Writing new branches into being: Connecting donor-linked families via Web 2.0

Abstract

Abstract Families that are linked by having chosen the same sperm donor are increasingly locating and connecting with each other online. Focusing primarily on queer-parented, donor-linked families, this article examines the ways in which parents are simultaneously adhering to and rebelling against heavy cultural emphasis on genealogical roots as a source of self-knowledge and identification. Emerging now via online media is a live chronicling of the shifting nature of family and kinship which pushes against borders that are commonly believed to be static in nature. Quick media allows not only for the volume of personal narrative to be increased but the coming together of these voices begins to disrupt the hegemony and reshape the narrative itself. This interactive shift also impacts the way in which parents develop a parental and family identity as online engagement shapes the reader and in turn shapes what is written. Within this article, donor-linked families are referred to as ‘dibling families’. The colloquial term ‘dibling’ refers to a donor sibling, creating a distinction between siblings within an individual family unit, while acknowledging a shared genetic connection between the children. In choosing to be connected (to varying degrees), dibling families are exemplifying hybridized family forms that reimagine, rather than completely reify or reject, traditional notions of kinship.