Through Her Eyes Thursday~"Inheritance" by Dani Shapiro

"Through Her Eyes" Thursday  is a genealogy prompt meant to help us see the world as our female ancestors would have. It's purpose is to encourage us to share things from the women's perspective of historical events.

Recently, I read an eye-opening memoir that explores a topic close to the heart of many women today: reproductive medicine and artificial insemination.

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro explores this topic through the eyes of the person most affected: the child.

Inheritance: A Memoir of
Genealogy, Paternity, and
 Love by Dani Shapiro

As a child, Dani always had the feeling of never quite fitting in with her family. However, she never quite knew why she felt that way. Several decades later, with the help of a DNA kit, she will have her answer.

But that answer opens up a Pandora's box of other questions for Dani. As you read her fascinating story, you get swept up in her search to find her identity, her history, her story.

Through her book, you will find that artificial insemination has a much longer history than most of us knew. We remember hearing in 1978 of Louise Brown, the world's first baby to be conceived via in vitro fertilization.

However, between Dani's book and an article I found, I discovered the history actually dates back to the early 1950's. According to an online article, "Artificial Insemination History: Hurdles and Milestones (Ombelet & Van Robays), the first successful human pregnancy was reported in 1953. "Considering the hostile climate for donor insemination at the time...it is not surprising that nearly a decade passed before the first successful birth...was announced in public."

Inheritance: A Memoir of
Genealogy, Paternity, and
 Love by Dani Shapiro

And this is where Dani's story comes in...As a "donor-concieved person" born in the early 1960's, there was a lot of secrecy surrounding her conception and birth. Her parents lived in an era when this was a taboo and forbidden topic.

She spends a good portion of the book looking at what happened through our modern lenses. 

"For a long while I was able to put myself in their shoes only as myself, product of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, with all the biological, genetic, historical, and psychological tools available to me." (p. 222)

But once she was able to look at it through the eyes of her mother, and father, it changed her whole perspective of the situation.

"But now I was coming to the awareness that my young

 parents-to-be had none of these tools." (p. 223)

Dani discovered in the writing of this book, what family historians and genealogists need to keep in mind. It is not our place to question how, or why, a decision was made by our ancestors. However, if we do, it has to be done from their perspective.

3 Questions to Ask When Questioning Ancestors' Decisions

   1.) What was the culture of their times/place?

   2.) What information/tools would they have had at that time?

   3.) Who was the decision-maker? We have to remember that until           the last half of the twentieth century, it was predominantly the               father or husband.

If you are looking for a good book to read, this is at the top of my list for anyone. But it is an exceptional read for historians,  genealogists and family historians! In an age where DNA and technology aid our research into the past, this book asks some very important questions.

Source

Shapiro, Dani. Alfred A. Knopf, 2019.

(   Ombelet, W. and Van Robays. "Artificial Insemination History: Hurdles and Milestones". Facts, Views & Vision in ObGyn 2015. (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) Accessed on 3/26/20.