Siblings?

Who are my relatives?

Today's New York Times Magazine contains a cover photo-essay entitled "Brothers, Sisters, Strangers."  The author leads off:

I always knew that I was conceived using a sperm donor.  But I never really understood what that meant -- until I went searching for my half siblings.

All 32 of them.

The essay is illustrated with large photos of thirteen of his "half siblings," accompanied by what he has learned of their lives to date.

Many may find this very appealing. I have a young relative who is engaging with enthusiasm in meeting up with her "half siblings." Maybe because I'm older, I find the appeal puzzling.

I suppose looking for half siblings can just be a convenient excuse to meet people. Like joining a club for redhaired people with braces, or fellow Star War fanatics. But I guess I lack the sense, shared by many, of the importance of genetic similarity or derivation.

When I first learned about adoption, I suppose I wondered "What if I were adopted?" I never wondered for long, because I realized I wouldn't really care. Who I was -- who I am -- is the result of my upbringing and my unique life experiences. My two "full siblings" -- far more likely to resemble me than a half sibling -- and I are all very different people. What makes us similar -- makes us share closeness -- isn't our physical characteristics or our innate temperaments or abilities. It's our common memories and the experiences we've had over a lifetime together.

If I didn't care who my "birth parents" were, I would be even less interested in locating my "half siblings." Especially, when I note how totally different the lives and personalities of the thirteen "half siblings" that the author portrays have from each other.

But for those who feel driven to seek out their half siblings, I suppose it's a largely harmless exercise. Although I wonder about the privacy rights of those who lack the author's curiosity, and who would just as soon limit their familial feelings to the family they grew up with. (I feel the same uneasiness about the intense compulsion some adopted kids feel to locate and confront their birth parents -- I regret that the laws and rules protecting privacy rights are being progressively relaxed.)

With respect to this last point, the author concludes his essay somewhat cavalierly:

What looks like privacy to one person in a relationship may look like secrecy to another, unearned and undeserved. For sperm donors, their offspring, the half siblings, the distinction may become moot, in an era when both privacy and secrecy are aspirational rather than reasonable goals. Technology belongs to the young, and what the young seem to want, as ever, is to know -- and be known.

Really? And, even if the author has some study to show that the majority of "the young" feel this way, what about the hypothetical minority who don't? Or is their right to be left alone "unearned and undeserved"?