James' World 2

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I’ve always been proud my hands look just like my mother’s, even though we’ve had a strained relationship for most of my life. That’s because my mother’s hands look like her mother’s hands, and I never had a chance to meet my grandmother Ruth, although I was named after her. Somehow knowing my hands connected me to my matrilineal line gave me a feeling of belonging.

When my husband and I decided to use donor eggs to have a baby, resemblance was one of my first questions. Would my child’s hands look like mine? Or would his or her appearance belong to another family I’d never met?

At the time my husband, Rob, and I were choosing a donor, whether our child would resemble me was one of my biggest worries. Not just our hands, but the rest of us, too.

After all, we are living in a time when ancestry and genetic connection seem more important than ever — with more than 15 million people around the world spitting in a tube to send their DNA to 23andMe as of October 2024. Meanwhile, our Instagram feeds are filled with moms and daughters in matching pajamas, and there’s been a continued fascination with twins and doppelgangers. I’d seen friends with new babies post photos on social media and watched as their followers oohed and aahed about how their children looked exactly like them. I’d even done it, once telling a friend her newborn was a replica of her. Her husband turned to me and said, “DNA, it’s a powerful thing,” and I shook my head and thought to myself: “Yes. Yes, it is.”

Of course when we began pursuing egg donation, I understood, and made peace with, the fact that I’d be carrying a fetus made from my husband’s sperm and a stranger’s egg inside my body for nine months. It seemed vital, though impossible, to know whether our resulting baby’s face would forever remind me of another woman. And in turn of what I thought of then as my own failure.

The more I immersed myself in the world of donor eggs, the more I realized I wasn’t alone. In Facebook groups I frequented, other donor-egg recipients clung to the field of epigenetics and the idea that our DNA can be modified by the environment. Epigenetics gave them hope that even though they didn’t share DNA with their offspring, maybe they could still look like them. For better or worse, I’d spoken to a few geneticists and knew enough to understand this was highly unlikely and not really how epigenetics worked. But I also felt the longing behind their desire, the yearning for proof there was no wedge between them and their child.

Illogical or not, resemblance seemed to be one of the primary emotional concerns of donor-egg recipients. From the outside, it’s easy to wonder why. What is it about family resemblance that is so persistent and powerful — even when we know resemblance has nothing to do with love?

We understand plenty of families adopt children who look nothing like them and still feel bonded with them. And even those who have kids who are genetically related to them don’t always look alike. In fact, when I told our fertility doctor I was worried about how important resemblance was in this whole process, he reminded me kids often come out looking more like distant cousins or even great-grandparents than their biological mother or father. And yet, the desire to see ourselves in our children lingers.

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Resemblance seems to be one of the primary emotional concerns of donor-egg recipients.

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