Podcast Review: Half of Us – The acronym episode, DCP and BIPOC

Presenters and half-siblings Ally, Shannon, Jeremy and Meg discuss issues around donor conception during this Half of Us podcast. At over an hour, this episode allows for a wide exploration of the problems arising from trans-racial donor conception and gives guests ample time to tell their stories. While avoiding over-simplified narratives, it frequently succumbs to the main pitfalls of the podcast format (a cliquey set-up, lack of focus and clarity) and the listener will inevitably get more from the experience if they are already familiar with the presenters' back-stories, which is that they share a donor parent and have found each other through a DNA database.

In 'The Acronym Episode – DCP and BIPOC', guests Max and Eric describe what it is like to be donor-conceived offspring born into families whose ethnicities are different to the donor.

Having assumed she and her twin brother were Chinese-American, Max discovered that the egg donor used by her parents was white. Her Chinese-American parents refused to discuss it, so she grew up a bi-racial child of Chinese parents at home, but, outside of this, 'the world won't let me forget I'm mixed'. Struggling with identity and questioning her sense of belonging (her brother, blue-eyed, much less so) Max knows next-to nothing about her biological mother. Conceived in 1996, there is little documentation, aside a vague observation about the donor being 'probably Italian'.

Max sought out other trans-racial adoptees, and, later, a donor-conceived Facebook group where she finds others struggling with the same problems of race dysphoria. With the help of the group, she is able to trace her donor mother, who had never been told about the children from her altruistic donation (Max's parents had falsely painted the donor as an alcoholic who had donated eggs for a financial inducement, in their efforts to discourage her from her search). They went with a white donor when their plan to have IVF with a Japanese donor fell through.

Both contributors are exasperated by the 'layers of shame' that prevent their parents from engaging honestly with their children – leading to family tension, souring relationships and silence rather than healthy communication. The complexity of issues can't be overstated; the parents themselves are frequently immigrants to the USA and experience their own problems with identity and belonging. Max mentions that her Chinese parents struggle in both their adopted country (USA) and China. The term used is 'jook-sing' or 'empty bamboo', Chinese in appearance but devoid of the cultural inheritance from the mother country. Max feels she has to manage her parents' feelings in addition to making sense of her own.

The failure of clinics to address the lack of black or ethnically diverse donors is another problem discussed. Distrust of medical intervention from a portion of society that has been exploited within it through historical medical racism, means that clinics are regarded with suspicion. As a result, very few donors come forward. The clinic billboards for donor conception may feature happy black families but this, it is suggested, is where any representation of ethnic minorities ends. This issue is particularly well discussed by the participants.

The contributors to the podcast are aware of the inherent difficulties of looking at race as identity – white American, for example, being problematic in a country made up of so many different immigrants. Yet the prevalence of DNA testing in the USA indicates just how invested some Americans are in their own ancestry – one only has to read a Wikipedia entry for a random celebrity with a solemn paragraph telling us that so and so has 'English, German and Irish ancestry'.

The discussion, then, is so complex as to go down many rabbit holes, all of which are relevant but not easy to put into any coherent argument. By the time it takes into account the clinical experience of donors and recipients, the lived experience of immigrant families, the parenting styles experienced by DCPs and resulting relationship issues, racism seems too generic a term for the forces at work here, though racism surely plays its part. The impostor syndrome the guests describe comes from a sense of not fitting into a clear family narrative – a situation shared by many adoptees for example, both in transracial and mono-racial settings. It is also a sense of wanting to be 'claimed' by a particular culture. This is something that many dual nationals and children of immigrant families, myself included, will identify with, and involves a lifetime's process of coming to terms with.

The second guest, Eric, raised as Brazilian and speaking Portuguese, is donor conceived from a West African sperm donor. His parents have both white European and indigenous South American ancestries. His relationship with his parents has been strained since his mother forbade him to speak about this with other family members and he carries an additional trauma as a result of being a first responder during the Capitol riots of January 2020 and witnessing first-hand the violence unleashed through the forces of white supremacy.

At times the discussion becomes confusing, especially when the speakers backtrack to fill in contextual and often peripheral detail. The many acronyms used don't always help either; the listener would have to be embedded in the terminology to make sense of what was being discussed at times. I had to listen to the podcast twice and still struggled to fully understand the second case study. In fostering an atmosphere of informality, the podcasting team allow the points made to become lost or diluted – an issue that might be resolved by clarifying points and summing up as the conversation progresses. The advantages of the format – the informality and warmth – are clearly what's needed to allow participants to open up about their stories.

The subjects raised here are important and beg to be analysed and debated more precisely. Shared beliefs and values are more important cultural markers than ancestral DNA, yet they rely on confident, positive parental upbringing, which in turn relies on emotional intelligence and skill. Donor offspring face challenges more particular to trans-racial settings and need to see themselves and their experience positively reflected and normalised in wider society – hence the enormous value of self-help and support groups.

Everyone involved in the donor conceived journey owes it to the children to reflect more rigorously on their roles and responsibilities and foresee the potential pitfalls, from clinic to donor parents, recipients and wider family. Infertile couples don't always leave their issues behind with a successful pregnancy – far from it. In the case-studies in this podcast, parents inflict all sorts of additional damage to their much-wanted children through a refusal to face reality and denying their children's feelings of isolation and confusion.