Introduction: Unprecedented Relationships Part I: Making Sense of the Donor and Donor Siblings Chapter 1. Choosing Donors Chapter 2. Inventing the Donor / Inventing the Self Chapter 3. Parents Make Contact with Genetic Strangers Chapter 4. The Surprise of donor siblings Part II: Networks of Donor Siblings Chapter 5. Michael's Clan: The Arrival of the Father Chapter 6. 7008 Builders: We are Family Chapter 7. The Tourists: Just Related Strangers Chapter 8. Connected Soul Mates: Emotional Ties Chapter 9. The Social Capitalists: Joining The Preschoolers Group Chapter 10. Donor Sibling Networks: Continuity and Change Conclusion: Choice in Donor Sibling Networks Appendix A: Respondents Appendix B: Interviews, Virtual Ethnography And Language In The Book Endnotes Bibliography

"The scope of Random Families is astounding...Hertz and Nelson have made a significant contribution to what is an area of research in its infancy and have sparked an important conversation on what it means to be a family." -- Sociology of Health & Illness "The networks that Hertz and Nelson selected for case study...represent different age cohorts and different eras in the history of donor conception, and provide a fascinating glimpse into the varied ways in which these networks interact." -- Global Technologies of Sperm Donation from Conception to Connection "Rosanna Hertz and Margaret Nelson provide an important and significant expansion of the field [of donor kinship]. At the core of the book is a sociological investigation and analysis of whether and how strangers become relatives, and what happens to the meaning of family as these strangers who share genes manage their new relationships. Random Families is an impressive bookâ Ultimately, this is not a neatly tied package of family connections but instead an analysis, an attempt to create a narrative to describe these otherwise âunscriptedâ relationships (p. 198) that are so different from other kinship-based bonds." -- , Society "add[s] substantially to the literature on Americans' changing families, family values, and behaviors. This clearly written and organized text ... [is] a groundbreaking and illuminating study ... Highly recommended." -- W. Feigelman, CHOICE "Hertz and Nelson's approach is a welcome addition to the scholarship on searching for genetic relations among donor-conceived people and their parents . . . Random Families is an intellectually honest account of the complexity, and diversity, of same-donor networks . . . What becomes of these [donor network] possibilities remains to be seen, but for bringing them to light, Random Families deserves recognition." --SCIENCE

Selling point: Includes over 350 interviews from donors and both parents and children in the same families Selling point: Sheds light on critical processes like choosing a donor among parents and the development of identity among children with an unknown donor Selling point: Chronicles the choices couples and single moms make, from conceiving, to accepting donors into their families, to discovering that other children share their child's DNA Selling point: Explores how children at different ages understand their relationships with their donor and donor siblings Selling point: Describes what happens when people are brought together by shared genes, what they say about family resemblances, and how they work through the ways donor siblings become kin

Rosanna Hertz is the 1919 50th Reunion Professor of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. She authored the widely acclaimed Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice, a path-breaking study of women who choose parenthood without marriage. She is frequently sought out by national media on issues related to women, work and changing families in contemporary society. Margaret K. Nelson is the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Sociology Emerita at Middlebury College where she taught for four decades. Her books include Working Hard and Making Do: Surviving in Small Town America (with Joan Smith), and Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times.

Selling point: Includes over 350 interviews from donors and both parents and children in the same families Selling point: Sheds light on critical processes like choosing a donor among parents and the development of identity among children with an unknown donor Selling point: Chronicles the choices couples and single moms make, from conceiving, to accepting donors into their families, to discovering that other children share their child's DNA Selling point: Explores how children at different ages understand their relationships with their donor and donor siblings Selling point: Describes what happens when people are brought together by shared genes, what they say about family resemblances, and how they work through the ways donor siblings become kin