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1 results

  • Chapter 2 - Recipient Parents Using Do-It-Yourself Methods to Make Early Contact with Donor Relatives

  • from Part I - ‘DIY’ Donor Linking: Issues and Implications
  • Edited by Fiona Kelly, La Trobe University, Victoria, Deborah Dempsey, Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria, Adrienne Byrt, Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria
  • Book:
    Donor-Linked Families in the Digital Age
    Published online:
    13 July 2023
    Print publication:
    27 July 2023, pp 33-48

  • 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.