Tuesday, November 18, 2008

How to search for your sperm donor father - Part II


I recently discovered a new tool for people searching for their biological fathers....all you need to know is that your 'donor' was a student (college, medical school etc...) at the time of donation, which many donors were.  If you know the exact college/university that's the best - often a clinic/bank is connected to a specific school, but if not check out what schools are nearby.  Do a google search for the school in quotations and alumni.  Ex: "Augusta State University" and alumni and 1983.  

For most medium-large schools they have a classmates.com listing, and it normally comes up as a hit, sometimes on the second or third page.  This is a way to bypass needing to be a paid member of classmates.com to access information.  Here's the listing for Augusta State University on Classmates.com and the Medical College of Georgia on Classmates.com

If classmates.com is a hit, there should be a list of every member who listed that school as attended.  It should also list the years they attended.  For me, I was looking at Augusta State University and the Medical College of Georgia (because I have a hunch he was in science/medicine based on my own interests), and I was looking for men who attended one or both of these schools anywhere from 1979 to 1989.

I wrote down every male who attended either of those schools during the 10 years that I assume they were in college/graduate school (since he was a senior in 1982, but didn't stop donating until 1989 - leads me to assume he was short on money for about 7 years post-college, and most graduate (PhD or medical/residency programs) are 6-7 years in length).  I also checked that they graduated from high school around 1978, so that I was not looking at non-traditional students who may have been older and in school at that time.  

Then, I went to the Free Birthday Database and entered their name in to see if anyone came up as being born 2/12/61.  Since I tested the site to see how accurate it was, and many people I entered weren't in the database, I assumed it was not a perfect system, so I also googled these names, and for many of the men from the Medical College of Georgia who are now doctors, I was able to see photographs of them, and read more extensive biographies.  

While many of the men I was able to knock off my list of candidates for finding information that led me to believe that they did not fit the profile, there are still a handful of men who I have no excluded - and of course it is likely that my biological father is not a member of classmates.com and therefore I would not find him this way.  BUT, it is another tool for us to use to try and decipher who we are.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

lindsay. you are so brave. thank you for this site. i'm going to link it to my discussion blog about children having the right to a mom and a dad. thank you so much.

emi. said...

society should be doing everything it can to protect this right. and any corollary rights regarding it. ESPECIALLY in your case. I can't believe that they didn't think it would ever be important to require more info for the future children.

it just goes to show that EXTREME caution should be taken in matters/laws/etc regarding family issues.