Monday, November 26, 2007

Daily Tasks: Check for Half Siblings. Done That.

One of the issues confronting a number of donor conceived individuals, like their adoptee counterparts, is the curiosity and desire to know if they have “family” or at least biological relatives out there.

As opposed to their adoptee counterparts today’s generation of donor conceived have online registries that they may have registered themselves on or that their parents have done so via their donor numbers if those numbers are known. A few months after learning of the Donor Sibling Registry I registered each of my children under their common’s donor’s number and cryobank.

I have to wonder in this age of the Internet how many parents, biological or social, check these registries on almost an obsessive basis to determine if new half-siblings have registered or whether their donor has registered. It’s not something I do everyday anymore but I do admit to checking at least once a week if not more. Sometimes I don’t even realize I am doing it I just find myself linking from this blog or off the main Yahoo DSR discussion group.

As much as I wonder about the parents of very young children checking on a periodic basis I wonder what the frequency is for donor conceived individuals themselves. Certainly for those that only know the clinic’s name or that of the doctor such action is not possible but for those individuals that do know enough info what is their thought process and do they check more often just because they can?

Will the ability to easily check these registries push the desire to know more to an obsessive level and if no additional entries are ever made for their donors will it further an unhealthy level of loss? For some individuals the feelings of loss are obviously normal emotions to have in this regard but are we fueling these emotions by the ease of these searches?

In the long run the benefits these registries provide between creating kinship and allowing the exchange of medical information among families far outweigh the remote possibility of creating an obsessive “checker”. Like anything Internet related I guess it just comes down to using it in moderation and looking at it as a tool.

3 comments:

stacyb said...

hi -- tried to leave a post just now don't know that it worked. just wanted to say thank you for stopping by my site and sharing your experience regarding talking about donor conception with others. much appreciated.

Bea said...

Interesting thoughts, and I think you're right. It's a tool, and you have to choose how to use it.

Bea

Unknown said...

Not sure how much you remember about me, Eric. As a donor-conceived adult, I check the DSR about once ever six months.

I'm not registered on there as of now, and I'm beginning to doubt whether I'll ever register. I have nothing but a clinic and a doctor (who refuses to give me any information) so those two factors may play into my disinterest.

Well, that's as good as my input can get.