Rosanna Hertz, Classes of 1919-1950 Reunion Professor, Wellesley College, and Margaret K. Nelson, Hepburn Professor of Sociology, Middlebury College

Rosanna Hertz is the 1919 50th Reunion Professor of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. She authored the widely acclaimed Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice, a path-breaking study of women who choose parenthood without marriage. She is frequently sought out by national media on issues related to women, work and changing families in contemporary society. Margaret K. Nelson is the A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Sociology Emerita at Middlebury College where she taught for four decades. Her books include Working Hard and Making Do: Surviving in Small Town America (with Joan Smith), and Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times.

"The scope of Random Families is astounding...Hertz and Nelson have made a significant contribution to what is an area of research in its infancy and have sparked an important conversation on what it means to be a family." - Sociology of Health & Illness

"The networks that Hertz and Nelson selected for case study...represent different age cohorts and different eras in the history of donor conception, and provide a fascinating glimpse into the varied ways in which these networks interact." - Global Technologies of Sperm Donation from Conception to Connection

"Rosanna Hertz and Margaret Nelson provide an important and significant expansion of the field [of donor kinship]. At the core of the book is a sociological investigation and analysis of whether and how strangers become relatives, and what happens to the meaning of family as these strangers who share genes manage their new relationships. Random Families is an impressive bookâ Ultimately, this is not a neatly tied package of family connections but instead an analysis, an attempt to create a narrative to describe these otherwise âunscriptedâ relationships (p. 198) that are so different from other kinship-based bonds." - , Society

"add[s] substantially to the literature on Americans' changing families, family values, and behaviors. This clearly written and organized text ... [is] a groundbreaking and illuminating study ... Highly recommended." - W. Feigelman, CHOICE

"Hertz and Nelson's approach is a welcome addition to the scholarship on searching for genetic relations among donor-conceived people and their parents . . . Random Families is an intellectually honest account of the complexity, and diversity, of same-donor networks . . . What becomes of these [donor network] possibilities remains to be seen, but for bringing them to light, Random Families deserves recognition." - SCIENCE