chance networks once parents and donor siblings find one another? Based on over 350 interviews with children (ages 10-28) and their parents 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.

Counseling Donor Family Members
Counseling Donor Family Members

Author: Wendy Kramer

Publisher: Ethics International Press

Published: 2023-11-25

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 1804410195

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Donor families are unique, yet are also becoming substantially more common with the exponential advancements being made in the field of reproductive medicine, and with the wider acceptance of LGBTQ+ and single-parent families utilizing donor gametes in recent decades. The accessibility of commercial DNA testing is also helping to expand these families, as many people are finding out by surprise that they are part of a sometimes quite large donor family. Individuals connected to donor families are therefore much more likely to be seen across a variety of mental health and medical settings for a range of presenting problems, either related to or separate from this part of their background. For these individuals the challenges of forming and redefining family as they explore their own or their child’s new biological connections are therefore very likely to surface as a topic of discussion in treatment. Given the greatly increased probability of encountering a client connected to a donor family in their practices across settings, and the specific challenges this presents, clinicians must be well-informed about all perspectives in order to address such issues in a knowledgeable and sensitive manner. Counseling Donor Family Members provides clinicians and mental health professionals with guidance on the unique issues that can present for egg and sperm donors, parents of donor-conceived children, and donor-conceived people. Counseling Donor Family Members is both a resource for mental health and medical professionals in any setting, and a useful reference book for researchers, and donor family members themselves. It presents evolving ideas, recommendations, and talking points, that can be used in counseling everyone in the donor family. Understanding all viewpoints is important for a successful counseling experience with any parent, egg and sperm donor, or donor-conceived person.

Why Don't I Have a Daddy?
Why Don't I Have a Daddy?

Author: George Anne Clay

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 142599587X

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As the little lion cub notices all different types of families, he starts to question his own family. His family consists of his mother and him. The little cub learns that while there is no "daddy" in his family, there is a donor lion who made his life possible. Through his mother's love and nurturing, the lion cub understands how special he and his family are. This book, winner of the Mom's Choice Silver Award for children's picture books, presents the basic facts of anonymous donor conception in a simple but loving manner. By reading this story with a child who was conceived through the help of an anonymous donor, the child will start learning about and understanding his or her family and his or her origins, just as the lion cub does in the story. The delightful illustrations of various animals and their families make the subject accessible to small children. It is a book you can share with your child over the years, and with each reading your child will gain more insight and appreciation for his or her family - for his or her own special story.

Donor-Linked Families in the Digital Age
Donor-Linked Families in the Digital Age

Author: Fiona Kelly

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2023-07-27

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1316518515

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Situates donor conception debates in a global context, exploring the interaction between law, technology, and relationships.

Donors
Donors

Author: Petra Nordqvist

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2022-10-14

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 1800435665

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Drawing on interviews with donors, their kin and fertility counsellors, the authors discuss what donation stories can tell us about contemporary understandings of connectedness, time and morality in the context of reproduction and family life, and consider how reproductive ‘openness’ might be done differently.