Friday 22 March 2013

Guest post: Our family tree

I hadn't really given much thought to what our family tree will look like, but one of this blog's followers, Kate, has looked into it. Here, in a guest post, is her experience.


Having recently discovered this blogspot I thought I’d share a few discussions my wife and I have had over the past 3 years ( DD, will be 2 years next week). One of the elements of DD’s development we have spent hours thinking about is her identity.

With family history being en vogue we wanted her to have a family tree that was true to her biological heritage as well as recognising my role in her life. After all she shares my name so how about my family history and future?

We came up with the idea of building a family tree that incorporated three family lines, both her mums’ as well as her donor’s. Although there were times when it was tough for me to accept, she does have a fantastic donor she will hopefully see periodically throughout her life.

We gathered our own data and were lucky enough that our donor was also able to provide information dating back 2-3 generations that he was happy for us to have and share with our daughter as she gets older.

It has not been easy to try and put this together and it is not a particularly clean or tidy genogram but it will hopefully go some way to helping her make sense of who she is and bring with it an element of pride.

Of course another advantage we have with a known donor is that we are aware of DD’s half siblings. The plan is that we will all try and meet up at least once a year and the children will develop a relationship with one another. The other benefit being we have other lesbian mothers we can get support from although we can’t help looking out for little similarities in our children.



Thanks very much to Kate for sharing her story - both the easy and difficult bits. Have you created a family tree?




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