Thursday, July 1, 2010

Figuring out complex [donor] family relationships

Being donor-conceived makes family relationships all the more complicated, especially as we move farther into the future. We must distinguish between our full-blooded siblings, our half-siblings we're raised with, our half-siblings from the same donor, our half-siblings raised by our donor, our dads, our fathers, our non-biological paternal relatives and our biological paternal relatives. And this is only a single generation!!

By the time we're grandparents our family trees are going to be so complex that we might not even be able to keep track of all our nieces and nephews!! Especially these donors kids with 10, 20, 30+ siblings!!

So I found out that WolframAlpha (a computational knowledge search engine - basically it calculates or provides information on just about anything!!) has a genealogical relationship calculator. While it is really not able to deal with such complex situations as donor conception currently would allow, it's a really awesome tool to play with for fun or for genealogy purposes!


Basically, you enter the relationship you want to know and it will provide more common names for that relationship (example is cousin's son = first cousin once removed). It also provides how much DNA these two individuals would share, and other bits of information for the curious genealogist.

2 comments:

Kids Parties Calgary said...

Hi
That is great that you are calculating the blood relationship with the search engine.How much easier it made your query solution.

lili dauphin said...

The need to know who we are is a natural yearning that is ardently delicate. Such a quest can become emotionally burdensome. Not knowing where we're from and what our linkage may be can become very frustrating. The need to know may outweigh the frustrations. However, finding our biological parents later in life may not always satisfy our expectations. Why? It's hard for people to bond with those they don't know. A biological link may not make up for the initial, emotional bond and attachment that parents may form with their babies. Although, there are exceptions to the rules. These newfound parents don't have to love us because they don't know us. We can't force them to love us either. We should be grateful for our lives and make the best of our circumstances. Furthermore, we must love and appreciate ourselves. Loving ourselves is more important than the conditions of a our births. If we don't love ourselves even the love of real parents may not make us happy. Sometimes, we have to let go so we can be truly happy. The circumstances of our births do not determine our worth. No matter what, we're as special as anyone else.