Geographic Region: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States, Belgium, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Germany, Ireland, and Sweden

Research Question: What psychosocial support and counseling services are currently available to donor-conceived people, parents, donors, and their families across ten jurisdictions, and how well do these services meet the growing complexity of donor conception at all life stages?

Design: Descriptive, cross-national mapping study using publicly available information and expert consultation. Data were collected in three areas: (1) the legislative and regulatory context of donor conception in each country, including identity-release provisions; (2) psychosocial support available before or during treatment; and (3) psychosocial support available after treatment or donation, including at the time of information release and donor-linking. Information was gathered through publicly available government and organizational documents, with verification from key researchers and representatives of professional counseling bodies in each country. Data were accurate at the time of publication (early 2026).

Sample: Ten jurisdictions: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, Belgium, the Netherlands, UK, Germany, Ireland, and Sweden. Countries were selected based on two criteria: having a professional fertility counseling organization, and/or having published research on donor conception in English. The authors consulted with key informants from each country, including researchers, psychosocial practitioners, and members of fertility counseling organization boards.

Key Findings

Legislative Landscape

• Legislation governing donor conception varies widely across the ten countries. While Belgium, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK have national legislative frameworks, Australia and Canada regulate ART at the state/provincial level, and the USA has almost no federal legislation.

• Sperm donation is permitted in all ten countries. Egg donation is prohibited in Germany. Gestational surrogacy using donor gametes is not permitted in Sweden and is not yet legally available in Ireland.

• Seven of the ten countries (Australia, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK) require identity-release donation, meaning DCP can access identifying information about their donor when they reach a certain age (typically 18). Anonymous donation remains an option in the USA (except for one state), most of Canada, and Belgium (though Belgium has committed to ending anonymity by 2027).

• Donor-conceived people generally have the right to access identifying donor information at age 18 in identity-release jurisdictions, but parents have far more limited rights in most countries, and donors have even fewer rights to information about the children born from their donations.

• Restrictions on the number of children or families that can be created from one donor are inconsistently applied. Ireland legally restricts one donor to four families; Belgium limits one donor to six women; Sweden recommends (but does not mandate) six families. The UK allows up to ten families; the US allows up to 25. No international limits exist, and enforcement across borders is largely impossible.

• Record-keeping requirements vary significantly, with some countries specifying that records must be kept for 70 to 110 years, and others having no legal time limits. This inconsistency has implications for DCP’s future ability to access information about their origins.

• None of the jurisdictions surveyed explicitly address donor conception that occurs outside the formal medical system (e.g., home insemination) or cross-border reproductive care, leaving many DCP without legal protections or access to support.

Pre-Conception Counseling

• Mandatory pre-conception counseling exists in some form in Ireland (at least one implications counseling session required by law), Quebec/Canada (an information session required by law), Sweden (mandatory psychosocial assessment, though not implications counseling), and Australia and New Zealand (two counseling sessions required for clinic accreditation, making attendance effectively mandatory).

• In Belgium and the UK, counseling must be offered, but attendance is not required. In Germany, the Netherlands, Canada (outside Quebec), and the USA, counseling is recommended by professional guidelines but not mandated.

• Qualification requirements for fertility counselors also vary significantly. Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, and Canada have established professional associations with training and registration requirements. In the USA, the ASRM Mental Health Professional Group recommends certain qualifications but has no official accreditation, and anyone can join regardless of training. In the Netherlands, counselor qualifications are loosely defined.

Post-Conception and Long-Term Support

• Post-treatment psychosocial support is rarely mandated in legislation. The Netherlands stands out as having the most developed post-conception support system, providing government-funded counseling to DCPs and donors on identity release and donor-linking. The Belgian Flemish Ancestry Centre (‘Het Afstammingscentrum’) offers free, government-funded support without session limits.

• Some Australian states (Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia) have recently introduced provisions for free counseling when DCP access the register. However, in Victoria, the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA), which had provided free counseling and donor-linking services, was dissolved at the end of 2024.

• In the UK, the HFEA previously offered time-limited free counseling when people requested donor information; this service was discontinued in September 2024 and replaced with online information pages only.

• Peer support organizations exist in most countries and provide valuable community-based support. However, these organizations are largely run by volunteers with lived experience, are typically unfunded, and should be seen as complementary to (not a replacement for) professional support. This leaves DCP, parents, and donors without adequate support as they navigate disclosure, donor-linking, large sibling networks, and DNA testing discoveries across their lifetimes.

Limitations: Notably absent from the study are countries in the Global South, Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe, including countries with significant ART industries, such as Spain (a major destination for reproductive tourism), Denmark (a major sperm-exporting country), India, and Thailand. Countries where anonymous donation remains the norm (e.g., China, South Africa, Iran, Italy, Brazil) are also not included, even though many DCPs globally were conceived in these contexts. The study does not examine whether the counseling that does exist is culturally appropriate, linguistically accessible, or relevant to families of color, Indigenous families, LGBTQ+ families, or families with lower socioeconomic resources. Legislative and practice provisions are under active review in several of the included countries. Publicly available data may not reflect the most recent changes, and individual clinic practices within jurisdictions may vary and were not captured.

Applications: The study highlights the need for post-conception counseling to be treated as a distinct and specialized practice area, separate from pre-conception fertility counseling. The study identifies direct-to-consumer DNA testing as a growing source of unexpected DC discoveries, early donor contact, and large sibling network identification. Very few jurisdictions have support systems designed for these situations. Clinicians, counselors, and DCP organizations should be prepared to support individuals who encounter these situations without warning. This mapping study identifies multiple important research gaps, including studies on the psychosocial needs of donors (particularly as DCP seek contact), the effectiveness of different counseling models for DC-linking, experiences of families using cross-border or informal donor conception, and the support needs of DCP from non-Western or non-disclosure contexts.

Funding Source: No funding source is identified

Lead Author: Sonja Goedeke is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Auckland University of Technology (New Zealand), a registered clinical psychologist, and a specialist in the psychosocial and ethical implications of infertility treatment and donor conception; she is also Co-Chair of the ASPIRE Special Interest Group on Psychology and Counseling. No personal connection to donor conception was disclosed.

Regulatory Context: Varies by jurisdiction

Related Posts

• Framework proposed for supporting clients through transformative DNA recognition events (Shepard, 2025)

• Perspectives on early disclosure support for donor-conceived families (Hershberger, 2026)

• Parents who used egg donation say better counseling and consistent guidelines are urgently needed (van Bentem, 2025)

Geographic Region: Australia and South Africa

Research Question: What are the expectations of Australian egg donation recipients, South African egg donors, and South African infertility counselors regarding donor anonymity, identification, and future contact?

Study Design: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three participant groups between 2021 and 2023. Australian recipient parents were asked about their experience traveling to South Africa, their views on future implications of donor anonymity for their child, and whether they had tried to find the donor or donor siblings. South African egg donors were asked about their donation experience and their views on anonymity and potential future contact. South African infertility counselors were asked about their counseling practices, impressions of donor motivations and attitudes toward anonymity, and approaches to the possibility of future identification.

Sample: 33 participants across three groups. 12 Australian recipient parents were aged 40 to 51 at the time of their first egg donation in South Africa. All identified as heterosexual; six were in a relationship (partnered or married), and six were single. All had at least one live birth resulting from their South African egg donation. The 12 South African egg donors ranged in age from 19 to 31. All described themselves as Christian. Two were married, three were single, and the remainder described themselves as having a long-term partner. Five were from White backgrounds; the remaining donors were Black South Africans. Three were students; others worked in various occupations. Donors were recruited through fertility clinics, an egg donor agency, and Facebook. The 9 South African infertility counselors included psychologists, social workers, and one counselor, ranging in age from 30 to 61. Most had been practicing for over ten years. South African counsellors were recruited through the Special Interest Group in Psychology and Counselling of SASREG (the South African Society for Reproductive Medicine and Gynaecological Endoscopy).

Key Findings

• Most Australian recipient parents had first tried unsuccessfully to conceive with their own eggs, and many had actively but unsuccessfully sought an Australian egg donor before traveling to South Africa. For some, traveling overseas for an anonymous donation was experienced as a last resort. Several recipients expressed discomfort with the anonymous nature of South African donations, believing that their child would want to know the donor’s identity. Some chose specific donor agencies partly because they asked donors whether they would be open to future identification. While all recipients accepted that the donation was currently anonymous, most anticipated that their child would eventually be able to find the donor through direct-to-consumer genetic testing or online research.

• After the birth of their donor-conceived children, some Australian recipient parents actively engaged in online searching to find their child’s donor’s identity and locate donor siblings before their child reached adulthood, sometimes within months of their child’s birth. Recipients described using donor codes shared in Facebook groups and Google searches to identify donors and connect with other families who had used the same donor.

• All egg donors interviewed understood their donation to be an anonymous act and had been counseled by the donor agency that their identity would not be disclosed. Most donors preferred anonymity and did not seek information about recipients or the resulting children. Several compared egg donation to blood donation, an act of generosity with no expectation of ongoing relationship. None of the donors had received any counseling about the possibility of future contact, identification through genetic testing, or the existence of recipients in other countries who held different expectations about anonymity. One donor who had been adopted expressed openness to future contact, reflecting an understanding of the curiosity donor-conceived people might have about their origins.

• South African counselors reported that the majority of egg donors expected and preferred anonymity, and that most donors did not consider themselves genetically related to the donor-conceived children they helped create. Counselors described their role as supporting donors to conceptualize their donation as providing ‘tissue,’ not as creating a child with whom they would have a relationship. Direct-to-consumer genetic testing was not consistently discussed with donors. Some counselors were unaware it was easily accessible in Australia; others reported it simply never came up.

Limitations: The sample is small and non-representative. The study is focused on a specific cross-border context (Australia to South Africa) and findings may not apply to other cross-border arrangements or to domestic egg donation in either country. The study does not examine what happens after contact attempts occur: whether donors are found, how they respond, or what the psychological consequences are for all parties. The ‘mismatch’ identified is prospective and relational rather than empirically measured in terms of outcomes. The framing of donor-conceived people’s interest in knowing their donor’s identity as a universal or self-evident good draws heavily on Australian advocacy discourse and on research conducted primarily with donor-conceived adults who have sought contact. The perspectives of South African donor-conceived people, who grow up in a context of mandated anonymity and different cultural norms about family, are entirely absent from this study.

Applications: The study provides a clear rationale for expanding implications counseling in cross-border egg donation to include explicit discussion of direct-to-consumer genetic testing, online searching, and the realistic possibility of future identification even in jurisdictions where donation is legally anonymous.

Funding: This research was funded by the Australian Government through an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (DP 200101270).

Lead Author: Cal Volks is a postdoctoral research fellow at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, whose work focuses on donor conception relationships, policy, and counselling, with a background in sexual and reproductive health research and education. Volks holds certification in infertility counselling from the British Infertility Counselling Association (BICA) and has been a member of the ANZICA executive since 2019. No personal connection to donor conception was disclosed.

Regulatory Context

Australia

• Australia’s gamete donation laws vary by state and territory, but all states and the federal ethical guidelines (National Health and Medical Research Council, 2017) require that donor-conceived people have the legal right to access identifying information about their donors when they reach adulthood — at age 16 in Western Australia, and 18 in all other states.

• Only altruistic donation is permitted in Australia. Donors can be reimbursed for verified expenses but cannot be paid for gametes.

• Recipients and donors are required to undergo implications counseling before proceeding with domestic gamete donation, including a discussion of the donor-conceived person’s future rights to identify the donor.

• There are no federal laws governing cross-border reproductive care by Australians, and some Australian practitioners may face legal liability if seen to be facilitating arrangements that contravene domestic anonymity laws. Australian medical staff may therefore be unable to refer patients for implications counseling ahead of overseas treatment.

• VARTA (the Victorian Assisted Reproduction Treatment Authority), a statutory authority that provided information and support to donor conception stakeholders, was dissolved at the end of 2024, and its functions were transferred to the Victorian Department of Health.

• There is a growing trend in Australia among recipient parents to seek early contact with donors and donor siblings before the donor-conceived child reaches the legal age of access.

South Africa

• Gamete donation in South Africa is governed by the National Health Act 61 of 2003 and its Regulations Relating to Artificial Fertilisation of Persons (GN R175, 2012).

• Donor anonymity is currently mandated in South Africa for donations arranged through egg donor agencies and egg banks. Donors’ identities are not disclosed to recipients or offspring.

• Donors receive fixed compensation set by SASREG, approximately R8,000–9,000 per cycle (approximately USD $450–506 at the time of the study). Commercial trading in gametes is prohibited but compensation is permitted.

• A donor’s gametes may not result in more than six live births (excluding the donor’s own children). Fertility clinics maintain records to enforce this limit.

• Donors have no legal parental rights or obligations to donor-conceived children.

• Recipients traveling to South Africa from overseas are not required to undergo counseling prior to treatment at South African clinics.

• South African law on donor anonymity is described in this paper as ‘evolving,’ with legal scholarship (Thaldar & Shozi, 2022) examining whether open-identity donation could be lawful under current legislation. A 2020 survey of 150 South African egg donors found that a majority (54%) would have chosen identity-release if given the option, while 34% preferred anonymity.

Related Posts

• How Australian egg donors interact with recipient families (Volks, 2026)

• Providing implications counseling to South African anonymous oocyte donors donating to Australian recipients (Volks, 2024)

Geographic Region: The Netherlands

Research Question: What are the motivations, needs, and experiences of donor-conceived adolescents in the Netherlands when seeking sperm donor information and making contact?

Study Design: Semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted in two rounds of recruitment: June 2021 and August-September 2022. Participants were asked to reflect on their experiences during adolescence, broadly defined as ages 10–24. New themes emerging from earlier interviews were incorporated into later interview guides, consistent with iterative qualitative methods.

Sample: 19 donor-conceived individuals participated across 18 interviews. In one interview, a mother also participated; in another, two mothers participated alongside their donor-conceived son and daughter. The average age was 22.6 years, ranging from 17 to 26 years. Participants were predominantly female (n=16; 84%). Family structures included single-mother families (n=11; 58%), mother-father families (n=4; 21%), and mother-mother families (n=4; 21%). All participants had an identifiable sperm donor. Disclosure of donor conception occurred from birth for most participants (n=15; 79%). One participant was not told until age 21. The majority began their donor search between ages 16 and 17 (n=11; 58%). At the time of the study, 14 of the 19 participants had made contact with their donor, and 12 had had contact with donor siblings. Nearly all participants (n=16) received counseling from a Fiom counselor during the information exchange process. Purposive and snowball sampling were used, with recruitment through Fiom’s social media, newsletter, website, and direct email to people already in Fiom’s counseling system.

Key Findings

• Curiosity about donor information ranged widely, from little to none to deep and enduring preoccupation. Some participants integrated their donor conception into their identity from an early age with minimal urgency for further information, while others experienced intense curiosity beginning in early childhood.

• Most participants were interested in the donor’s personality (questions such as, ‘Who is he?’, ‘What kind of man is he?’, ‘What does he look like?’, ‘What characteristics does he have?’, ‘Why did he donate?’, ‘Where is he from?’, ‘What interests and hobbies does he have?’) and his medical history.

• The approach of the age-16 access threshold heightened awareness and desire among many participants: the legal right to request information became a more prominent thought, even for those who had not previously been curious.

“Around the age of 14 or 15, I started thinking about the donor more as the time to make the request got closer. I was just really curious.” - Liam, 21 (single mother family)

“‘I told my parents, ‘It’s allowed at sixteen, so I really want to do it then’.” - Maud, 17 (mother-mother family)

• The decision to seek donor information was rarely purely internal. Siblings’ curiosity often catalyzed or accelerated others’ searches. Parents frequently shared in or initiated the process, and some participants delayed their search out of loyalty to parents or fear of causing distress. Broader societal influences (e.g., television programs featuring donor-conceived people searching for their donors) could make the idea feel possible and open conversations within families. Two participants also feared that the donor might die before contact.

• For many participants, receiving information about the donor and recognizing shared physical traits, personality characteristics, or interests contributed to their emerging self-image. Several participants also described a fully settled sense of identity prior to receiving information about the donor.

• The relationship with the donor varied enormously: from a single meeting out of curiosity, to occasional contact at significant life events, to close ongoing personal relationships. None of the participants described the donor as a father figure, though some formed meaningful bonds (e.g., mentorship, friend).

• Many participants described challenges in establishing contact with the donor, including a lack of shared history that made interactions feel awkward, uncertainty about the donor’s expectations, and practical factors like geographical distance. Some participants encountered concerning donor behaviors, including donors who shared private information without consent, expressed extreme views, or had psychological difficulties that complicated or made contact unsafe.

• Many participants expressed that their curiosity about donor siblings was stronger than their curiosity about the donor himself. Donor siblings were seen as a potential extension of their social network, people who could offer shared experience and recognition, particularly for those who grew up without siblings. At the same time, the prospect of having large numbers of unknown genetic relatives and the possibility of inadvertently meeting a donor sibling in romantic or social contexts were sources of anxiety and ongoing distress for some participants.

“It would be so nice to have a lot of siblings, because I don’t have any myself. I thought about that a lot. At school, I would hear others talking about their brothers and sisters and think, ‘Maybe I’ll have them too.’” - Elise, 25 (mother-father family)

“It’s complicated because there are probably people who have half your DNA and are your age. You could easily meet them while dating or through friends. The idea of meeting someone and only finding out later that they are your sibling is scary to me.” - Tessa, 23 (mother-mother family)

“I find the subject of half-brothers and sisters difficult; I’d rather not think about it. After all, my family is complicated enough as it is, with brothers, sisters, stepbrothers and stepsisters.” - Emma, 19 (mother-mother family)

• Almost all participants received Fiom counseling, and most valued it highly. They appreciated empathetic, personalized support, a step-by-step approach, and counselors who allowed them to proceed at their own pace without pressure. Participants particularly valued having control over the process and retaining agency to decide if and when to request information or make contact. Some participants felt that counseling support did not keep pace with the complexity of evolving donor sibling networks, particularly when group dynamics became complicated.

• Participants suggested that family support played an important role. Parents who showed active interest, listened without judgment, and encouraged their children’s autonomy helped normalize the topic over time. In many families, parents sometimes initiated conversations or information seeking themselves rather than waiting for children to ask. Most parents were open to their children making contact with the donor and donor siblings, accompanied them to meetings, and provided practical and financial support.

“My parents had a little book that explained everything in simple language, and they would read it to me from time to time. So, ever since I became aware of my existence - ever since I knew I was alive - I also knew that I was a donor-conceived child.” - Annabelle, 19 (mother-father family)

“My parents’ support was valuable. We did it as a family. Although it was about my sister and me, my parents were involved in everything and knew everything.” - Tessa, 23 (mother-mother family)

Limitations: Three of the 19 participants were outside the 10–24 age range used to define adolescence in this study, meaning their experiences were captured only retrospectively. The study focused exclusively on sperm donation; findings may not apply to those conceived with egg or embryo donation. Participants were predominantly female (84%), which the authors note aligns with research suggesting kinship work is primarily done by women, but limits the representation of male donor-conceived people’s experiences. Single-mother families were overrepresented (58%), which may limit the range of family dynamics reflected. The study may be affected by self-selection bias, overrepresenting people with strong interest in their genetic background, though the authors note that one participant specifically joined to represent those who did not want donor contact. Families who avoided disclosure, had difficult experiences, or never sought professional support are absent. The research team is based at Fiom, the same organization whose counseling services are evaluated in the study.

Editor’s Note: The authors conclude that early disclosure is associated with lower urgency regarding donor information; however, I think this is a reach for a small, self-selected sample from a qualitative study.

Applications: The findings validate that curiosity about donors and donor siblings is normal, varied, and evolving. Donor-conceived people who feel little interest are not unusual, and those with intense curiosity from an early age are also not unusual. Participants valued personalized, empathetic, and responsive counseling that matched their individual timing, not a fixed process with predetermined steps. The complexity of growing donor sibling networks appears to exceed what individual counseling is currently designed to handle. Support that addresses group processes, not just individual ones, may be needed. Professionals should be alert to the range of donor behaviors that can arise, including donors who are unsafe, who have not disclosed their donation to their own partners, or who have significant psychological difficulties. Preparing young people for the possibility that contact may not go as hoped is important, but should be done in a way that does not pre-emptively dampen genuine excitement.

Funding Source: ZonMw (project number 554002007) as part of a broader research program on age limits in the Dutch Donor Data Act, commissioned by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport

Lead Author: A. Janneke B. M. Maas is a Senior Specialist in Policy and Researcher in Donor Conception at Fiom in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. She holds a PhD in Developmental Psychology from Tilburg University, with her dissertation focused on prenatal influences on infant development and parent-infant relationships. No personal connection to donor conception was disclosed.

Regulatory Context:

• The Netherlands abolished donor anonymity through the Artificial Fertilisation Donor Information Act (Wdkb) in 2004. Under this law, all donations made after 2004 must be identifiable.

• From birth, parents can request a ‘donor passport’ containing the donor’s physical and social characteristics. Donor-conceived individuals can request this passport themselves at age 12. At age 16, they gain the right to access identifying information, including the donor’s name, date of birth, and place of residence.

• The national donor register (College donorgegevens kunstmatige bevruchting, or Cdkb) is government-funded and manages all donor records.

• Fiom is contracted by the Cdkb to provide counseling to donor-conceived people and donors during information exchange and contact processes. Contact between donor-conceived people and donors is not a legal right; it requires mutual consent.

• For donations made before 2004, donors who previously donated under anonymity had the option to register in the voluntary Fiom KID-DNA Database and release their identity. Donors who donated before 2004 and died without changing their status cannot release information; in those cases, next of kin may be approached.

• All forms of gamete donation in the Netherlands must be altruistic; commercial trading of gametes is prohibited. Counseling is provided to both donors and recipients. The Netherlands permits access to assisted reproduction for heterosexual couples, lesbian couples, and single women.

Related Posts

• Legal age limits in accessing donor information: experiences of donor-conceived people, parents, sperm donors and counsellors (Bolt, 2024)

• Majority of donor-conceived teens want donor information access, regardless of family or donation type (Groundstroem, 2024)

• How donor-conceived people feel about discovering they have multiple donor half-siblings (Sørensen, 2025)

Should you search for other families who used the same donor? When should you tell your child that genetic half-siblings might exist? What level of contact makes sense for your family? I wrote about these decisions and what research actually shows about same-donor peer relationships.

Sonja Klug, founder of Storydo, wrote a guest post about how parents’ donor conception conversations with children are stories to keep building rather than talks to get through, drawing on research about elaborative reminiscing. And then, I tried to create some practical guidance on how to do it!

Research Recap

Gilman and Davis (2026) interviewed 49 UK participants (30 intended/recipient parents, 19 sperm donors) about how digital technologies shape informal donor conception knowledge management. Four interconnected themes emerged: managing identifying information, (dis)embedding connections, communicative knowledge, and creating digital artifacts.

Volks et al. (2025) interviewed 24 Australian egg donors who met recipients through online platforms (23 donated to multiple families). Donors described strong empathy for recipients arising from reproductive difficulties or witnessing others' struggles. Online platforms enabled direct recipient selection based on shared values and perceived openness to contact, with platform discourse emphasizing early disclosure significantly influencing decisions.

Hurley and Goedeke (2026) interviewed nine New Zealand participants (two embryo donor couples, one recipient couple, three individual recipients) with donor-conceived children aged 2-8 about early contact. All described strongly positive experiences with kin-like connections, choosing partners based on shared values.

Hershberger et al. (2026) interviewed 20 US parents (6 pregnant, 15 with children aged 3-24 months, mostly White female) and 10 clinicians about disclosure needs. All parents intended to tell children about donor conception, citing honesty and transparency, though several reported no healthcare professional discussed disclosure despite required counseling sessions. Clinicians, particularly outside the fertility setting, felt unprepared to counsel families, constrained by time (15-minute appointments) and lacking training. Parents requested support via multiple delivery modes, customization by family/donation/donor anonymity type, peer connections, privacy protection, and low/no cost.

van Rooij et al. (2026) interviewed 17 Dutch donor-conceived people (average age 32, mostly women) who met sperm donors through professionally supported counseling. Motivations included seeking resemblances, incomplete identity, curiosity, medical information, and closure, often triggered by major life events. Those with identifiable donors had straightforward paths through government bodies, while those with formerly anonymous donors experienced long, emotionally draining searches with repeated dead ends and clinic discouragement. The gap between expectations and actual meetings shaped experiences.

Other Tidbits

• Researchers with Morehouse Center for Maternal Health Equity are recruiting Black participants who have considered or used fertility treatments (ovulation-inducing medication, IUI, or IVF) since June 2022 to examine how abortion bans impact fertility care decision-making. The study involves a 20-minute online survey with optional in-person focus groups in Atlanta (April 15, 3:00-5:00pm during Black Maternal Health Week) or Raleigh (April 25, 11:00am-1:00pm during National Infertility Awareness Week). Focus group participants receive incentives and meals. The study team includes people who have used medically assisted reproduction and aims to improve Black families' experiences and outcomes with fertility care. To participate: https://bit.ly/ReproIntersect

• In Psychology Today, Zoe Weil describes discovering at age 51 through 23andMe that she was donor-conceived with 62 half-siblings, an experience that was both fascinating and deeply unsettling as it called into question "how much of who we think we are is woven from stories told to us and by us and layered on like garments we eventually mistake for our self."

• Professor Vasanti Jadva delivered an inaugural lecture at City St George’s, University of London reflecting on 25 years of research examining families formed through assisted reproduction including IVF, egg and sperm donation, and surrogacy.

• Riki Lindhome’s song about asking someone to be a known sperm donor had me rolling.

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Editor’s Note: This guest post makes the case for why the donor conception conversation is less a talk to get through and more a story to keep building. The research she draws on - particularly the elaborative reminiscing work of Robyn Fivush - points toward something specific and learnable for parents. If you want to go deeper on what that looks like in practice for donor conception families, check out my companion post on how to use elaborative reminiscing for talking to your child about your family story.

We’re seeking guest writers to share perspectives, lived experiences, and questions that academic literature hasn’t reached yet. You’re welcome to publish under your name, a pseudonym, or anonymously. While we can’t offer financial compensation, we’ll amplify your voice and welcome links to support you directly. To pitch an idea or ask a question, email laura@dcjournalclub.com.

The Science of Family Storytelling and What It Means for Families Through Donor Conception

Two questions come up again and again when people consider donor conception. Firstly: “Will my child reject me because I’m not their genetic parent?” And secondly: “How on earth will I talk to my child about donor conception?”

I’m Sonja, the founder of Storydo, a platform that helps parents tell their family stories to their children. It’s for all family storytelling, and donor conception origin stories are one variety of story Storydo has been designed to tell. Building the Storydo BookBuilder took me deep into family storytelling research. I also worked closely with child psychologists, social workers, and child development experts to determine how best to facilitate family storytelling through bespoke books.

We’ve now made hundreds of books, and I’m more convinced than ever that the sometimes dreaded ‘talk’ is an opportunity to bring families closer. Family storytelling helps parents build close, resilient families and can help ease fears of rejection.

The Research on Family Storytelling

Robyn Fivush, Professor of Psychology at Emory University, has spent over three decades studying family storytelling and its impact on children’s development. Her research focuses on a style of parent-child conversation about past shared events called elaborative reminiscing, which is characterised by open-ended questions, rich detail, emotional content, and a focus on following the child’s lead.

For example, instead of just asking “Do you remember when we went to the zoo?” and waiting for a yes or no, an elaborative parent builds the story out loud with the child, asking open questions like “What animals did you see?” and “How did you feel when the lion roared?”, filling in details when the child gets stuck, and responding warmly to whatever the child contributes.

The research behind this style of conversation is substantial. A 2006 review by Fivush et al. found that parents regularly talking with their young children about shared experiences in rich, open, collaborative ways is associated with positive outcomes for children. There’s a clear relationship between maternal elaborative reminiscing and benefits for children’s memory, language, and literacy development. There’s also evidence for a link between elaborative reminiscing about emotions and coherence of children’s self-concept.

A narrative literature review by Elias and Brown (2022) adds to this picture, showing that knowing one’s family history is consistently linked to better mental health outcomes in adolescents, such as lower anxiety, higher self-esteem, greater sense of control, and fewer behavioural problems. And it’s not just about knowing the facts. Fivush et al. (2011) found that adolescents who told richer intergenerational narratives - ones that included perspective-taking, emotional content, and explicit connections between their parents’ past experiences and their own lives - tended to have higher wellbeing overall.

You might wonder, though, whether it’s only the positive stories that do this work. Marin et al. (2008) examined whether sharing negative emotions with children could be harmful. They asked middle-class two-parent families to tell stories about a recent negative experience, like the death of a family member or pet, a child’s illness or injury, or an accident or disaster. Interestingly, families that named and explained specific negative emotions (”we were scared,” “it was so sad when Grandma died”) in a collaborative way, building on each other’s feelings rather than arguing or dismissing them, were more likely to have children who reported higher social and academic competence two years later.

The Role of Storytelling in Donor Conception

A parent’s journey to having a family is, of course, a fundamental part of family storytelling. How does this look in practice? In my experience from working closely with families through donor conception, most parents focus on the happy emotions when talking about donor conception to their young children. Most tell their toddlers and preschoolers how much they wanted a baby, about the people who helped them make it happen, about how grateful they are, and how overjoyed they were at the birth of their much-desired child.

But the truth is, many parents also faced barriers to having a family, like infertility, finding a partner, discrimination, and financial restrictions. In my experience, most parents naturally don’t want to focus too much on their own emotional struggles when explaining donor conception. However, when the children are older and able to understand nuance, the fuller narrative can emerge: the parents’ emotions, how they coped with difficulties, and what it took to build their family. Research on intergenerational family narratives suggests that what matters is not just that children know the facts of their family history, but that those stories are told with emotional honesty, coherence, and a clear sense of meaning, the kind of storytelling that helps children locate themselves within something larger than themselves.

What Donor Conceived People Say Matters About How They Were Told Their Story

Navarro-Marshall (2025) argues that the field has spent too long debating whether and when to tell children about their donor conception origins, and not nearly enough time on how those conversations should happen. She proposes a framework that reframes origin story sharing as a rich, responsive, emotionally open storytelling about their origins, one where parents ask questions, follow the child’s lead, and return to the story over time. This aligns with the elaborative reminiscing style of family storytelling discussed above.

A study by Applegarth et al. (2025) of 422 donor-conceived people also makes clear that how people learn about their conception matters enormously. Among those who found out at 16 or older, about two-thirds were dissatisfied with how they learned. Among accidental discoverers, nearly three-quarters were. The most difficult experiences combined both late and accidental discovery, bringing shock, confusion, sadness, and feelings of betrayal. What donor-conceived people in this study consistently valued was being told directly by a parent.

Parents can take real comfort from this. Whatever challenges may come, what matters might not be the story itself, but how, when, and by whom it’s told.

Family storytelling has benefits for parents, too. It can help address the fear of rejection that many parents carry. It’s been shown that elaborative reminiscing can be learnt, and that it creates closer and more resilient families over time, families where children feel secure, connected, and known.

I think something else can be transmitted via family storytelling. Most people who choose donor conception believe that love, shared history, and showing up for each other day after day, year after year, is what makes a family, not genetics. Stories are one of the most natural ways to communicate this value. You can point to it when you see it: a step-parent and child who are clearly devoted to each other, friends who are family. You can explain what is genetic (eye and hair colour), what is a mix of genes and environment (personality, how tall someone grows), and what is purely about the life you share, such as the fun you have together, the close bond you share, how much you enjoy each other’s company and how much you care about each member of your family, and communicate that this what matters.

For children, elaborative reminiscing means they learn about their beginnings in an open, warm way, where they have space to explore, to question, and make it their own (rather than stumble upon it, or it being shared under pressure). For the parents, it can help to address fear and to build stronger bonds. The child’s conception story is integrated into the whole family story and becomes one part of the many wonderful things that make their family who they are.

Bringing Storytelling Into Everyday Life

Working with families, I see every day that telling the conception story is an opportunity for family storytelling, to build trust and even to show some vulnerability that can bring you closer.

So how best to incorporate family storytelling into family life? There are as many ways as there are families, but one thing that really works for us is letting my children look through my camera roll on my phone. They’ll often pick up my phone, when we’ve got 10 minutes before we have to leave the house, for example, or they ask me to look at photos when we’re on the train or waiting in a queue. They scroll, and stop at photos that catch their attention, remembering the day, asking questions and giving me the opportunity to fill in any details or link to other events and stories.

Family storytelling doesn’t have to be a big deal. The in-between moments, like the queue, a cab ride, the 10-minute wait, are often where meaningful conversations happen.

Sonja Klug is the Founder of Storydo, a UK-based company that helps parents create personalised books to tell their children their family stories, including their donor conception story. For more tips on family storytelling, visit storydo.co.uk/blog.

References

Applegarth, L. D., Kaufman, N. L., Thomas, C., Beroukhim, G., Tsai, S., & Joseph-Sohan, M. (2025). Secrets and lies and donor conceptions: What donor-conceived individuals feel about their disclosure/discovery experience. Human Reproduction. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deaf215

Elias, A., & Brown, A. D. (2022). The role of intergenerational family stories in mental health and wellbeing. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 927795. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.927795

Fivush, R., Haden, C. A., & Reese, E. (2006). Elaborating on elaborations: Role of maternal reminiscing style in cognitive and socioemotional development. Child Development, 77(6), 1568–1588. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2006.00960.x

Fivush, R., Bohanek, J. G., & Zaman, W. (2011). Personal and intergenerational narratives in relation to adolescents’ well-being. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 2011(131), 45–57. https://doi.org/10.1002/cd.288

Marin, K. A., Bohanek, J. G., & Fivush, R. (2008). Positive effects of talking about the negative: Family narratives of negative experiences and preadolescents’ perceived competence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 18(3), 573–593. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2008.00572.x

Navarro-Marshall, J. (2025). Beyond the disclosure debate in donor-conception: How do we help families to discuss origin stories with their children? Human Reproduction, 40(3), 405-409. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deaf004

This is a companion piece to a guest post about family storytelling. As I reviewed the research, I realized that this approach wasn’t too far off from what I use for my own family. Sharing the facts through Silverberg’s What Makes a Baby, making my kids their own Parts of Me book, and revisiting their “coming here” story in small moments when they present… all of that aligns with elaborative reminiscing. I decided to operationalize the conversation style for parents seeking concrete guidance for talking about donor conception. I welcome feedback!

Robyn Fivush, a psychologist at Emory University, has spent decades studying how families talk about the past and what those conversations do for children. The style she identifies as most beneficial - elaborative reminiscing - is characterized by open-ended questions, emotional content, rich detail, and a consistent focus on following the child's lead. An elaborative parent doesn't ask "do you remember the zoo?" and wait for a yes or no. They build the story out loud together: "What animals did you see?" "How did you feel when the lion roared?" They fill in details when the child gets stuck and respond warmly to whatever the child contributes.

Research on elaborative reminiscing assumes that both the parent and the child were present for the event being discussed: a family vacation, a birthday party, or a family loss. Donor conception is different. The story is about something that happened before the child existed, that the child has no independent memory of, and that may involve people and circumstances they have never encountered.

Because there is no shared memory to revisit, the goal for family building storytelling shifts from “let’s remember this together” to “let’s craft this story together.” Elaborative reminiscing in this space means returning to the story regularly, adding new details as the child grows, answering new questions as they arise, and letting the story evolve as the child’s understanding develops and circumstances change. It means helping the child become the protagonist of the story, not just the recipient.

While elaborative reminiscing was not developed with donor conception in mind, the principles translate, and what follows is one possible way to apply them.

Lay the Foundation

To begin building a story together, your child needs one thing: a foundation of facts you return to and build on as your child grows up.

Every child has questions about where they came from, and every child deserves answers. A child cannot ask questions about a story they don’t know, and they cannot begin to make meaning from information they don’t have. The donor conception facts are part of your child’s origin story, but they are not the whole of it. Grounding them within a broader narrative means your child receives them in the context of everything else that is true about their family and their place in it.

These foundational facts are answers to questions like:

• How are babies made?

• What kind of help did your family have from donors, surrogates, or medical providers?

• What do we know about the donor(s)?

• Who was excited for you to be born?

• What happened when you arrived?

• How did people feel when they first met you?

• Who loves you and takes care of you every day?

Anchor the Story

Anchors keep a story present and give your child something important: agency. A child who can pick up a photo, open a book, or return to a folder on their own time and at their own pace is a child who owns their story.

Books are one of the most powerful anchors available and can do some of the work for you. Read alongside other beloved stories, they make the origin story ordinary. Let your child choose when to read them. Let them ask questions, or not. This includes books others have written or those you make yourself. (I maintain a summary of research and a list of the books I think get it right. I’m always adding new ones and welcome suggestions.)

Artifacts from the family-building experience, such as a good-luck charm from fertility treatment, a picture from the donor profile (if one exists), a pregnancy announcement photo, and mementos from the birth, kept in an accessible place rather than filed away, create natural openings for conversation without requiring a formal sit-down talk. The child can pick it up. The child can ask questions. You can say, “That’s from when we were hoping you’d come along,” and see where the conversation goes.

A simple folder or box that holds everything you know - the donor profile, any photos, information about donor-linked peers, and whatever else is part of the story - is more than a practical resource. It is a message that says: this is yours, it has always been yours, and it will be here whenever you are ready for it. Let your child know it exists and that they can return to it whenever they want.

Not every family has donor information. Some families have almost nothing. Name the unknown explicitly. “We don’t know what the donor looks like, but here is what we do know” makes the gap present and manageable rather than absent and anxiety-provoking. A placeholder, like a folder with a note that says “this is where we will put things as we find them out”, gives the unknown a home and communicates that new information is welcome when it comes.

Elaborate Over Time

Once your child has the facts and the story has a physical presence in their life, something new becomes possible: you can start building the story together. Remember, elaborative reminiscing is not about having the right answers. It is a way of being in a conversation: curious, responsive, and led by your child. Here is what it could look like in practice:

• Ask open questions. Instead of questions that can be answered with a yes or a no, ask questions that open things up. “What do you think about that?” “What do you wonder about?” “What happened next?” Open questions invite your child into the story as an active participant rather than a passive listener.

• Expand and add detail. When your child contributes something, build on it. Add the who, what, where, when, and why. If they say, “I wonder what the donor looks like,” you might add what you know or what you wonder too. This is how a bare fact becomes a story, and how a story becomes shared.

• Follow their lead. Listen to the question your child is actually asking, not the one you fear they are asking. Follow it with curiosity rather than rushing to respond. Be led by what interests them, what confuses them, what they want to know more about. Your job is not to direct the conversation but to go where they take it.

• Validate their perspective. Accept your child’s view of the story, including feelings you find hard to hear. If they are sad, or angry, or curious in ways that feel uncomfortable, resist the urge to correct or reframe. “That makes sense” or “I can understand why you’d feel that way” matters more than setting the record straight. The goal is not accuracy; it is trust.

• Encourage and affirm. When your child contributes a question, a memory, a feeling, or an observation, tell them it matters. “That’s a really important question.” “I’m so glad you told me that.” “I hadn’t thought about it that way before.” Positive affirmation is what keeps the conversation open. A child who feels that their contributions are valued will keep contributing. A child who feels managed or corrected might go quiet.

• Talk about thoughts and feelings. Stories are not just sequences of events. What makes them meaningful is the inner life they carry, and the inner life that matters most here is your child’s. What do they think about what they’ve heard? How does it feel to know this about themselves? What do they wonder about? Invite your child to name their feelings, and make space for whatever comes up. Specific emotion words - curious, confused, proud, sad, excited, worried, unsure - give children a richer vocabulary to draw on and signal that all feelings about their story are welcome. Parents can share their own emotions too, not to ask the child to carry them, but to model that feelings can be named. “I felt scared because I didn’t know if it would work, and what helped was...” is not a burden; it is an invitation. It shows the child that difficult feelings belong in this conversation, and that they don’t have to protect you from theirs.

No parent gets this right every time. You will stumble over words, misjudge the moment, or say something you wish you could take back. It is not the perfect telling that matters, but the telling and retelling, the accumulation of conversations over the years that weave a story into the fabric of your family.

The research suggests that children who grow up in families where the past is talked about richly - openly, honestly, and repeatedly - develop better emotional understanding, stronger coping skills, and a more stable and coherent sense of who they are. For donor-conceived children, that could mean something specific: the capacity to hold their own story and make their own meaning from it. They will find their own labels for the relationships in their story. They will decide what meaning and value to place on those connections. They will determine how central their donor conception is to their identity, and what place it holds in the larger picture of who they are.

That is the goal: not a child who has been told their story, but a child who owns it.

Geographic Region: United States

Research Question: What are the views and needs of pregnant and new parents who used donor-assisted conception - and the clinicians who work with them - regarding disclosure to their children?

Design: Qualitative descriptive study. Data were collected between September 2023 and February 2024. Each participant completed a one-on-one, semi-structured interview conducted over Zoom, lasting an average of 45 minutes for parents and 36 minutes for clinicians. Interviews used a “think-aloud” method, where participants verbalize their thoughts as they work through questions.

Sample: 20 parents and 10 clinicians. Parents ranged in age from 27 to 52 years. Six were pregnant at the time of the interview and 15 were new parents with children aged 3 to 24 months (one participant was both pregnant and a new parent). The majority of parents identified as female (18), White (15), and straight (18). Fifteen were married or living with a partner. Types of donation used included egg (n=11), sperm (n=5), embryo (n=3), and double donation (n=1). Donor anonymity type was split between nondirected (anonymous) and directed (open-identity) donors. Clinicians (n=10) represented a range of disciplines including Advanced Practice Nurses (n=4), Registered Nurses (n=2), a Psychologist, a Clinical Counselor, a Social Worker, and a Physician. They worked in fertility/infertility (n=4), obstetrics and women’s health (n=3), and family and reproductive health settings (n=3), with experience ranging from 3 to 47 years. Nearly all clinicians identified as White (9) and female (8). Notably, half identified as sexual or gender minorities (lesbian, bisexual, or queer). One clinician also participated as a parent. Recruitment used multiple channels including online advertisements targeted at pregnant individuals and new parents, professional email lists for fertility and obstetrics clinicians, and the research team’s newsletter.

Key Findings

Theme 1: Reasons for What Matters Most

• All 20 parents said they intended to tell their children about their donor conception origins, most citing values like honesty, transparency, and avoiding shame. As one parent said, “I want it to be clear. I want it to be transparent. I don’t want there to be any shame attached to it.”

• Parents also wanted their children to know they were deeply wanted and intentionally created.

• Several parents reported that no healthcare professional had discussed disclosure with them, even within the required counseling session. One said: “No, not a soul. Nobody except for the therapist, and that was because [it was required].”

Theme 2: Managing Emotions, Conflicts, and Needs

• Most parents described a need for emotional support that they felt had been largely absent from their clinical care. Clinicians, particularly those outside fertility settings, also described feeling genuinely unprepared to counsel families on disclosure. One clinician said plainly: “Oh, I feel completely unqualified to do that [educate parents about disclosure]. I feel like that’s an incredibly personal, like, parent decision. And I don’t think it’s something that I have any training or knowledge and feel confident, giving any advice about at all whatsoever.” Parents experienced this gap directly. One parent observed: “…but I feel like every time I’ve hit a healthcare professional with like, ‘she’s donor conceived,’ like they are like deer in headlights, like they don’t know what to do. They don’t know what to say.”

• Even clinicians who recognized parents’ emotional needs described being constrained by time. One said, “In my current practice, I am [time] limited. We only have 15-minute appointments. And I have to make sure I touch on all the important things…. And they have to check with their insurance company, etc., etc. So, I hadn’t even thought of talking to [patients] about that [disclosure to their children].” Another clinician added that parents’ emotional needs around family stigma alone were time-consuming: “So usually what takes the most amount of time is just them telling me about the family situation and how they’re afraid their children [will] get disowned.”

• Several parents used the language of grief and loss to describe their experience of using donor-assisted conception. One parent described the emotional weight of the selection process: “It’s really emotional going through the process of looking at people’s pictures [to select a gamete donor]. It’s like you’re shopping for somebody that’s like you. But nobody is gonna be like you. And you have this weird mixture of excitement but sadness…. And you need to get through all that in order to make it to the end stage of being the parent, and then from there on out, being able to tell them… So that you tell them in a healthy way. And in order to get to the point of being able to tell them in a positive way, you have to process your own grief and trauma.”

• Fear that their child would reject them or feel like a second choice was one of the most consistently voiced concerns across the parent interviews. Parents described both the emotional pain the fear evoked and how it shaped how they thought about disclosure. One parent shared, “the biggest question that comes to my head, and my greatest fear is still acceptance. Her, you know, accepting what I did. And not finding faults in it at the end of the day is like my greatest fear.”

• Several parents worried about their child feeling like a “last resort”: “I don’t want them to ever feel like they are second choice, because obviously it’s like ‘Oh! She tried, she tried, she tried it, didn’t work, and she couldn’t have one the other way. So her last resort was us.’”

• For parents in two-parent families, partner disagreement was a distinct and significant stressor. While some couples described being aligned, others were at opposite poles of the spectrum. Even among couples who broadly agreed on disclosure, the specifics (when to start, how often to bring it up, what to say to a very young child) could be a source of friction. One parent recounted their partner’s resistance: “He’s like, ‘Our kids are so little. Why is this a conversation that we’re having right now?’” Another parent reported that they had largely avoided the conversation altogether: “We’ve not had much discussions about that because we’re a little bit confused [about how to tell].”

Theme 3: Desired Content for Support

• Parents wanted help understanding how their choice of donor (e.g., anonymous/nondirected versus open-identity/directed) would shape the disclosure process and their child’s future access to information.

• Parents wanted more information about the disclosure process itself, specifically when to start, what frequency of conversations was appropriate, and what “tell them early” actually looked like in practice with an infant or toddler.

• Parents wanted explicit guidance on what words to use, both for the donor and for others within the donor network. Many described uncertainty about terminology, even in the day-to-day language of their own families.

• Several parents raised a need that is often overlooked in the disclosure literature: guidance on how to talk with extended family, friends, and the broader social world. Donor conception doesn’t exist in a family bubble, and families with limited language and support for their wider network face additional complexity.

• Parents and clinicians almost unanimously wanted perspectives from donor-conceived adults, and importantly, they wanted DCP voices framed around practical guidance, not cautionary testimony.

• Peer connection with other parents navigating disclosure was also frequently mentioned. Some parents wanted to hear from parents who were “ahead of their timeline,” while others said talking to other parents would cause them to second-guess themselves.

• Parents, especially those with open-identity donors, expressed significant confusion and anxiety about how to navigate relationships with donors, donor siblings, and the donor’s family.

Theme 4: Recommended Support Characteristics

• Most parents said disclosure support should begin well before a successful pregnancy, ideally before or during the donor selection process, when consequential decisions with long-term disclosure implications are still being made. At the same time, clinicians were divided on timing. Some felt support was best introduced once pregnancy was confirmed and parents were emotionally ready to engage. Others saw value in multiple touchpoints across the entire journey.

• Parents and clinicians were clear that support delivered in a single format would inevitably exclude some families. Multiple delivery modes (video, audio, and written text) were seen as essential to reaching parents with different learning styles, cognitive loads, and life circumstances.

• Customization was understood not as a convenience feature but as a signal of inclusion. Parents and clinicians were explicit that support designed around a default family type would feel alienating to the many families that don't fit that template. They asked for content tailored to family type (single parent by choice, same-sex couple, heterosexual couple), donation type (egg, sperm, embryo), and donor anonymity type.

• Over half of parents wanted a way to connect with other parents navigating similar experiences: “It’s nice to know you’re not alone.”

• Privacy protection and low or no cost were identified as essential features. Cost was seen as a barrier for families already managing expensive fertility treatment.

• Clinicians emphasized that support must be evidence-based and tested. They needed confidence in its validity before recommending it to patients.

Editor’s Note: All parents in this sample intended to disclose and volunteered to participate in a study about telling, so these findings reflect a motivated, disclosure-positive group. The emotional complexity described is real and important, but may not capture the full range of experiences among parents who are more ambivalent or opposed to disclosure.

Limitations: The sample is largely White, female, English-speaking, and US-based, limiting generalizability to other racial/ethnic groups, languages, and countries. The gap between intention and action is critical context here. The study does not examine how race, ethnicity, class, or cultural background shape parents’ experiences of donor conception or their disclosure decision-making.

Applications: Most clinicians outside of fertility settings feel unprepared to counsel donor-conceived families about disclosure, yet many donor-conceived families encounter these clinicians during obstetric care, pediatric visits, and primary care. Professional education about disclosure, including basic language, what research shows, and how to refer families to appropriate resources, is an unmet need across disciplines. Very little is known about what makes disclosure experiences high-quality beyond timing. Components like ongoing conversations, how donor kinship relationships are navigated, how donor type shapes the experience, and how racial and cultural context affects family communication patterns are important directions for future research. The ASRM already recommends psychoeducational counseling about disclosure, but this study suggests the counseling requirement is inconsistently implemented and often perceived by parents as a procedural hurdle rather than meaningful support. Clearer standards, better training, and integration of support across clinical settings might strengthen the translation of recommendations into practice.

Funding Source: American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) Research Institute through an educational grant from EMD Serono, a pharmaceutical company that manufactures fertility medications

Lead Author: Patricia E. Hershberger is the Rhetaugh G. Dumas Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Health Behavior and Clinical Sciences at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, where she leads a transdisciplinary research program focused on improving outcomes for individuals and families created through donor-assisted conception. No personal connection to donor conception was disclosed. Hershberger served on the ASRM Taskforce on the Needs and Interests of Donor Conceived People.

Regulatory Context

• The United States has no comprehensive federal legislation governing donor conception, with regulation primarily occurring at state level, creating a patchwork of laws across the country. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provides minimal federal oversight, mainly focused on screening requirements for disease prevention.

• There are no federally mandated limits on the number of children conceived from a single donor. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) recommends limiting donors to 25 live births per population area of 850,000, but this is voluntary and not enforced. Colorado became the first state to establish a statutory limit in 2022, capping donor use at 25 families per donor, regardless of location, effective January 2025.

• No centralized national registry exists to track donor-conceived births OR donors, making it difficult to enforce any limits in practice.

• Commercial donation is permitted throughout most of the United States. Donors can be compensated for their gametes.

• Access to donor conception is generally open to a wide range of individuals regardless of marital status, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Most major medical organizations support the position that fertility treatments should be available to any individual who is fit to parent.

• The U.S. does not have national laws prohibiting anonymous donations, but this practice is gradually changing. Colorado’s 2022 “Donor-Conceived Persons Protection Act” (effective January 2025) bans anonymous donation and gives donor-conceived individuals the right to access their donor’s identity upon reaching age 18. In January 2024, the Uniform Law Commission amended the Uniform Parentage Act to require disclosure of donor identifying information to adult donor-conceived persons upon request, though states must adopt this amendment for it to become law in their jurisdictions.

Related Posts

• Most egg donors tell their partners and friends about their donation, but only half disclose to their own children (Adlam, 2025)

• Egg donors report lack of follow-up for medical updates from clinics (Adlam, 2025)

• A promising disclosure tool could help close pediatric provider knowledge gaps about donor conception (Hershberger, 2025)

Geographic Region: Aotearoa New Zealand

Research Question: What are embryo donors’ and recipient parents’ expectations and experiences of early contact?

Design: Semi-structured interviews conducted between June and September 2025. Two interviews were conducted face-to-face and four were conducted online. Couples were interviewed together. Interview topics included participants’ decisions to engage in embryo donation, their expectations and experiences of contact, the perceived nature of the relationship between the two families, and desired or available sources of support.

Sample: Nine participants (two embryo donor couples, one embryo recipient couple, and three individual embryo recipients) were recruited through an advertisement shared by FertilityNZ, a New Zealand consumer advocacy and support organization for people experiencing fertility challenges. Participants were required to be living in New Zealand, to have donated or received embryos through a fertility clinic resulting in the birth of at least one child, and to have had early contact with the donor or recipient family before the donor-conceived child turned 18. All participants were living in two-parent heterosexual households. The age of recipient children ranged from 2 to 8 years old, with a median age of 4. Most participants identified as non-religious or agnostic.

Key Findings

• All participants described their early contact experiences in strongly positive terms, with many reporting that close, kin-like connections had developed between the two families.

• Many participants reported they chose their donor or recipient partner based on shared values, lifestyles, and personalities, and that this perceived alignment provided a foundation for the ongoing relationship.

• Participants used sibling language (‘brother’ and ‘sister’) to describe the relationships between genetically connected children in the donor and recipient families. Several recipients expressed comfort in knowing their child had genetic siblings, even when raised separately.

• For many families, the children’s relationships were described as among the most important and meaningful aspects of the contact, with parents noting that children were genuinely enthusiastic about spending time together.

• Donor couples consistently and explicitly distinguished between the donor-conceived child and their own children, emphasising that once the embryo was donated, the child belonged entirely to the recipients. This boundary was clearly held and did not create tension in most cases.

• Participants drew on extended family metaphors (e.g., ‘in-laws,’ ‘cousins,’ ‘aunties,’ and ‘distant cousins’) to describe the relationships between the two families. In many cases, contact extended beyond the nuclear family units to include grandparents and other relatives, who also formed connections with the other family.

• Participants valued flexibility in contact arrangements. Contact patterns tended to mirror typical extended family arrangements: in-person gatherings for milestones (birthdays, holidays, school events) combined with ongoing digital communication in between. Frequency varied across families but was described as regular without being intrusive.

• Donors acknowledged a degree of vulnerability in contact arrangements, recognizing that promises made before donation carried no guarantee of follow-through once the embryo was transferred.

• Both donors and recipients described efforts to give each other space, particularly around the birth of the donor-conceived child, respecting that this was an important and private time for the recipient family.

• Participants described the complexity of explaining embryo donation to extended family, friends, and children, noting that many people struggled to understand the concept of full genetic siblings raised in separate families.

• All participants valued the mandatory joint pre-donation counseling session, describing it as having been instrumental in establishing shared expectations, building trust and empathy, and providing a framework for future contact and tools to navigate difficult conversations, including discussions about what would happen if the relationship broke down. Many described the initial meeting as emotionally significant and somewhat nerve-wracking, but ultimately positive.

• Participants expressed that post-donation counseling support was limited and that access to ongoing professional guidance as children grew and contact dynamics evolved would be valuable.

Limitations: This is a small, self-selected, convenience sample recruited through a donor conception advocacy and support organization. The restriction to participants who had already experienced early contact means that the sample cannot speak to the experiences of those who avoided contact or found it challenging. LGBTQ+ families, single parents, families from religious backgrounds, and families from lower socioeconomic positions are not represented. The children in recipient families were still quite young (median age 4), meaning contact relationships were in their early stages and the full complexity of evolving relationships as children mature had not yet emerged.

Applications: Clinicians and counselors facilitating embryo donation could support donor-recipient matching processes that allow for values alignment. Participants attributed their positive contact experiences in part to choosing families with whom they felt genuine alignment. This does not mean imposing criteria, but rather creating conditions in which donors and recipients have meaningful information about each other and the opportunity to consider whether an open relationship feels sustainable.

Funding Source: No funding was received for this study.

Lead Author: Emma Hurley is a researcher in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Auckland University of Technology. No personal connection to donor conception was disclosed.

Regulatory Context:

• Gamete and embryo donation in New Zealand is governed by the Human Assisted Reproductive Technology (HART) Act 2004, which provides the primary legislative framework for all assisted reproductive technologies in the country. The Act is administered through the Advisory Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ACART), which develops guidelines, and the Ethics Committee on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ECART), which must approve all embryo donation procedures on a case-by-case basis. This is a more rigorous oversight requirement than applies to gamete donation.

• Under the HART Act, all donor identities are recorded, and donor-conceived people have the right to access identifying information about their donor when they reach age 18. Parents may also apply for this information on behalf of a child prior to age 18, and access to identifying information from birth (with donor consent) is possible. Embryo donation has been available since 2005 under this framework. Only 67 live births from embryo donation were recorded in New Zealand between 2005 and 2023, reflecting how uncommon the practice is.

• ACART guidelines require that donated embryos must be surplus to the donors’ reproductive needs, and each donor’s embryos may be used to create full genetic siblings in no more than two families. Both donors and recipients must undergo implications counseling, a requirement that goes beyond the baseline for gamete donation. In New Zealand, uniquely, all embryo donors and recipients must participate in a mandatory joint counseling session prior to donation, regardless of whether they were previously known to each other. This session covers motivations for donation, grief and loss, disclosure plans, contact expectations, and the rights of donor-conceived people, including access to information and whakapapa.

• New Zealand’s approach to donor conception is explicitly informed by the cultural and legal obligations owed to Māori under the Treaty of Waitangi, including the recognition of individuals' right to access their whakapapa (genealogical lineage). This principle has shaped both legislation and clinical practice and distinguishes New Zealand’s framework from those of other jurisdictions.

• Donor conception is available to single women, heterosexual couples, and same-sex female couples in New Zealand. All donations must be altruistic: donors cannot be paid for gametes or embryos, though reasonable expenses may be reimbursed. Anonymous donations are not permitted; all donations are identity-release. The country does not maintain a national publicly accessible registry of all donor-conceived individuals, but donor information is recorded in clinic records and can be accessed through Births, Deaths and Marriages.

Related Posts

• Religious beliefs shape embryo donation decisions among recipients (Salari, 2025)

• Study finds participants more satisfied with directed embryo donation than anonymous programs (Fuchs Weizman, 2023)

• Insights on the Evolving Landscape of Embryo Disposition in the United States

Geographic Region: The Netherlands

Research Question: How do donor-conceived people experience being linked with and meeting their sperm donor for the first time?

Context: The Netherlands operates one of the most structured donor-linking systems in the world: when a donor-conceived person requests identifying information, the government registry notifies the donor and automatically refers the donor-conceived person to Fiom for free, professionally supported counseling, and then facilitates a meeting with the donor.

Design: Cross-sectional, retrospective qualitative study. Researchers conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with donor-conceived people who had already met their sperm donor and who had received professional counselling support through Fiom, a Dutch organisation specialising in ancestry questions. Interviews were conducted in person between 2019 and 2020, lasted approximately one hour on average.

Sample: 17 donor-conceived people (average age 32 years, range 17–42; 15 women, 2 men). Most were born into mother-father families (n=14), with two from mother-mother families and one from a single-mother family. The majority had been conceived using sperm from a formerly anonymous donor (n=14); three had identifiable donors. Participants learned about their donor conception at widely varying ages: two had always known, others found out in childhood, teenage years, or adulthood. The largest group (n=5) discovered this at age 19 or older. Most were told by their parents (n=13). The rest found out from someone else or through their own discovery. Participants were recruited in two ways: through a previous study on donor-conceived people who had consented to be re-contacted, and through announcements on the websites and social media.

Key Findings

• Participants described multiple, overlapping reasons for wanting to find and meet the donor. The most frequently mentioned were: seeking physical or personality resemblances they couldn’t find in the family that raised them; a sense of incomplete identity without knowing the donor; curiosity; wanting to understand their genetic origins; seeking medical information; wanting to find peace or closure; a sense of having a right to meet; and wanting to understand why the donor chose to donate. Motivations changed over time and were often triggered by major life events, particularly having children of their own or facing medical situations where genetic history became relevant.

• Participants’ desire to meet the donor ranged widely. Those with the strongest desire to meet their donor appeared more likely to report disappointment, possibly because high expectations were harder to meet.

• Participants with identifiable donors had a more straightforward path to finding their donors. They could request information directly from the Dutch governmental donor information body. Those with formerly anonymous donors often experienced long, complicated, and emotionally draining searches spanning multiple years, involving repeated dead ends, incorrect information, and even active discouragement from clinic staff.

• Participants described three broad types of expectations: deliberately low expectations (to protect against disappointment); expectations of physical or personality resemblance; and idealized expectations, sometimes involving fantasies about a donor who would be wealthy, powerful, or “perfect.”

• The gap between expectations and the actual meeting was a key factor in how participants felt about the experience. When the meeting met or exceeded expectations, participants reported positive feelings. When it fell short, like if the donor showed less interest than hoped, or the conversation felt awkward, participants reported disappointment.

• Upon learning they had been matched with a donor, participants reported a range of feelings: happiness, relief, a sense of peace, surprise, unreality, and fear. Several described being caught completely off guard after searching for so long. In the lead-up to the meeting, nervousness was the most commonly reported feeling, alongside anxiety about being rejected or about how to present themselves. During the meeting itself, participants frequently experienced multiple, sometimes conflicting emotions simultaneously, including relief and disappointment, happiness and shock. Feelings also shifted over the course of the meeting.

• All but two participants reported experiencing some degree of recognition during the first meeting (e.g., physical traits, personality, motor skills, interests, or ways of expressing themselves). For some, this brought an immediate sense of connection or “click.” Participants who had the strongest desire to meet the donor were more likely to report less recognition, possibly because high expectations made even genuine resemblances feel insufficient. Participants who experienced little or no recognition, or whose expectations of the donor’s personality or behavior were not met, tended to have more negative overall experiences.

• The donor’s level of interest, how openly and warmly he engaged, the information he shared, and his willingness to consider future contact all shaped participants’ experiences. When the donor seemed genuinely interested and warm, the meeting was more likely to be described positively. Receiving unexpected or difficult information about the donor’s medical or psychological history (e.g., depression, psychosis, or cancer) was described as shocking or “gloomy” for some participants, even when they had wanted to know about their genetic background.

• Counseling was described as valuable by most participants, particularly for managing expectations before the meeting, starting and facilitating the conversation during the meeting, and providing aftercare afterward. Some participants found the counselor’s presence during the meeting helpful or reassuring, especially younger participants or those who felt overwhelmed by emotion. Others found the formal setting reduced the sense of intimacy they wanted. A minority said the preparation was insufficient and wished they had received more thorough information and emotional support in advance.

• Not all participants felt supported by their parents. Some reported that parents discouraged the search, were unaware of how to help, or had unresolved feelings about infertility that made the topic difficult. Several participants chose not to tell their parents about their search to avoid upsetting them.

Limitations: The sample was small (n=17). Women were heavily overrepresented (88%), as were people from mother-father families (82%) and those with formerly anonymous donors (82%). Part of the research team was employed by Fiom, the very organization providing the counseling being evaluated. While this is disclosed in the paper, it represents a potential conflict of interest that may have influenced findings in favor of the Fiom counseling model. Participants who had a negative experience, did not complete the process, or chose not to meet their donor at all are absent from this study. The sample is drawn entirely from a Dutch, likely predominantly white context, which limits generalizability.

Applications: For mental health professionals and counselors supporting donor-conceived people seeking contact with donors, the most actionable finding from this study is that counseling must be individually tailored. Helping donor-conceived people develop realistic but open expectations for first meetings with their donors could help to improve the experience.

Funding Source: ZonMw (grant number 854020001), the Dutch organization for health research and development

Lead Author: Floor B. van Rooij is a researcher at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education at the University of Amsterdam, whose work focuses on family formation, parenting, infertility, and donor conception in diverse cultural contexts and family types. No personal connection to donor conception was disclosed.

Regulatory Context

• The Netherlands is governed by the Artificial Fertilisation Donor Information Act (Wet donorgegevens kunstmatige bevruchting, 2004), which abolished anonymous gamete donation. This law established the national Cdkb (College Donorgegevens Kunstmatige Bevruchting), a government body that maintains records of donors and donor-conceived people.

• At birth, parents can request a non-identifying “donor passport” with physical and social information about the donor. At age 12, donor-conceived people can request this information themselves. At age 16, they can request personally identifying information (name, date of birth, and city of residence). Before identifying information is released, the Cdkb notifies the donor and seeks confirmation to proceed. The Cdkb then refers donor-conceived people to Fiom, which provides free counselling and facilitates meetings between donor-conceived people and donors.

• Fiom operates a voluntary DNA database (Fiom KID-DNA Database, established 2010) for people conceived before 2004 who cannot access donor information through official channels.

• Donors who donated before 2004 had the option to change their status to anonymous; for deceased pre-2004 donors, next of kin may be approached.

• Commercial gamete donation is prohibited; only altruistic donation is permitted.

Related Posts

• Family dynamics factor in donor identity search process (Widbom, 2024)

• Legal age limits in accessing donor information: experiences of donor-conceived people, parents, sperm donors and counsellors (Bolt, 2024)

• I have to remind myself that everyone's search is different': experiences and outcomes of searching and not searching for donor connections among donor conceived adults (Zadeh, 2024)

Geographic Region: Australia

Research Question: How do Australian egg donors who meet recipients through online platforms understand their motivations for donating, select recipients, negotiate contact, and experience early post-birth contact with recipients and donor-conceived children?

Design: Semi-structured interviews to explore donors’ motivations to donate on online platforms, their expectations of contact, and their lived experiences of early contact. Interviews ranged from 40 to 90 minutes. Data were collected from participants who primarily donated between 2013 and 2018.

Sample: 24 egg donors who met recipients through online platforms and had early post-birth contact with the resulting children. Most participants donated to multiple families (23 of 24 participants). Five participants also donated through clinic recruitment or to friends in addition to online platform matches. All participants were cisgender women who identified as she/her and most described themselves as Caucasian. In terms of sexual orientation, 23 identified as heterosexual, one as lesbian, and one as bisexual. Participants were recruited through online platform group moderators who posted study advertisements on Facebook pages, and through the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA) Facebook page.

Key Findings

• Donors described a strong sense of empathy for, and personal identification with, the families they donated to. This empathy most often arose from their own reproductive difficulties, from watching close contacts struggle to conceive, or from reflecting on the value of motherhood and the pain of not achieving it. Donors’ personal reproductive journeys created a sense of common ground with potential recipients and motivated them to donate.

• Unlike clinic-based donation, online platforms gave donors a mechanism to select recipients directly. Donors read recipients’ advertisements and communicated through instant messaging, which allowed rapid relationship development. Donors chose recipients with whom they felt shared values and a sense of compatibility, with many explicitly selecting recipients they believed would be open to ongoing contact.

• Discourse on online platforms, which emphasizes the importance of early disclosure, access to identifying information, and the value of early contact for donor-conceived children, significantly influenced donors’ decisions. Exposure to stories from adult DCPs who had not known they were donor-conceived, and who expressed regret about missing early connections with their donors, shaped donors’ beliefs that early contact was in the best interests of children. Donors negotiated explicitly for early contact during the pre-donation stage with recipients, with some making donation conditional on agreed post-birth contact.

• Early contact between donors and donor-conceived children typically involved family gatherings organized by donors, with donors inviting recipients and sometimes their own extended families. Donors used extended family terminology, describing themselves as “aunts” and positioning their own children as “cousins” to the donor-conceived children. This framing allowed donors to establish meaningful relationships without threatening recipient parents’ parental roles.

• Donors reported that early contact led to strong kinship bonds and meaningful relationships. Many described feeling proud of genetic traits they observed in donor-conceived children and experiencing satisfaction at knowing the families their donations had helped create.

• Some donors experienced relationship breakdowns when recipient parents disengaged after the child’s birth, despite prior agreements about ongoing contact. These donors felt unable to enforce informal agreements and experienced emotional distress about losing contact. They expressed concerns about the donor-conceived child’s future ability to access information about their genetic background and family history.

Limitations: The study captures only donors’ perspectives. Understanding how parents and donor-conceived people themselves experience early contact relationships, and how they understand their relationships with donors and donors’ children, will be important for future research. The sample is likely biased toward donors more comfortable with contact and relationship-building. Most participants were Caucasian and identified as cisgender women, which limits understanding of whether experiences differ across racial, ethnic, gender identity, or other diversity dimensions. The research is specific to Australian context where all states mandate identity-release donation (not anonymous), which differs substantially from jurisdictions permitting anonymous donation.

Applications: The fertility system (pre-treatment counseling, clinic infrastructure, and regulation) was designed for donation at arm’s length. The shift toward relational, early-contact donation is happening largely outside those systems, without professional support. People aren't bypassing the system because they're reckless. They're bypassing it because it wasn't designed for the kind of experience they want. Professionals should keep in mind that people are often making decisions based on experiential wisdom, not research evidence. Evolving and often complex psychosocial needs can emerge post-donation, particularly when contact relationships are established.

Funding Source: Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project grant, DP180100188.

Lead Author: Cal Volks is a researcher, policy commentator, educator, and donor-conception linking counselor based in Melbourne, Australia. Volks has formal training in infertility counseling (BICA-certified) and currently works as a research fellow at Monash University. No personal connection to donor conception was disclosed.

Regulatory Context

• The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) provides ethical guidelines for assisted reproductive technology (ART), including donor conception.

• Each state and territory has its own laws governing donor conception, which can lead to some variation across the country.

• Since the early 2000s, most states have moved away from anonymous donation. Donor-conceived individuals generally have the right to access identifying information about their donors once they reach a certain age (usually 18).

• Many states limit the number of families a single donor can contribute to, to reduce the risk of inadvertent consanguineous relationships.

• Most jurisdictions require counseling for donors and recipients before proceeding with donor conception.

• Several states maintain central registries with information about donors and donor-conceived individuals.

• It’s illegal to pay donors for their gametes (eggs or sperm) beyond reasonable expenses.

Related Posts

• First study to map decision pathways for egg disposition reveals complexity of choices (Caughey, 2025)

• Analysis of college newspaper ads shows how recruitment commodifies racial and intellectual traits (Hagan, 2025)

• Attachment style influences disclosure patterns in donor conception (Rodino, 2023)

Introducing

Donor-conceived people are nearly invisible in popular media and culture. Parts of Me is a nonprofit working to change that by expanding authentic representation of donor-conceived people across arts, media, and culture. We start with a simple belief: there is no single donor-conceived experience, and authentic representation has to honor that full spectrum of lived experience. Our work takes shape through a growing DCP stories collection of books, films, and more with DCP characters and themes, DCP creator profiles, guidance for journalists and storytellers writing about donor conception, and eventually, funding for DCP creators. Led by a majority donor-conceived board, Parts of Me envisions a future where donor-conceived people see this part of their identity reflected and validated in the cultural landscape. Humans, not headlines. Visit www.partsofme.org to learn more.

Research Recap

Schroedter (2025) surveyed 3,599 Swiss residents aged 18-85 about attitudes toward nine assisted reproductive technology procedures, finding artificial insemination received highest acceptance, followed by IVF, sperm/egg donation and egg freezing, with preimplantation genetic testing receiving lowest acceptance. Prayer frequency was the single strongest religious factor, with daily prayer linked to lower acceptance of all nine procedures.

Des Roches et al. (2025) surveyed 299 transgender individuals across Canada about reproductive interests and barriers. While 82% expressed interest in reproductive options (biologically related children, donor gametes, gestational carriers, or fertility preservation), significant barriers emerged: cost was most frequently cited (33%), with fertility preservation fees competing with transition expenses; 21% reported barriers accessing trans-appropriate care including providers lacking knowledge about trans bodies, fear of mistreatment, and waiting lists ignoring time-sensitive preservation needs; 35% received no fertility counseling before transition care (65% had discussions, though whether perceived as informed consent or coercive prerequisites is unclear).

Van Rijn-van Gelderen et al. (2025) used the Strange Situation Procedure to assess attachment in 229 parent-child dyads (12-month-olds) from 115 families across Netherlands, France, and UK: 65 dyads from same-sex male parent families (surrogacy+implied egg donation), 96 from same-sex female parent families (donor insemination), and 64 from different-sex parent families (IVF). Secure attachment rates were similar across family types, with 54% overall showing secure attachment—nearly identical to worldwide average of 52% from studies of 20,000+ parent-child pairs. Infants in Netherlands were more likely securely attached than other infants regardless of family structure, suggesting supportive social contexts (parental leave policies, social support systems, attitudes toward diverse families) may matter more than family structure.

Côté et al. (2025) conducted a systematized narrative review of 18 studies (2011-2024) from UK, Australia, Canada, Netherlands, and Russia examining online sperm donation experiences. Donors (mostly white heterosexual men aged 18-67) were motivated by helping others and passing on genes, while recipients (mostly white lesbian women, 75% in relationships) sought affordability and accessibility versus clinics. Both valued direct contact and relationship possibilities, though recipients prioritized donor reliability and trustworthiness over appearance. While most donations involved artificial insemination, ~30% of donors reported "natural" insemination (sexual intercourse). Recipients experienced sexual harassment through donors pressuring toward sexual contact or misrepresenting "natural" insemination as more effective.

I revisited Talbot et al.'s (2024) systematic review of donor-conceived psychological outcomes. While the paper follows proper systematic review procedures, the analysis contains substantial problems: The authors sort findings into "better," "same," or "worse" categories without clear decision rules, leading to miscategorizations—six papers listed as showing "worse" outcomes actually included two showing DCP doing better and two misrepresenting study findings. The paper conflates neurodevelopmental conditions (autism, ADHD) with psychological outcomes, which is scientifically inaccurate. At least 44% of the 50 articles draw from just five longitudinal studies, meaning the findings come from the same families rather than independent studies. The authors' discussion contradicts their findings, recommending parenting interventions despite evidence not supporting this.

Martin et al. (2026) conducted a mixed-methods study with 107 French sperm donor-conceived adults. While 85% considered disclosure beneficial regardless of age learned, the authors found no statistical association between age at disclosure and perceived benefit, though the small sample may have lacked power to detect relationships. Four disclosure pathways emerged: parental strategy (43%—intentional plan from conception, often informed from birth/early childhood), life event triggers (11%—illness, parent death, milestones prompted uncertain parents to tell), family conflict (17%—during arguments, often one parent breaking agreement), and donor-conceived person initiates (10%—through questions about origins or physical differences), with 14% discovering accidentally.

Nash et al. (2026) conducted a systematic review of 35 studies (1991-2024) examining the psychosocial impact of being a sperm donor recipient (heterosexual couples, same-sex female couples, and single women) across multiple countries. I didn't find the review particularly helpful because it spans 33 years without consistently accounting for how attitudes, laws, and practices evolved, and restricts to sperm donation despite many psychosocial processes being shared across egg and embryo donation. What was potentially useful was a summary of six studies that examined cross-border reproductive care (CBRC), with popular destinations including Spain, Czech Republic, Denmark, Belgium, US, India, Thailand, and South Africa. CBRC motivations included legal restrictions, donor shortages and wait times, cost, and privacy. The most significant challenge was accessing follow-up care at home, with support varying dramatically by country.

Other Tidbits

• A Guardian essay by Rebecca Coxon describes discovering through 23andMe that she was donor-conceived, connecting with the donor and half-siblings, and later learning her own egg donation resulted in a child.

• An Undark feature examines surrogacy research debates following the UN's 2025 ban call.

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It’s a question that can be surprisingly charged. If you are in any donor conception group online, you’ve seen the exchanges. Some people feel strongly that sharing DNA is meaningful, and genetic family members deserve to know one another. Others argue that genes are just biology, and family is based on the relationships we choose. Some think connection should happen as soon as possible. Others believe that children should lead the way.

At its core, I don’t think this is about whether children who share a donor must know each other; it’s about whether knowing each other might matter to your child, and if so, how you want to navigate that terrain.

Decisions to connect deserve to be made with an understanding of what connection might offer and require. Ultimately, these choices aren’t about strictly following “best practices.” They are about understanding your values, your child’s needs, and the kind of family story you want to write together.

In this post, I’ll explore (1) how cultural ideas about family shape the conversation, (2) practical considerations for parents of young DCP, and (3) what research says (spoiler: not much).

A note on language: Donor siblings can be described in a variety of ways in research literature. You might see terms like donor-linked peers/families, same-donor peers/siblings, or donor sibling networks/cohort. These are not usually the terms that people use in everyday life (more on this later). I try to use a mix of terms in this post.

What Makes Someone Family?

All of us know this from lived experience: biology doesn’t guarantee family bonds, and kinship doesn’t require biology.

Black American traditions of othermothering and play cousins reflect a long history of intentional, collective care under conditions where family structures were systematically disrupted. In Latin American communities, compadrazgo creates formal kinship through ritual obligation and reciprocal responsibility. Queer and trans communities have long practiced chosen family, a way of building kinship around care, recognition, and shared values rather than biology or legal designation. For many people, that chosen family is also what biological family couldn’t provide.

Kinship also forms in less formalized ways. In many cultures, children call familiar adults “auntie” and “uncle.” Military members who serve together become brothers. A college roommate becomes a child’s godparent. An elderly neighbor becomes an extra grandparent. These can be real bonds, created through care, commitment, and mutual recognition.

At the same time, dominant cultural narratives continue to elevate genetic connection as the marker of ‘real’ family. This is what scholars call bionormativity, or the privileging of biological kinship as more authentic or legitimate than other forms of family bonds. Closely linked are heteronormativity and cisnormativity: the assumption that families should be headed by heterosexual, cisgender married couples, with children genetically related to both parents. Together, these ideologies present a narrow vision of what counts as a legitimate family. This is not a new phenomenon. From Hungary's pronatalist constitutional reforms to Australia's Family First movement, the political project of defining and defending the "natural family" has been a global one for decades. In the US, Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s policy blueprint, explicitly promotes the “stable, married, nuclear family” as the only acceptable family form, asserting that “all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”

Why Does This Matter for Donor Conception?

Understanding this context is important for how we talk about donor connections. When claims surface that donor-conceived people need connection to genetic relatives to be “whole,” we’re encountering bio-, cis, and heteronormative ideology, not scientific fact. When we uncritically center genetic connection in donor conception conversations, we risk reinforcing these ideas.

The alternative isn’t to flip the binary and insist genes don’t matter at all. It’s to reject the binary itself, to make space for genetic connection to matter without treating it as mandatory and to not matter without treating it as a deficiency. Same-donor connections can be meaningful to some donor-conceived people without insisting that all DCP are incomplete without them. Genetic curiosity can be normal for some without accepting that biology determines identity. Parents can opt to facilitate donor sibling connections to expand their child’s world, not to fix something broken in it.

What to Consider When Thinking About Connecting With Families That Used The Same Donor

Families who search for guidance on connecting with donor siblings likely find advice insisting that the connection is always beneficial and that families should search early and connect enthusiastically. However, treating connection as a universal best practice ignores the reality that families have different values, circumstances, and needs. It’s also worth recognizing that many of the concerns about donor siblings don’t seem to show up the same way across cultures.

What follows are the key questions parents might encounter, with the understanding that each family’s circumstances will shape how they approach the decisions.

Before walking through these considerations, I should acknowledge my own position: I’m a white, cisgender, heterosexual solo parent who used a sperm bank donor to conceive neurotypical-ish children. What I can offer comes from my exploration of research, careful attention to diverse voices, and a humble awareness that I have a lot to learn. Families using known donors, LGBTQ+ families, Black, Brown, and Indigenous families, and families with neurodivergence or disability will have considerations beyond my lived experience.

In addition, we can’t talk about donor siblings without acknowledging the role of industry and regulation. Third party reproduction operates under a patchwork of self-regulation and national laws, resulting in widely varying practices. A lack of enforceable donor limits in many jurisdictions creates donor-linked peer networks that can span dozens or even hundreds of people scattered across vast geographic areas. The mechanisms for finding and connecting with same-donor families are fragmented. Some banks maintain their own registries, but families also rely on informal social media groups, third-party registries, and consumer DNA testing services. In rare cases, donor-conceived people can access official sibling information from a regulatory body, like the UK’s HFEA, but most have no way to know the true scope of their same-donor peer network.

It’s also worth noting that for health updates, banks and clinics rely entirely on voluntary self-reporting from donors and families and typically only relay updates that meet institutional thresholds for disclosure. This means families often turn to informal same-donor networks to learn about and share health information that they believe could inform their children’s care, creating a situation where access to medical information becomes entangled with decisions about social connection.

Decisions about Disclosure

The starting point seems pretty straightforward: children should know the truth. Being donor conceived often means the possibility that other families used the same donor, and that means there may be other kids who got half their DNA from the same person or people. This is simply factual information about how donor conception works, not a suggestion about what those genetic connections should mean. Truth-telling creates the foundation for everything else. Children can’t develop their own understanding of what sharing genes with other children means to them if the basic facts are obscured. They have a right to form their own interpretations of these connections, but that requires knowing they exist in the first place.

When to introduce the concept of donor-linked peers depends on your family’s approach to disclosure more broadly. Some families treat information about origins or family formation, which might feel significant to a child later, as a normal part of their story from the beginning. Early introduction of the possibility of donor siblings means children grow up with this knowledge, creates space for questions to emerge naturally over time, and, if you pursue connection, allows for relationships to develop alongside other childhood friendships. Very young children will not fully grasp the concept, so parents should be comfortable with some confusion and ambiguity in the beginning.

For some families, disclosure sequencing may look different. For families where a parent is trans or nonbinary, disclosure about donor conception may be woven into broader conversations about that parent's gender history and the specific path that led to this family. For neurodivergent children, the abstract relational concepts involved may need to be introduced in concrete, staged language long before the fuller picture comes into focus. For children conceived from donated embryos, the concept carries a particular complexity: their genetic siblings are being raised by the people who are also their genetic parents. In each of these situations, the question isn't just when to introduce the concept but how to sequence information in a way that serves the child's developing understanding.

Waiting for child-led disclosure of same-donor siblings means responding to actual curiosity at the moments when children may have greater cognitive capacity to understand. For example, a school-age child encounters genetics in the classroom and begins wondering about half-siblings. In theory, this honors developmental readiness and meets children where they are. In practice, however, it can carry risks. Children may have genuine curiosity without ever asking, because they don’t know enough to know the question is available to them or because they think they are protecting a parent. There’s also the risk that your child discovers the information some other way, or eventual disclosure feels more like a “shock.” Children might wonder why their parents waited, so be prepared to answer those questions. (This happened to a family in my kids’ sibling group. A nearly 5-year-old asked their mother why she hadn’t told them about their donor siblings.)

Decisions about Searching and Connecting

Another question parents grapple with is whether to search for other same-donor families, when to make initial contact, and how to involve children in this process. Families take different approaches based on their culture and values, their children’s ages and personalities, and their capacity to manage these relationships.

Some families search and connect early. These parents might look for same-donor families when their children are young (or even before birth) and make enthusiastic initial contact with other families. Other families do the initial work of finding one another and establishing basic contact, but don’t actively pursue relationship-building until their child shows curiosity or a desire for connection. Some families wait for child-initiated interest before even searching.

Ultimately, parents should consider whether the potential benefits of the spectrum of connection options outweigh the potential costs and risks for their child and their family.

The Potential Benefits of Connection

Connecting with same-donor families isn’t about correcting a deficit or filling a void in your family. Rather, these connections have the potential to be additive. They can provide access to information, community, and relationships that enhance what already exists.

At the most basic level, connecting with other families provides information you often can’t get elsewhere. Connecting with other families can sometimes clarify the scope of a donor’s reach: how many families, how many children, and where they’re located. Some of this serves protective purposes, like preventing accidental consanguinity. More common is simply knowing: information can shape how families talk to their children. It’s one thing to say, “There might be families that used the same donor as us.” It’s another thing to say, “We know of seven other families who used our family’s donor, and some of them have children who are your age.” The specificity can be helpful as children grow and ask more detailed questions.

Shared genetics can also mean shared health profiles. When multiple families compare notes, patterns emerge that no single family would notice on their own. Sometimes these are minor quirks: early walkers, late teethers, the same distinctive thumb. Sometimes they’re more significant: similar sensory processing quirks, the same autoimmune condition, a pattern of ADHD. (My pediatrician is no longer surprised when I mention my kids’ cohort at annual well-child visits.)

Beyond information, these connections can offer social and emotional benefits. For some parents, connecting with other donor-conceived families means finding others navigating similar questions about disclosure, identity, and family formation. When families share not just donor conception but also similar family structures, religious backgrounds, cultural contexts, or values, these connections can provide meaningful support and reduce isolation. For some children, meeting others who are also donor-conceived—especially those who share the same donor—offers a unique reference point. These are kids who might understand this particular aspect of their story without explanation. These connections don’t replace existing friendships or family bonds, but they can add another dimension for families who find networks where they genuinely belong.

I’ve also been thinking about this: Extended family networks provide important buffers against isolation and offer support throughout life, and families are shrinking. Research projects that by 2095, people will have 35% fewer relatives than in 1950, with particularly steep declines in lateral kinship bonds such as cousins, nieces, and nephews. Donor sibling connections could offer one way to build extended family relationships for a future when many people will have fewer of them.

The Potential Risks and Costs of Connection

Connecting with same-donor families does require investment of time, emotional energy, and money. Understanding what these relationships can require helps parents make informed decisions about whether and how to proceed.

Searching and connecting require emotional labor and an ability to tolerate uncertainty. In most cases, you’re reaching out to strangers based solely on shared donor use, with no way to know in advance whether you’ll find compatible families. Some families discover far more half-siblings than expected, which can be overwhelming. Others find none, which can be disappointing.

Managing relationships across distance and differences takes work. Unlike friendships that develop organically through proximity, donor sibling connections often span geographic distance and bring together families with different life circumstances. Maintaining contact requires intentional effort.

These connections can create unanticipated complications. Children may form attachments to same-donor siblings and then feel hurt when those relationships fade or when other families pull back (ahem, parents aren’t immune to this either). Seeing children who live in different circumstances can prompt difficult questions or comparisons.

Financial costs can add up, especially if same-donor families live far apart. Some families have resources to visit routinely; others find meetups financially straining. This disparity can create tension within networks when some families can afford to attend gatherings and others cannot.

Boundary violations and values clashes can create problems. Some families may share more information than you’re comfortable with, pressure you to maintain contact you don’t want, or violate agreed-upon rules around privacy. Families may express values fundamentally at odds with yours—homophobia, racism, and other harmful views—forcing difficult decisions about whether to maintain connection. Another common cause of conflict is searching for and connecting with the donor.

Calculating Benefits and Risks

There’s no single approach that works for everyone. Understanding a family’s context—what they’re bringing, what they need, what they’re being asked to navigate—helps clarify the extent to which same-donor connections are likely to serve them.

For some, connecting with others who share the same donor offers access to community and reference points they wouldn’t otherwise have. If you’re the only donor-conceived family in your community, these connections can reduce isolation and provide your child with others who understand this aspect of their story. The investment required may feel worthwhile because these connections provide something genuinely valuable.

Some families find these connections align naturally with existing values around expansive kinship. Other families find the emphasis on genetic connection uncomfortable, particularly when their family has never prioritized biology as the basis for kinship. If your child already has strong community, identity anchors, and a sense of belonging, same-donor connections may matter less, or matter differently than they do for other families. Your calculation will depend on your specific circumstances, not on what a social media forum says these connections should mean.

Decisions about Levels of Connection

If a family decides to connect with same-donor families, they’re not committing to a cookie-cutter relationship. Connection isn’t all-or-nothing. It exists on a spectrum, and where one lands on that spectrum varies from family to family and changes over time.

Some families choose to maintain minimal connection, exchanging basic information for medical purposes, aware of each other’s existence but keeping the relationship peripheral. They acknowledge the genetic link without building an active relationship around it.

Other families might take it a step further with moderate connection: occasional meetups, holiday card exchanges, and periodic check-ins that maintain friendly awareness without deep integration into routine life. The connection is real but bounded.

And then there are the families who aim for a deeper connection, treating same-donor families as sort of an extended family, building shared history through regular calls, visits, or other exchanges. These families can develop the kind of closeness that transforms the genetic connection into a lived relationship, creating a sort of chosen family bond.

Your family’s position on this spectrum isn’t fixed, and your relationship with each family might occupy a different point. You might start with minimal connection and move toward deeper engagement as children grow and express interest. Or you might begin with high engagement and pull back as life gets busy or children’s interests shift. You might have seven same-donor families in your network, but maintain close, regular contact with only two of them. You don’t owe the same level of relationship to every family just because you chose the same donor.

A Note About Letting Kids Take the Lead

In many families, parents make the initial decisions about the level of contact: how often to meet, whether to join group video calls, and how much to share in network communications. These decisions feel necessary when children are young and can’t yet articulate their own preferences.

As children develop their own perspectives, their preferences should increasingly determine where relationships land on the spectrum. Knowing what children actually want requires more than waiting for them to volunteer their feelings. Regular, low-pressure check-ins can help. For example, after a video call or meetup, ask, “How did that feel for you?” rather than just, “Did you have fun?”

Children are perceptive. If they sense a topic makes you anxious or if they think you’ve invested heavily in these relationships, they may tell you what they think you want to hear rather than what they actually feel. The goal is to signal that all feelings are acceptable and that your child won’t disappoint you by expressing any of them. Respecting autonomy means accepting that these relationships belong to your child, not to you, and they get to decide where on the spectrum each relationship belongs.

Decisions about Terminology and Language

Research shows that donor-conceived people use a range of terms in general and that terms often vary based on the nature of the relationship. For example, someone might reserve terms like brother or sister for someone they feel close to while calling other same-donor peers more casual terms.

The terminology families use for donor siblings matters less than whether the words serve the child. I’ve seen so many options: half siblings, same-donor peers, donor-linked peers, genetic siblings, kids from the same donor, diblings, dosies, donor sibling groups, donor sibling pods, and more. There’s no single “correct” term, and the language isn’t static. Parents can offer language and model terminology, but children will develop their own ways of describing these relationships. Your job isn’t to prescribe the right term. It’s to ensure your child has the words they need to reflect their experience. It’s important to remember that while we can personally prefer certain terms within our families, our children still need a way to talk about donor conception that is accessible to a kid on the playground.

Co-Parent Readiness and Alignment

Before pursuing same-donor connections, primary caregivers should honestly assess their own emotional readiness. This means examining whether the desire for connection comes from what you believe will serve your child or from something else. It means considering whether you can hold space for your child’s curiosity about these connections without feeling threatened or defensive and whether you can accept your child’s disinterest without feeling you’ve failed to provide something important. It also means reflecting on whether you could support a child who becomes deeply invested in these relationships without feeling replaced or diminished.

These reflections don’t have “right” answers, but unexamined feelings can inadvertently shape how you present options to your child. Working with an informed therapist can help you distinguish between your needs and your child’s.

When multiple caregivers are involved in raising a child, they might have different feelings about same-donor connections: comfort levels with contact, views on what these relationships could mean, concerns about privacy or boundaries, and capacity for the emotional labor involved. These differences need to be acknowledged before engaging.

Feelings about the donor conception journey itself can create particular tensions. One caregiver may see same-donor connection as exciting, while another experiences it as a painful reminder of a complicated path to becoming a family. One caregiver might want to avoid connection to maintain a sense of “normal” family, while another feels guilty about denying the child access. These decisions can stir up questions about genetic lineage, physical resemblance, and inherited traits. These dynamics deserve attention.

Alignment doesn’t mean all caregivers need to be equally enthusiastic; it means everyone needs to be genuinely on board with whatever level of engagement is pursued, even if one is driving it more. One person’s excitement about connection can’t override another’s boundary concerns, and one person’s discomfort shouldn’t unilaterally close off all possibilities without honest conversation about what’s going on. And “we need to align first” can’t become an indefinite delay tactic.

If you’ve facilitated same-donor connections and your child later decides they don’t want to maintain them, you may experience your own grief about the relationships you built with other families, about the vision you had of expanded family, and about the effort you invested. This grief is valid, but it belongs to you, not your child. Seeking support for your own feelings while maintaining your child’s autonomy is essential. Similarly, if your child wants deeper connection than you feel equipped to provide, you may grieve your capacity limitations while still trying to meet their needs.

Navigating Between-Family Differences

Same-donor family connections often bring together people with very different approaches to parenting, privacy, disclosure, communication, boundaries, and politics. These differences are inevitable and don’t need to be resolved; what matters is whether families can respect each other’s approaches while safely maintaining connection.

This means families must be clear about their own values and boundaries and recognize that they can only control their own family’s behavior and choices. No family can dictate how other families talk about donor conception, how much contact they want, what information they share with their children, or how they frame the relationship. What they can control is whether and how they engage, what boundaries they set, what information they share, and how they help their child navigate differences between families.

Some differences are manageable: different preferred terminology, different approaches to screen time, and different comfort levels with sharing personal details. But some differences aren’t acceptable bases for a relationship: families that express homophobia, racism, or other forms of bigotry; families that ask you to lie to your child or hide information; families that violate boundaries repeatedly or create unsafe dynamics. When values clash in ways that compromise your child’s safety or wellbeing, reducing or ending contact is valid. These connections should enhance your child’s sense of belonging, not require them to navigate harm for the sake of genes.

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Ok, But What About the Research?

There is no quantitative research (to my knowledge) on outcomes specifically related to early disclosure of or connection with same-donor peers. We have lots of anecdotal data from late-discovery adult DCP and early-disclosure/late-connection adult DCP who choose to share in public online spaces. We have research (mostly qualitative, mostly from white, educated, middle-class families) that includes queries about their experiences with same-donor peers. I’ve provided a bibliography of research published in the last decade at the end of the post.

Sørensen et al’s (2025) ESHRE poster (I look forward to the publication of the full paper!) describes major themes from an analysis of 18 papers about DCP’s reactions to having a large number of donor-linked peers. Some experience curiosity and interest in learning more, while others feel indifferent or express concern about the implications. When donor-conceived people do want to connect with their donor siblings, they often face real challenges in forming and maintaining relationships. The complexity of building meaningful bonds with large groups of genetic strangers scattered across different geographic locations presents ongoing practical and emotional obstacles. And it’s not at all uncommon to see donor-conceived adults say they regret connecting with their donor siblings so late in life and missing years of shared childhood. For some DCP, having donor siblings provides a valuable sense of connection and belonging. These relationships can become an important part of what it means to be donor-conceived.

A few researchers have examined the motivations for connecting among both parents and DCP across different family types. Parents’ motivations for searching are typically related to expanding their child’s support network, curiosity about physical and behavioral traits, and access to medical information (Goldberg, 2015; Hertz, 2017). For DCP, both adolescent and adult, motivations included curiosity about the donor and potential siblings, learning more about themselves through unique and shared characteristics, gaining access to medical information, and, for some, the potential to expand their family network (Persaud, 2017; Hertz, 2017; Indekeu, 2022, Scheib, 2020).

I want to highlight a few studies for folks who want a deeper dive. I’m also hoping that the Swedish Study on Gamete Donation will explore this topic.

Hertz et al.’s (2022) study of 62 young people aged 14-28 offers insights into how same-donor relationships might develop. Families in this study primarily found each other through donor sibling registries, where parents of DCP searched by donor number. Parents typically initiated contact with other same-donor families: 88% of solo mother families, 89% of heterosexual-parent families, and 68% of same-sex parent families. When youth first learned about potential donor-linked siblings, they most frequently reported feeling surprise, confusion, and curiosity. Youth often relied on familiar ideas about siblings or friends to imagine what these relationships might become. Some hoped for “a true brother or sister,” while others expected something more like “a fun new friend group.” Youth raised as only children were twice as likely to regard donor siblings as “immediate family” compared to youth who had siblings in their household. Still, about 70% of all youth, regardless of household composition, formed meaningful relationships with at least one donor sibling. As youth entered their teen years, they generally established independent relationships with their donor siblings. One practical consideration: older same-donor family networks (i.e., those that have existed for over 5 years) were harder for new members to integrate into. The 2018 book Random Families: Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin (Hertz and Nelson) goes into much more detail on same-donor family connections.

Scheib et al. (2020) of The Sperm Bank of California interviewed 47 donor-conceived people aged 19–29 (almost half from female same-sex couples) to learn about their experiences with same-donor peers. About half were in contact with same-donor peers. Among those who had made contact, about half first connected in childhood or adolescence (typically initiated by parents), while the other half initiated contact as adults. Nearly all those who were not yet in contact expressed interest in connecting eventually. Of the 22 who had linked with same-donor peers, most had met in person, and over half maintained regular contact. Challenges were relatively rare. Only one participant described difficulties with a larger same-donor peer group, noting that when people differed in their interest in the donor, it could be polarizing. For some participants, what distinguished these relationships was their flexibility; they described how they could pause and resume easily. The connections had the potential to become important, if not immediately, perhaps in the future.

The National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) follows 75 donor-conceived offspring born from 1986-1992 to lesbian-couple families into adulthood. Koh (2023) found that around half of the offspring had donor siblings. Seven offspring (23% of those who had met donor siblings) had known their donor siblings since birth. More than three-quarters chose to make contact, and two-thirds of those people maintained ongoing relationships with at least one donor sibling. Regardless of whether participants knew their donor siblings, participants felt neutral about knowing siblings and satisfaction with the level of information they had about siblings was relatively high.

A Final Thought

Being an admin of my kids’ donor sibling online forum has given me a somewhat unusual perspective. I’m simultaneously playing a role on behalf of my own children and on behalf of all the families in the group, and those two roles don’t always pull in the same direction. The admin hat creates obligations I might not otherwise feel: tracking details, managing boundaries, staying friendly even with families where I sense value conflicts, and ensuring equitable access to information. It’s given me a stake in the cohort as a whole, not just in my own kids’ needs, and it’s deepened my empathy for families whose choices differ from mine.

I opened this post by saying the question isn’t whether donor siblings must know each other, it’s about whether and how knowing each other might matter to your child and your family. What I want to emphasize now is that “mattering” looks different depending on your family. There are families in my kids’ group who are actively opting out of group connection. Some parents have decided this isn’t what serves their family right now—or maybe ever. I trust they’re making the best decisions for their children, even as I’m making different ones for mine. Their absence doesn’t represent failure or missing out; it represents families exercising autonomy about what their children need. The group will always be there if anything changes for them.

Meanwhile, I’m watching my kindergartener’s relationship to her half-siblings shift from something I’ve been loosely maintaining into something she’s actively shaping. We’ve been experimenting with letter writing, messaging, and phone calls, and it’s opened up this whole new realm of possibility that feels much more in her control. She’s an introvert who prefers one-on-one interactions. Group meetups have always been overwhelming for her, but in these individual conversations, I’m seeing something different emerge.

Recently, she was voice messaging with another child from the group. The exchange ended with: “I love you.” Then immediately: “I don’t really love you, just kidding.” Followed by: “But I do love you. It’s weird. I don’t know. Bye.” I loved that little back-and-forth. They’re still figuring out what their connection means, and they will figure it out, in their own time and their own way. I can be comfortable because my child is finding ways to navigate these relationships in ways that feel good to her, with families where she’s safe and welcome.

For me, forging same-donor connections isn’t about following best practices or meeting obligations. It’s about giving my kids one more way to potentially understand themselves and one more set of relationships to explore if they choose. I’ve laid a foundation. Whether or not they choose to build upon that is up to them.

Bibliography

Andreassen, et al. (2025). Sprouting sideways: queer temporalities and kinship in donor conception. DOI: 10.1080/13691058.2024.2446260

Blyth, E. (2012). Genes r us? Making sense of genetic and non-genetic relationships following anonymous donor insemination. DOI: 10.1016/j.rbmo.2012.02.010

Bolt, et al. (2023) The ongoing work of kinship among donor half-siblings in The Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-021-00259-z

Goldberg & Scheib (2015). Female-partnered and single women’s contact motivations and experiences with donor-linked families. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/dev077

Goldberg & Scheib (2016). Female-partnered women conceiving kinship: Does sharing a sperm donor mean we are family? https://doi.org/10.1080/10894160.2016.1089382

Hertz, et al. (2017). Donor sibling networks as a vehicle for expanding kinship: A replication and extension. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X16631018

Hertz & Nelson (2018). Random families. Genetic strangers, sperm donor siblings, and the creation of new kin. Oxford University Press.

Hertz, R. (2022). Sociological accounts of donor siblings’ experiences: Their importance for self-identity and new kinship relations. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19042002

Indekeu, et al. (2022). Meeting multiple same-donor offspring: psychosocial challenges. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647273.2021.1872804

Koh, et al. (2023). Donor sibling relations among adult offspring conceived via insemination by lesbian parents. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/dead175

Nelson, et al. (2013). Making sense of donors and donor siblings: A comparison of the perceptions of donor-conceived offspring in lesbian-parent and heterosexual-parent families. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1530-3535(2013)0000007004

Persaud, et al. (2017). Adolescents conceived through donor insemination in mother-headed families: A qualitative study of motivations and experiences of contacting and meeting same-donor offspring. https://doi.org/10.1111/chso.12158

Scheib, et al. (2020). Finding people like me: Contact among young adults who share an open-identity sperm donor. https://doi.org/10.1093/hropen/hoaa057

Sørensen, et al. (2025) Donor-conceived persons’ experiences of (possibly) having multiple donor half-siblings: A systematic literature review and thematic synthesis. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deaf097.854

Rothblum, et al. (2024). Adult offspring of lesbian parents reflect on having been donor conceived: Feelings about their sperm donor and donor siblings. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cfp0000256

Zeghiche, et al. (2024). “There might be two hundred of us”- a qualitative study on the experience of meeting large numbers of same donor offspring https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/deae108.263

Geographic Region: United Kingdom

Research Question: How do digital technologies shape what informal sperm donors and intended parents know about each other, and how do they manage what they share, when, and with whom?

Study Design: A qualitative, interview-based study drawing on data from the Digital Donor Conception research project. The study used in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in 2024 with intended parents who had arranged or were pursuing informal donor conception and informal sperm donors. Interviews lasted between 45 minutes and 2.5 hours and were conducted via video call or in-person. Participants were asked about how they came to informal donor conception, how conception was organized, and their experiences over time. Inspired by ‘media go-along’ and ‘scroll back’ methods, participants were encouraged to show and explain how they had used digital platforms.

Sample: 49 participants: 30 intended parents or recipient parents and 19 sperm donors. Participants self-selected after seeing recruitment advertisements shared via the study’s social media channels, UK-based organizations serving donor-conceived families, LGBTQ+ and solo-parent communities, infertility organizations, and platforms specifically used for informal sperm donation. The majority of the parents were cisgender women (26), with 3 transgender men and 1 person of another gender. Fifteen identified as gay or lesbian, 4 as bisexual, 8 as heterosexual, and 1 as greysexual. Most were single (13) or in various relationship configurations. Among the 19 donor participants, all identified as cisgender men; 14 identified as heterosexual and 4 as gay or bisexual. Ethnicity was less diverse: most participants identified as white British, with others identifying as other white, Black, Asian, or mixed/multiple ethnicities. Nineteen parents and 18 donors had engaged with specialised digital platforms (e.g., Facebook groups, Pride Angel), while 15 parents and 5 donors had found a donor/recipient through pre-existing relationships and networks. Many had used both routes as well as clinical donor conception at some point.

Key Findings: The study identifies four interconnected modes of knowing that donors and intended parents negotiate in informal donor conception.

Managing Identifying Information

• Sharing or withholding real names, addresses, photographs, and other identifying data was the most explicit mode of managing knowledge. Approaches varied widely, from full use of pseudonyms and separate ‘donor profiles’ to upfront use of real names.

• Most participants took a graduated approach, sharing more information as trust was established (e.g., first name on profile, surname added only once conception was successful).

• Some participants reported accidentally learning or searching for identifying information (e.g., reverse image searches, name on a bank card), raising questions about consent and mutual understanding of what ‘knowing’ means.

(Dis)Embedding Donor-Recipient Connections

• Some donors and recipients kept their connection entirely separate from their wider social networks (dis-embedded), using separate email accounts and social media profiles known only to donation contacts.

• Dis-embedded connections are vulnerable to sudden rupture: loss of a phone, deletion of accounts, or the death of a donor can make contact permanently impossible. One parent described fearing her long-term donor had died because she had no way to reach anyone in his wider life.

• Some donors created digital records (spreadsheets, Facebook groups, Ancestry profiles) linking all the families they had helped create, offering a form of embedded knowledge across donor sibling networks, including notifying recipients when two of their children might live near each other or attend the same school.

Communicative Knowledge

• For all participants, direct communication (both before and after conception) was central to ‘getting to know’ someone. Planning an informal donation always involved at least one face-to-face meeting.

• Participants described a perceived hierarchy of communicative modes: in-person meetings were most valued, followed by phone/video calls, with asynchronous text messaging seen as useful but requiring verification through more embodied forms of contact.

• Knowledge gained through communication was often described as instinctual (’I just felt it,’ ‘you go with your gut’) rather than factual, and had a moral dimension: participants assessed whether potential matches seemed like ‘good people’ rather than just suitable candidates.

• Many participants emphasized the importance of ‘staying in touch’ after donation, not frequent or intrusive contact, but retaining a communication channel so that knowledge of each other could be updated over time. Digital platform affordances (asynchronous messaging, ability to ‘like’ posts) facilitated a particular rhythm of low-level contact directed from recipients to donors.

Creating Digital Artifacts

• Recipients often gathered digital artifacts (e.g., photographs, questionnaire responses, messages) for the donor-conceived child who might one day want to know about the donor. Some parents retained all their messages with donors as a future archive for their children. Others created questionnaires asking donors about their favorite films, foods, and other personal details.

• Some donors intentionally created information packages modeled on the UK clinical system’s identity-release approach: non-identifying details for younger children (height, eye color) and fully identifying information (name, schooling, family details) for when the child was older.

• Some donors created digital records tracking all their donations, outcomes, and the families they had helped create.

Limitations: The sample is predominantly white British, limiting transferability to the experiences of racially and ethnically diverse families using informal donor conception. Participants self-selected, creating selection bias toward people who were comfortable discussing their experiences. Those who found informal donation harmful, distressing, or who had negative outcomes may be less represented. The sample includes only informal sperm donors, not egg donors, embryo donors, or recipients of egg and embryos.

Applications: The study suggests that many donors think about their donor-conceived offspring and the long-term implications of their donation. For mental health professionals and counsellors, the paper's four-mode framework offers a practical structure for conversations with informal donor conception clients: What identifying information has been shared? How connected are the parties within each other's wider lives? What communication exists and what is expected going forward? And what records or information will be available to a donor-conceived child in the future? Working through each dimension can help clients think through the longer-term implications of their arrangements.

Funding Source: The Wellcome Trust (grant number: 225536/Z/22/Z).

Lead Author: Leah Gilman is a Research Fellow in the School of Sociology and Criminology at Manchester Metropolitan University, specialising in sociological perspectives on reproduction, kinship, donor conception, digital media, and personal relationships. No personal experience of donor conception is disclosed.

Regulatory Context:

• The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) regulates licensed fertility clinics and sperm banks in the UK.

• Since 2005, the HFEA requires all donors at licensed clinics to be identifiable, meaning donor-conceived people conceived after April 1, 2005, can access identifying information about their donor at age 18, along with the identity of any willing donor siblings. Those conceived before 2005 do not have the same legal right; a voluntary register (the Donor Conceived Register) exists for voluntary matching.

• Fertility treatment is provided at both NHS and private licensed clinics. Single women, female same-sex couples, and heterosexual couples all have equal legal access to fertility treatments, including donor conception. Since 2013, all women qualify for fertility services regardless of marital status or sexual orientation.

• The 10-family limit restricts the number of families that can be created from a single donor at UK licensed clinics; this limit applies to both UK donors and imported donor sperm.

• Donors can only be compensated for verified expenses: £750 per cycle for egg donors and £35 per clinic visit for sperm donors. Only altruistic donation is permitted.

Related Posts

• Small study shows Black sperm donors motivated by altruism turn to informal donations rather than traditional sperm banks (Newman, 2025)

• Acceptance and rejection of "morally challenging" behaviour in online sperm donation communities: narrative interviews with recipients and donors (Forshall, 2024)

• Analysis of 30 studies shows online sperm donation attracts older donors, marginalized recipients, and creates power dynamics favoring donors (Taylor-Phillips, 2025)

Geographic Region: This review draws from studies conducted in multiple countries: UK (n=7), USA (n=7), Belgium (n=5), Australia/New Zealand (n=7), Sweden (n=4), France (n=3), Spain (n=2), and Canada (n=1). Individual studies were also conducted in the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Finland, and Korea.

Research Question:

• Primary: What is the psychosocial impact of being a sperm donor recipient, across heterosexual couples, same-sex female couples, and single women?

• Secondary: What motivates recipients to seek cross-border reproductive care (CBRC) for donor sperm access, and what are their experiences doing so?

Design: Systematic review that followed PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines and was prospectively registered in the PROSPERO database (CRD42024527213). The research team searched PubMed and PsycINFO, with no restrictions on publication date, identifying studies published between 1991 and 2024. There were no language restrictions on the initial search, though studies not available in English were ultimately excluded. Articles were assessed for quality using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT, 2018) and JBI checklists for qualitative research.

Sample: 35 articles encompassed a combined total sample ranging from 4 participants (smallest study) to 1,700 participants (largest study). All included participants were actual recipients of donor sperm—people who had already undergone, were undergoing, or had children via donor sperm—distinguishing this review from studies of potential or prospective recipients. Participants represented three recipient groups: heterosexual couples, same-sex female couples, and single women. Some studies focused on one group exclusively; others included multiple recipient types. Most study participants were Caucasian, middle-class, highly educated, and in a relationship, reflecting well-documented selection biases in donor conception research. Eighteen studies used questionnaires and sixteen used semi-structured interviews; one study combined both methods. Six of the 35 studies specifically examined recipients who had pursued cross-border reproductive care (CBRC) to access donor sperm.

The authors frame this review as an examination of psychosocial impact, with the goal of helping providers and policymakers improve psychosocial “outcomes” for sperm donor recipients. The articles included in the review largely document how recipients think, make decisions, and navigate social contexts. It is not the same as measuring what happens to people as a result of using donor sperm. This distinction matters because many of the processes described are not problems to be solved; they are simply the diversity of human experience. They may describe normal variation rather than deficits requiring intervention. Readers should also note that the included studies span 1991 to 2024. Social attitudes, legal frameworks, and clinical practices have changed enormously across this period, and the review does not consistently account for this when drawing conclusions. Finally, I found myself thinking about what is missing. Many of the psychosocial processes described in the review (e.g., how recipients represent the donor, how families navigate disclosure, how counseling needs evolve) are not specific to sperm donation. They occur across egg and embryo donation, within the same family structures, and in the same clinical, legal, and social contexts. By restricting inclusion to sperm donation studies, the review produces a thinner evidence base than necessary.

Key Findings

• Motivations to Use Donor Sperm - Heterosexual couples were motivated by male infertility, avoiding genetic disease transmission, maintaining relationships, enabling male partners to experience fatherhood, and achieving social normalcy; they preferred donor insemination over adoption for control over genetics and the ability to experience pregnancy. Same-sex female couples sought pregnancy experience for one partner and avoidance of legal complications with known donors. Single women were typically motivated by approaching the end of reproductive years without a partner.

• Disclosure Patterns - Heterosexual couples were least likely to disclose, while same-sex female couples and single women disclosed at significantly higher rates. Reasons for disclosure: honesty, respecting children’s rights to genetic origins, preventing accidental discovery via genetic testing, and reducing stigma. Reasons against: protecting non-biological parents, fear of harm to children, concern about children telling others, worry about donor relationships. Disclosure increased over time across all groups and evolved as children developed and bonds with non-biological parents strengthened. Couples usually agreed on disclosure approach; disagreement caused stress and typically resulted in non-disclosure. Those who disclosed were satisfied; non-disclosure sometimes caused guilt.

• Preference for Anonymous vs. Identity-Release Donors - Preference for open-identity donors increased significantly over the years covered in the study.

• Counseling - Counseling provision was inconsistent and inequitably distributed. Counseling was identified as important both before, during, and after treatment and during disclosure. Opinions on mandatory counseling are divided: some (especially heterosexual couples) supported it; others (especially same-sex couples) objected. Content included disclosure decisions, legal implications, and donor selection, though advice was sometimes inconsistent.

• Cross-Border Reproductive Care (CBRC) - Six studies specifically examined recipients who traveled outside their home country to access donor sperm.

  • The most popular European destinations were Spain, Czech Republic, Denmark, and Belgium, while common non-European destinations included the United States, India, Thailand, and South Africa. Destination choice was influenced by geographic proximity, availability of donors matching recipients’ desired phenotypic characteristics, legal frameworks, and cost.

  • The most common motivations for CBRC were legal and access-related: prohibitive legislation in home countries restricting access to donor sperm for specific groups (particularly single women and same-sex couples), donor shortages, desire for anonymous donors when home countries prohibited anonymous donation (or conversely, desire for identity-release donors when home countries only permitted anonymous donation), and shorter waiting times. Other motivations included lower cost, perceived lack of prejudice toward single women or same-sex couples in destination countries, and privacy from home communities. Legal restrictions were the predominant driver for recipients from Italy, Germany, France, and Norway, while difficulties accessing treatment, namely long wait times and donor shortages, were most often cited by UK recipients.

  • The most significant challenge was access to follow-up care at home. Having a supportive home physician was identified as the single most important factor in treatment experience, with some recipients able to access supportive treatment (prescriptions, cycle monitoring) at home while others could not. Support levels varied dramatically by home country: Germany, France, and Switzerland provided high levels of home physician support, while the Netherlands, UK, and Sweden provided low levels. Other challenges included financial strain from travel costs and inability to access insurance reimbursement, difficulty gathering reliable information about clinics and legal requirements, justifying absence from work without disclosing fertility treatment, and legal vulnerabilities, particularly for same-sex couples around parental rights. Notably, French patients seeking treatment in Belgium reported frustratingly long waiting times, reproducing the very problem they had traveled to solve and highlighting that CBRC does not always resolve the access issues that motivated it.

• Several themes appeared in the review, but I felt they lacked sufficient consistency and sample size to support reliable conclusions.

  • Donor selection criteria and characteristics: Studies reported that health was the most important factor, followed by physical characteristics, and preferences were highly individual and context-dependent.

  • Clinical and procedural preferences: The evidence is insufficient to make recommendations.

  • Terminology and donor representation: How recipients describe the donor varied widely.

  • Quality of life and relationship outcomes: Most findings came from studies conducted in the 1990s with small samples; one recent study (2024) found no significant differences between sperm donor recipient parents and IVF parents in anxiety, depression, or family functioning

  • Treatment experience: Recipients generally reported positive experiences with healthcare professionals, but these findings were not specific to sperm donation and may reflect general fertility clinic satisfaction.

  • Effect of legislation on behavior: Findings were inconsistent about whether legislation (particularly laws prohibiting anonymous donation) affected recipient behavior around donor choice and disclosure.

Limitations: Only English-language studies were included, which excludes important research conducted in other languages and limits the global perspective. Studies used varied methodologies, limiting direct comparisons and the strength of conclusions. There is significant variation in care settings (private vs. public funding), which may affect findings. Although quality appraisal was conducted, the review synthesizes a 4-participant study alongside a 1,700-participant survey with roughly equal interpretive weight.

Applications: Laws, practices, and attitudes have changed profoundly over time. Reviews should be restricted by time period, stratify findings by era, or explicitly flag when older research may no longer reflect current experience.

Funding Source: None declared.

Lead Author: Emma Nash is a Specialist Trainee (ST6) in Obstetrics and Gynaecology in North West London, currently based at St Mary’s Hospital, and has completed a Clinical Fellowship at the Fertility Centre at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital; she is a member of the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. No personal link to donor conception was disclosed.

Regulatory Context: Varies globally

Related Posts

• A systematic review of qualitative studies investigating motives and experiences of recipients of anonymous gamete donation (Bauer, 2022)

• Three decades of research suggests donor conception couples maintain health relationship dynamics, with one exception (Fusco, 2025)

• Current egg donor counseling often prioritizes short-term preparation over long-term emotional resilience (Pote, 2025)

Geographic Region: France

Research Question: How can we understand the experiences and attitudes of donor-conceived people regarding the disclosure of their conception?

Design: Mixed-methods exploratory design. Data collection took place between March 2019 and September 2020 as part of the larger INFODON study on information-sharing practices in French donor-conceived families. The quantitative component was an online survey of 21 questions divided into three sections: background information, circumstances of disclosure, and how the story of conception had been managed in the family. The qualitative component involved 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted between July and December 2019. Interviews lasted between 64 and 295 minutes (average 131 minutes). The interview guide was inspired by life narrative techniques, covering participants’ family history, how they learned about their conception, and how it played out in their lives afterward.

Editor’s Note: The survey included one question to measure feelings about disclosure: Do you think that being informed of the facts of your conception has been beneficial to you? (Yes, No, I don’t know).

Sample: Survey: 107 sperm donor-conceived adults from heterosexual parents, predominantly women (87%), aged 20 to 54 (average 33 years). Interviews: 20 donor-conceived adults from heterosexual parents, predominantly women (85%), aged 21 to 53 (average 34 years). All participants were recruited through calls to participate on the Assistance Publique-Hopitaux de Marseille website, media coverage, social media, professional websites including the French CECOS Federation, and interest groups such as Procreation Medicalement Anonyme and Association des enfants du don.

Key Findings

Theme 1: Age at Disclosure Was Not the Primary Factor in How People Experienced Disclosure

• Survey participants found out about their conception at an average age of 18.6 years, and just over half (53%) learned as children or teenagers. The average time between disclosure and survey participation was 14.5 years. Interview participants were informed at an average age of 19.7 years, and most were informed as adults (55%). The average time between disclosure and interview was

  14.2 years.

• The majority of survey participants (85%) considered being informed about their donor conception to have been beneficial, regardless of the age at which they learned. The researchers ran an exploratory statistical test to see whether there was a relationship between age at disclosure and whether people viewed disclosure as beneficial. The test found no meaningful association between the two. The authors interpreted this result as evidence that age is not a primary factor in how people experience disclosure.

  Editor’s Note: The study was small (107 people), and the researchers didn't report whether they had enough participants to reliably detect a relationship even if one existed. This means the statistical results should be interpreted carefully because the study might have been too small to pick up on a real pattern. A non-statistically significant result technically means "we didn't find evidence of a relationship," not "we found evidence of no relationship."

• The authors state that these findings are in partial tension with a larger U.S. study (Applegarth et al., 2025, n=422) that found higher satisfaction among those informed before age 15.

  Editor’s Note: I’d argue that the two studies actually measured different things. Applegarth et al. asked about satisfaction with how people learned, a specific evaluation of the disclosure experience itself. Martin et al. asked whether people considered disclosure beneficial, a broader, more reflective question. These are related but not the same question.

Theme 2: Four Paths to Disclosure

• Path 1 - Parental strategy: Disclosure was part of an intentional information-sharing plan agreed upon by both parents, often at the time of conception. Participants in this path were often informed from birth or in early childhood. 43% of survey participants had always known or were informed at a time chosen by their parents.

• Path 2 - Life event triggers: Parents who had been uncertain about disclosure ultimately decided to tell when events made it feel necessary, such as the donor-conceived person facing illness, parent death or illness, or milestones like going to university or having their own children. The authors argue that even when an event prompted disclosure, parental agency and choice were still present. 11% of survey respondents experienced disclosure of this nature.

• Path 3 - Family conflict: 17% of participants were told during a conflict with or between their parents. These disclosures were often initiated by one parent alone, breaking a prior agreement with their partner. These disclosures tended to carry additional relational complexity.

• Path 4 - Donor-conceived person initiates: Some individuals (10%) prompted disclosure themselves by asking questions about their origins, noticing physical differences from their father, or seeking genetic health information before having children. The authors note this shows donor-conceived people were active agents, not just passive recipients of their parents’ decisions. The survey also found that 14% of respondents discovered their conception by accident, such as through DNA testing, overhearing a conversation, or finding a document.

Theme 3: Mothers as the Central Actors in Disclosure

• In the survey, 46% of participants were told by their mother alone, and 29% were told by both parents together. Only 9% were told by their father alone.

• Among the 83 survey participants (78%) who were able to discuss the topic again after the initial disclosure, 46% noted a difference in how their parents engaged with the topic, and 36% said they had only discussed it further with their mother.

• Three factors were identified to explain why mothers were more central: (1) the structure of fertility treatment protocols, which require mothers to attend all appointments and undergo all procedures regardless of the cause of infertility, making them keepers of information; (2) social stigma around male infertility, which led some donor-conceived people to avoid raising the topic with their fathers to protect them from pain; and (3) broader gendered family dynamics, with fathers described as more emotionally reserved and less likely to engage with intimate topics.

• The study also found that initial disclosure does not automatically lead to ongoing openness. Some participants described being unable to revisit the topic with their parents, even when they wanted to. The authors distinguish between disclosure (a specific event) and openness (an ongoing relational quality), noting that these are not the same.

Limitations: The study was conducted exclusively with donor-conceived people from heterosexual families in the French anonymous donation context, limiting transferability to other countries, family structures (such as same-sex parent families or solo-mother families), and identity-release contexts. Several participants were likely members of donor conception interest groups, creating a risk of selection bias toward people who are more engaged with their donor conception identity. The retrospective nature of the data introduces recall bias. No validated psychological measures were used. The primary outcome - whether participants found disclosure ‘beneficial’ - was a single self-report item. This cannot be compared to studies using standardized wellbeing or adjustment scales. The authors acknowledge this explicitly. The study does not address conflation of disclosure with donor conception per se: outcomes may reflect family communication quality, parental relationship quality, or the circumstances of disclosure rather than anything inherent to being donor-conceived.

Applications: For fertility clinicians, counselors, and psychologists, the distinction between disclosing and maintaining ongoing openness is clinically important. For mental health professionals working with donor-conceived people: Circumstances and relational context matter at least as much as age when assessing how a person experienced learning about their conception. Practitioners should not assume that early disclosure automatically means the experience was uncomplicated, or that later disclosure necessarily caused harm. Assessment should explore the pathway, the key actors involved, and the relational dynamics before and after disclosure.

Funding Source: French Agency of Biomedicine (Agence de Biomedecine), grant reference AOR nr. 2018-A02515-50.

Lead Author: Anais Martin is a French social anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research, currently affiliated with the NorPro ANR Program, whose doctoral and postdoctoral work focuses on kinship, donor conception, and the experiences of donor-conceived people and gamete donors in France, England, and Canada. No personal connection to donor conception has been disclosed.

Regulatory Context:

• Prior to the 2021 reform: French law mandated strict donor anonymity from 1994 onward. No identifying or non-identifying information about donors could be shared with recipients or offspring. Donation was required to be free (no payment beyond expenses), voluntary, and anonymous. Only public or non-profit health facilities authorized by the regional health agency were permitted to perform donor conception procedures. Access was restricted to heterosexual couples facing medically diagnosed infertility or at risk of transmitting a serious disease.

• The 2021 bioethics reform (Loi n 2021-1017 du 2 aout 2021 relative a la bioethique) introduced three transformative changes: (1) access to donor conception was extended to lesbian couples and single women; (2) anonymous donation was ended - all new donors must consent to identity-release, and donor-conceived individuals may request identifying information about their donor when they turn 18; and (3) fertility professionals are now legally required to encourage recipients to create conditions enabling them to inform their child, before reaching adulthood, that they are donor-conceived (Article L2141-10 of the French public health code). The new rules apply to donations made from 2025 onward. In 2021, France expanded its comprehensive national health insurance coverage for fertility treatments to lesbians and single women.

Related Studies

• Unique experiences of transgender and cisgender fathers who use donor sperm (Mendes, 2024)

• The preferences of single women and lesbian couples seeking motherhood through sperm donation in France (Gouya, 2025)

Editor’s Note: This was one of the first papers I reviewed. As part of ongoing review of all of my content (my approach has evolved a lot, yall!), and based on feedback, I revisited this paper. I corresponded with the lead author regarding my concerns about analysis and citation discrepancies. The author indicated they had been made aware of issues with the citations recently and acknowledged the other feedback. This summary will be further updated if a revised paper is published.

Geographic Region: Primarily high-income anglophone countries: United Kingdom (18 studies), United States (12), Australia (6), Netherlands (4), with additional studies from France, Sweden, and multi-country samples.

Research Question: What are the psychological outcomes donor-conceived people throughout their life course and how to they compare with those of non-donor-conceived people?

Methods: Systematic review inventory of both quantitative and qualitative studies (e.g., cross-sectional, case-control, and longitudinal cohort studies). Inclusion criteria were five or more participants, peer review, and assessment of any donor conception psychological outcomes. The inventory included 40 cross-sectional articles (34 quantitative, five qualitative, one mixed methods), three case-control, and seven longitudinal cohorts (one qualitative). The articles employed 66 different psychological outcome measures, most commonly the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (11 papers), Child Behaviour Checklist (10 papers), Golombok Rust Inventory of Marital State (8 papers), Trait Anxiety Index (9 papers), and Parenting Stress Index (8 papers). Outcomes were derived from parent-, teacher-, child-, and professional-rated tools. Quality assessment used Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal tools specific to each study design.

Editor’s Note: The authors say they’re reviewing for psychological outcomes but never clearly define what that means. They end up including a wide range of psychosocial and developmental measures, including neurodevelopmental conditions (autism spectrum disorder, ADHD), behaviors (aggression, substance use, parenting), relationships (parent-child warmth), and social/academic functioning. The categorization of autism as ‘worse psychological outcomes’ is particularly bothersome because it’s scientifically inaccurate: donor conception can’t cause neurodevelopmental conditions.

While this paper follows proper systematic review procedures, the actual analysis and synthesis are a bit messy. The authors couldn’t combine studies statistically because they were too different from each other. That’s totally fair. Instead, they sorted quantitative findings into three buckets: "better," "same," or "worse" for donor-conceived people. Without clear decision rules for how findings get sorted, bias and miscategorization become likely. When I crosswalked the in-paper tables, the supplemental table, and a number of the papers cited to compare orginal findings to the authors’ summaries, I disagreed with how some findings were framed and categorized, and found a number of flat-out errors. For example, the authors list six papers that had "worse" outcomes for DCP, but two of the findings in the table actually show DCP doing better than comparison groups and two misrepresent the study findings (e.g., the table states one study showed 'higher rates of conduct disorders' in donor-conceived females but the actual finding was that while the score for conduct problems - subscale of SDQ - in female DCP was higher than expected, the overall scores were not significantly different from the Australian general population and were well within normal range). Only three of the seven included qualitative papers center donor-conceived people's own perspectives (totaling approximately 38 participants). Two report parent perspectives and one examines how young donor-conceived children understand their family composition.

Sample: The inventory includes data from 4,666 donor-conceived participants and 3,790 non-donor-conceived participants across 50 articles, with mean study size of 93 participants (range: 10-528). Publication years spanned 1993-2023, with 70% published during or after 2010. Participant age distribution showed 26 articles (52%) included only children under age 12, nine (18%) focused on adolescents aged 13-17, and 14 (28%) examined adults over age 18, with one spanning ages 10-25.

Editor’s Note: The authors note that "two cohort studies followed up at more than two time points.” In reality, at least 22 of the 50 articles (44%) draw from five longitudinal studies, meaning they represent the same families measured at different ages rather than independent groups of people. Specifically, eight articles come from the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, 12 papers come from three separate Golombok longitudinal cohorts, and two Kovacs papers are from the same cohort. When the same families appear multiple times across different papers, counting each paper as a separate study inflates the apparent size and diversity of the evidence base. What looks like broad agreement across 50 independent studies is actually much narrower.

Key Findings:

Editor’s Note: Donor conception itself is just a method of family formation. It doesn’t directly cause either anxiety and attachment difficulties or high self-esteem and strong family bonds. So when research finds differences in well-being, we need to ask: what is the actual mechanism of harm or protection? Is harm caused by being deceived? By social stigma? By family dynamics around infertility? And when donor-conceived people do well, what protects them? Open communication? Supportive families? Social status? The critical question isn’t whether donor-conceived people differ from others, but what specific, modifiable factors shape their experiences. Without identifying these mechanisms, findings can only be filtered through cultural narratives about ‘real’ families rather than what actually helps people thrive.

This systematic inventory provides a reference point for the field by documenting what research exists through early 2024. It maps the research landscape rather than providing a definitive synthesis of psychological and well-being outcomes. With more careful abstraction and a different synthesis framework (perhaps outcome domain and age), we’d be able to better visualize patterns in findings and identify research gaps. The takeaways below are what I’m comfortable extracting from the paper.

• Across broad measures of mental health and well-being, the majority of donor-conceived children and adults show outcomes comparable to those of comparison groups and fall within normal ranges.

• Some studies found better outcomes for specific subpopulations of donor-conceived children when compared to non-donor-conceived individuals.

• A handful of studies found worse outcomes for specific subpopulations of donor-conceived children and adults when compared to non-donor-conceived individuals. In some cases, the outcomes are “worse on paper” and still in the normal range.

Editor’s Note: I found the discussion a bit peculiar. The authors make recommendations that contradict what they found. For example, they state donor-conceived children are more likely to have behavioral problems and then recommend parenting programs, which doesn’t at all reflect the actual findings. A quick google search revealed that one author has a professional interest in parenting interventions. Coincidence?

Limitations: In addition to everything else described, systematic review limitations include varying quality across included studies and challenges in comparing studies with different methodologies and sample sizes. The review also noted research samples typically over-represented families who disclosed donor conception to children and predominantly relied on self-selected volunteers who likely represented more engaged and motivated community members.

Applications: Future research should develop recruitment strategies that reach non-disclosing families, families disconnected from donor conception communities, and more diverse populations. Systematic reviews should move beyond simply cataloging findings to providing interpretive synthesis that helps readers understand patterns, contradictions, and gaps in the literature. Future research should consider using more uniform measures of psychological and mental health outcomes. Reviews should avoid overgeneralizing findings from narrow samples to all DCP.

Editor’s Note: Peer reviewers and editors have an important role to play in improving the quality of donor conception research. People are making decisions based on this research. That raises the stakes for getting it right. Please help authors give us the quality papers we deserve.

Funding Source: No specific funding was received for this systematic review. The authors were funded by National Institute for Health and Care Research (UK) clinical academic training grants.

Lead Author: Charlotte Talbot is affiliated with University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, and works at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham. Talbot was funded by a National Institute for Health and Care Research clinical academic training grant during this research. No personal connection to donor conception was indicated.

Regulatory Context: Varies globally

Related Posts

• Exploration of how donor-conceived people navigate genetic relations (Cutas, 2023)

• How donor-conceived people feel about discovering they have multiple donor half-siblings (Sørensen, 2025)

Geographic Region: United Kingdom (8 studies), Australia (5 studies), and Canada (3 studies), with single studies from the Netherlands and Russia.

Research Question: How do sperm donors’ and recipients’ motivations and perceptions compare across different stages of the online sperm donation process?

Design: The study used a systematised narrative approach (Booth et al., 2016) in which researchers systematically searched for all relevant studies on online sperm donation, then summarized what these studies found. To compare donor and recipient experiences, findings were structured into four key themes: (1) motivations, expectations, and alternatives; (2) the dynamics of donor-recipient interactions and risk management; (3) the practical, emotional, and power-related aspects of donation; and (4) the evolving role of donors beyond conception.

Sample: The review included 18 English and French language articles published between 2011 and late 2024. Thirteen articles included data from sperm donors, and six had data from recipients. The studies had different sample sizes - 8 quantitative studies had between 56 and 1,428 participants, while 10 qualitative studies had between 5 and 45 participants. Most donors were mostly white heterosexual men (64-89% across studies), ranging in age from 18 to 67 years. Most recipients were mostly white lesbian women (66% in one large study) and predominantly white (84%), with three-quarters in relationships. Some studies used overlapping samples but were considered distinct due to differing findings.

Key Findings

• Motivations, Expectations, and Alternatives

  • Both donors and recipients used online sperm donation to be able to meet each other directly, exchange information, maintain contact, and sometimes create relationships between donors and children.

  • Donors mainly wanted to help people have children and pass on their genes, while recipients mainly wanted an affordable and more accessible way to get pregnant compared to fertility clinics.

  • Many donors appreciated having control over recipient selection, considering factors like health, relationship status, and financial stability.

  • Recipients cared most about whether donors were reliable and trustworthy, even more than physical appearance, because they needed donors to show up on schedule and keep them safe.

  • Donor and recipient expectations around the number of offspring per donor existed but were largely implicit, self-imposed, or retrospective rather than the result of any formal negotiation or pre-donation discussion between parties.

  • Several studies reported that recipients had already explored or were simultaneously pursuing other paths to parenthood, including known donors from their personal networks or medically assisted reproduction.

  • Many donors also had experience donating outside of online platforms, with estimates of those who had donated in other contexts ranging from roughly 40% to 90%, including through sperm banks, to personal acquaintances, or across multiple connection sites.

• Dynamics of Donor-Recipient Interactions and Risk Management

  • Donors and recipients commonly engaged in discussions covering the terms and implications of the donation arrangement, including key topics such as insemination method and the donor's future relationship with the child, as well as practical logistics like menstrual cycle timing to optimize the chances of conception.

  • Pre-donation discussions also served as a common risk-management strategy, covering topics such as legal parentage expectations and sexual and general health history. Recipients reported taking practical steps to screen out donors seeking sexual contact, such as meeting in public, bringing a companion, or explicitly requesting self-insemination.

  • Many recipients said their first online contacts with donors went well, but some experienced sexual advances they didn’t want, verbal abuse, poor communication, or donors who suddenly stopped responding (”ghosting”). Donors reported few negative experiences. The authors note that two of the articles intentionally focused on negative experiences.

• Practical, Emotional, and Power-related Aspects of Donation

  • Studies indicated that most donations involve artificial insemination, though many donors reported using multiple methods over time. One study found that ~95% of online donors reported self-insemination, ~30% “natural” insemination (sexual intercourse), and nearly 6% directed donation (through a clinic). Heterosexual donors were more likely to prefer “natural” insemination than gay/bisexual donors (48% vs. 26%).

  • Online donors consistently ranked financial incentives lower than sperm bank donors. Some donors accepted travel reimbursement, though views on acceptable compensation varied.

  • Donors generally found the process positive, but could find it stressful when multiple attempts were needed. Recipients experienced greater stress and anxiety due to uncertainty around conception and the need for repeated attempts. In one study, recipients (women in same-sex couples) reported discomfort handling semen and preferred distance from the donor during the process.

  • Who has more control changes during the process. Before getting pregnant, recipients depend on donors and can feel vulnerable. After pregnancy, recipients have more power to decide how involved the donor will be, which sometimes frustrates donors.

  • Some studies documented instances of donors sexually harassing recipients by pressuring them toward sexual contact or misrepresenting “natural” insemination as more effective. Recipients felt unable to refuse due to investment in the process or fear of losing the arrangement.

• Evolving Role of Donors Beyond Conception

  • Preferences regarding donor identity disclosure varied among both donors and recipients, with studies reporting broadly similar levels of preference for known identity, open identity, and anonymous donation. The authors note that these findings draw on fertility clinic terminology and should be interpreted with caution, as online donors and recipients inherently engage in some degree of direct contact.

  • Preferences regarding the donor's role in the child's life varied considerably across both parties. Many recipients prioritize their child having access to information about their genetic origins and the donor's identity - either before or after age 18 - without necessarily expecting an ongoing relationship, though some do welcome a more active donor presence. Donor preferences show even greater variation, ranging from no contact at all to periodic updates, openness to answering the child's questions, or in some cases an active parental role, with preferences for no contact appearing more common in some studies than others.

  • Post-conception interactions between donors and recipients were also well documented, including sharing updates or photos, in-person meetings, and agreements for future donations.

  • Pre-conception agreements often evolved over time. For example, recipients limited or withdrew contact, sometimes leaving donors frustrated at being unable to maintain the level of involvement they had anticipated or agreed upon.

Limitations: The review did not formally assess the quality of included studies. Research on online gamete and embryo donations may become quickly outdated given the rapid evolution of digital platforms and shifting legal landscapes. Studies predominantly focused on heterosexual male donors and white cisgender lesbian recipients, leaving experiences of trans, non-binary, and racially diverse individuals largely unexplored. Most included studies focused on one platform (Pride Angel), meaning findings may not apply to users of other websites, apps, or Facebook groups.

Applications: Recipients should implement safety strategies, including holding meetings in public places, being accompanied during initial encounters, and clearly stating preferences for self-insemination upfront to screen out donors seeking sexual relationships. All parties should be aware of legal parentage regulations in their jurisdiction and establish clear agreements regarding parental rights. Clinic-directed donation — where a recipient brings their chosen known donor to a clinic for assisted insemination — is an option that combines the relational and intentional qualities of online sperm donation with clinical support and legal documentation. Making this pathway more accessible could be useful for families who want both.

Funding Source: Secretariat à la condition féminine, Québec, Canada

Lead Author: Isabel Côté is a professor in the Department of Social Work at the Université du Québec en Outaouais in Gatineau, Canada, who researches LGBTQ+ families and donor conception. No personal connection to donor conception was disclosed.

Regulatory Context: The studies reviewed were conducted across multiple jurisdictions with varying regulatory frameworks. The absence of regulation governing online sperm donation creates uncertainties around parental rights, donor involvement, health screening, and offspring tracking across all jurisdictions studied.

Related Posts

• Environmental scan identifies 52 English-speaking online sperm donation platforms with over 340,000 users globally (Taylor-Phillips, 2025)

• Acceptance and rejection of "morally challenging" behaviour in online sperm donation communities: narrative interviews with recipients and donors (Forshall, 2024)

• Analysis of 30 studies shows online sperm donation attracts older donors, marginalized recipients, and creates power dynamics favoring donors (Taylor-Phillips, 2025)

Geographic Region: Netherlands, France, and United Kingdom

Research Question: Do attachment patterns differ among infants in same-sex male parent families (conceived via surrogacy), same-sex female parent families (conceived via donor insemination), and different-sex parent families (conceived via IVF)?

Design: This study employed an observational, cross-sectional design using the Strange Situation Procedure, a standardized, laboratory-based assessment of infant-parent attachment security. Data were collected from the longitudinal New Parents Study between 2013 and 2016. Children were assessed at approximately 12 months of age during university-based laboratory visits. Each child participated in the SSP twice on the same day, once with each parent, with order randomly determined.

Sample: 229 parent-child dyads from 115 families, drawn from the larger New Parents Study of 140 families. This comprised 65 parent-child dyads from same-sex male parent families (surrogacy and implied egg donors), 96 from same-sex female parent families (with sperm donors), and 64 from different-sex parent families (IVF). Families were distributed across three countries: United Kingdom (23%), Netherlands (34%), and France (43%). The vast majority of parents (84%) held college degrees or higher, most were married or in civil partnerships (83%), and most were employed full-time (58%). Most parents (97% in UK and Netherlands) identified as White. Families were recruited through specialized surrogacy lawyers, LGBTQ+ parent support groups, fertility clinics, and online platforms.

Key Findings

• The study found that infants formed secure attachments with their parents at similar rates whether they were raised by two fathers (through surrogacy+implied egg donation), two mothers (through donor insemination), or a mother and father (through IVF).

• Looking at all families together, about 54% of infants showed secure attachment relationships with their parents, which is nearly identical to the worldwide average of 52% found in studies of over 20,000 parent-child pairs. About 21% showed avoidant attachment, 14% showed ambivalent attachment, and 12% showed disorganized attachment.

• Infants living in the Netherlands were more likely to be securely attached compared to infants in the United Kingdom, regardless of whether they had two fathers, two mothers, or a mother and father. This suggests that access to supportive social systems and contexts (e.g., parental leave policies, social support systems, and attitudes toward diverse families) may be more important than family structure itself.

• Compared to worldwide data, this study found somewhat more infants with avoidant (21% vs. 15%) or ambivalent (14% vs. 10%) attachment patterns, but fewer with disorganized (12% vs. 24%) attachment.

Limitations: Convenience sampling may limit generalizability, as participating families may be more confident in their parenting and have more positive parent-child relationships. Suboptimal video quality in some recordings made subtle facial expressions crucial for disorganized coding harder to detect. Data on ethnic background and health were only collected for UK and Netherlands participants due to ethical restrictions in France. Very high educational attainment limits generalizability to lower socioeconomic families. The Strange Situation Procedure has been validated primarily with mother-child dyads.

Applications: Consider how contextual factors like parental leave policies, social support, and experiences of discrimination may affect caregiving and attachment, rather than family structure or donor type.

Funding Source: This research was supported by grants from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC; grant ES/K006150/1), the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO; grant 464-11-001), the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR; grant ANR-12-ORAR-00005–01), and the Nederlandse Wetenschapsagenda (grant NWA.1389.20.05), under the auspices of the Open Research Area (Application BO 3973/1–1).

Lead Author: Loes Van Rijn-van Gelderen is a researcher at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. A personal connection to donor conception was not disclosed.

Regulatory Context

• The Netherlands has allowed identity-release donation since implementation of the Artificial Fertilisation Donor Information Act in 2004, which abolished donor anonymity. Same-sex female couples have had access to fertility treatment since 2005. A government-funded national register manages donor information, with donor-conceived individuals able to access identifying information at age 16. At the time of data collection (2013-2016), surrogacy was not officially available for same-sex male couples, requiring them to travel abroad (often to the US or Canada) and face administrative challenges for legal recognition of both parents.

• The UK changed from anonymous to identifiable donation in 2005. Donor-conceived people conceived after April 1, 2005, can access donor identity information at age 18. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) regulates fertility treatment. At the time of data collection, surrogacy was allowed in the UK.

• France prohibited surrogacy during the data collection period (Law No. 94-653 of 1994), requiring same-sex male couples to travel abroad and face legal hurdles for parental recognition. In 2021, France expanded fertility treatment coverage to lesbians and single women and created laws to end anonymous donation, though these changes occurred after data collection. Same-sex female couples had access to fertility treatment at the time of the study.

Related Posts

• Parents’ experiences highlight nuanced understanding of kinship in donor conception (Siermann, 2023)

• The preferences of single women and lesbian couples seeking motherhood through sperm donation in France (Gouya, 2025)

• Dutch research reveals diverse “kinning” strategies in lesbian family building (Geerts, 2025)

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Resource: The 2SLGBTQ+ Special Interest Group at the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society recently released a Resource Guide for 2SLGBTQ+ Fertility and Family Building for healthcare providers and professionals working in perinatal care.

Geographic Region: Canada

Research Question: What are trans peoples’ interests in reproductive choices, and what barriers do they face in meeting their reproductive goals?

Design: Cross-sectional design using a one-time anonymous survey. The survey ran from May 2021 to May 2022. Participants were recruited through LGBTQ2S+ groups across Canada. The 66-item survey asked about: personal information (age, income, etc.), interest in having biological children, use of donor sperm or eggs, use of surrogates, barriers to fertility care, plans for gender-affirming treatments, and experience with fertility services.

Sample: 299 transgender individuals across Canada, aged 16 years or older, and self-identified as trans or gender other than cisgender. The sample was asymmetrical, with 79% assigned female at birth and 28% assigned male at birth, plus 1% identifying as intersex. Most participants (79%) said they realized their gender identity was different from their birth sex by age 20. About two-thirds (68%) were taking or planning to take hormones to affirm their gender. About half (49%) had undergone or planned to have surgery that would affect their ability to have biological children. Not everyone answered every question. At most, 266 people answered any single question, and 197 people completed the entire survey.

Key Findings

• 82% (N=169) of participants expressed interest in pursuing some form of reproductive options (e.g., biologically related children, donor gametes, gestational carriers, or fertility preservation).

• Cost was the most frequently named barrier to accessing fertility services (33%, N=37), with trans people noting that fertility preservation fees were prohibitive, especially when competing with other transition-related expenses.

• 21% (N=23) reported barriers accessing trans-appropriate reproductive care: : providers who lack knowledge about trans bodies, clinics where they fear mistreatment, and waiting lists that ignore the time-sensitive nature of fertility preservation.

• 65% (N=91) reported fertility discussions before starting transition care, and 35% (N=49) received no fertility counseling at all. It is unclear if the conversations were perceived as informed consent or coercive prerequisites.

• Trans people identified additional barriers including: gender dysphoria triggered by fertility procedures or the prospect of pregnancy (N=17), being forced to interrupt their transitions by stopping hormones (N=16), and uncertainty about how hormones affect fertility (N=10). These barriers are caused by how medicine is currently practiced, not inherent to being trans.

• 13% (N=38) of participants stated they were not interested in future fertility, citing reasons such as not wanting children, not desiring genetically related children, or having lifestyle preferences incompatible with parenting.

• Participants reported that barriers to accessing fertility services were often multifaceted, involving a combination of financial, logistical, psychological, and healthcare access challenges.

Limitations: Because people volunteered to take the survey, those who cared more about fertility issues might have been more likely to participate. The researchers used social media to find participants, which might have reached mostly younger people and missed those who don’t use social media. There were more participants who were assigned female at birth than assigned male at birth. The study might not have captured the experiences of people who had already given up on fertility preservation because of barriers.

Applications: The current system often manufactures a false choice between accessing hormones and preserving fertility. Both should be guaranteed rights. For clinicians, this study highlights the importance of ensuring all trans patients receive informed, non-coercive fertility counseling that presents preservation as optional, not mandatory. This counseling should occur early but never function as a gatekeeping barrier to transition care. Fertility clinics must fundamentally redesign their practices, not expect trans people to adapt to cisnormative procedures. This means: gender-neutral intake forms and language, visual representation of trans families in waiting rooms, staff training that goes beyond tokenistic "cultural competency," and examining which aspects of current procedures unnecessarily trigger dysphoria.

Funding Source: No specific funding source was mentioned in the article.

Lead Author: Dr. Lara Des Roches is a physician in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, with expertise in reproductive healthcare for transgender populations. No personal connection to the donor conception was disclosed.

Regulatory Context

• In 2004, Canada passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act (AHRA), one of the most comprehensive pieces of legislation in the world concerning reproductive technologies and related research. In 2010, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down parts of the AHRA, leaving responsibility to provinces, which have largely not acted.

• Currently, there is no central system for storing donor information accessible to donor-conceived persons and no legislation protecting their right to know donor identity.

• Industry guidelines suggest limits of 25 people per population of 800,000; however, there is no national registry to track the number of births by individual egg and sperm donors.

• In 2024, Canada removed restrictions on gay and bisexual sperm donors.

• Commercial payment to donors is prohibited - donations must be altruistic. Donors can receive reimbursement for legitimate expenses but not payment for gametes themselves.

• Single people, same-sex couples, and heterosexual couples all have equal legal rights to access assisted reproduction treatments.

• Gamete and embryo donation can be known or anonymous. When a child is born using anonymously donated gametes, that child does not have a right to know the identity of their donor.

• In 2024, Quebec became the first province to recognize the right to know one’s origins. They launched a provincial donor registry, allowing donor-conceived people over 14 to access certain donor information if available.

• Over 90% of donor sperm used in Canada comes from the United States due to regulatory burden and lack of donor incentives.

Related Posts

• Unique experiences of transgender and cisgender fathers who use donor sperm (Mendes, 2024)

• “Queer tax” creates extra fertility barriers for 2SLGBTQ+ BIPOC families (Tam, 2025)

TAKE OUR 5 MIN SURVEY!

I kicked off the new year with a list of ten questions I wish researchers would tackle and shared a quick take on five books from my shelf: Chrysta Bilton's Normal Family (2022), Peter Boni's Uprooted (2022), Susan Golombok's We Are Family (2020), Michael Slepian's The Secret Life of Secrets (2022), and David Plotz's The Genius Factory (2005).

In a guest post, Nick Ludwig shared how a mushroom ceremony helped him process his late donor conception discovery and led him to write a book and launch a podcast featuring donor-conceived people's stories. If you’d like to write a guest post, you can learn more about the process and send me a message!

Research Recap

Sørensen et al. (2025) conducted a systematic review of research about experiences with multiple donor half-siblings. A thematic synthesis of 18 studies involving 2,162 donor-conceived persons aged 12-65 across five countries found that initial reactions varied from curiosity and interest to indifference or concern. Those desiring connection faced practical challenges maintaining relationships across large, geographically dispersed sibling groups, though some successfully developed friendships. Half-sibling relationships provided valuable connections and belonging for some. However, these relationships also highlighted feelings of difference and created complications in family identity.

Fyfe et al. (2025) interviewed 11 participants from eight New Zealand families who used known donors and home insemination, exploring motivations and experiences. Financial barriers were primary drivers, with all but one identifying fertility clinic costs as inaccessible. Participants preferred home insemination as "normal, at-home, non-medical intervention" allowing greater autonomy, though some experienced clinics as unwelcoming and lacked clear procedural guidance, creating stress and awkward practical interactions. Couples prioritized "ideal donors" who were good people with aligned values and accessible throughout children's lives, with two Māori participants considering Māori donors essential for cultural identity and whakapapa connections. All couples rejected "dad" roles for donors, conceptualizing them as "helping uncles" or extended family, and created written agreements covering financial responsibilities, accessibility, and relationship expectations.

Kaplan Idelchuk et al. (2025) interviewed 19 Israeli healthcare professionals (sperm bank directors, genetic counselors, geneticists, IVF specialists) about recontacting sperm donors for expanded genetic testing. Approximately half believed recontacting donors before broader testing (like exome sequencing) is ethically appropriate. One-third advocated recontacting only after pathogenic findings, citing practical concerns about locating former donors and low positive result rates. Eleven participants proposed asking donors at donation which recontact approach they prefer. Three controversially suggested donor attitude toward future testing should be a selection parameter, arguing those refusing recontact might be unsuitable, raising concerns about violating the right not to know genetic information.

Ghelich-Khani et al. (2025) developed and validated a 26-item questionnaire measuring psychosocial needs of 180 Iranian women receiving donor oocytes. Four distinct themes emerged: 1) Need to Protect Marriage (worries about fertility problems and third-party involvement damaging marriage, sex life, and spousal understanding); 2) Need for Ethical and Legal Reassurance (requiring doctor trust, complete legal/ethical information, privacy protection, donor health confidence, and assurance donor won't claim the child); 3) Need for Parenting Support (concerns about developing mother-like feelings during pregnancy, bonding with genetically unrelated child, and succeeding in parent role); and 4) Need for Partner Support (requiring husband's emotional understanding, treatment support, and protection from family/friend blame).

Navarro-Marshall (2025) analyzed naturally occurring home conversations recorded by 17 Chilean families with donor-conceived children aged 3-8, followed by parent interviews with children and researcher interviews with parents. Parents universally struggled more with when and how to tell rather than whether to tell. All families described stories evolving from simple "seeds" to progressively adding eggs, donors, and family diversity concepts. When parents interviewed children immediately after conversations, 9 of 14 expressed positive emotions, with favorite elements mirroring general birth narratives (being born, tummy, having mothers) rather than donor-specific details. Three older children (7-8) expressed discomfort: two disliked donors despite never meeting them, one expressed sadness about lacking father and feeling lonely.

Other Tidbits

• In Current Affairs, a donor-conceived woman writes about how her discovery that she has over 30 half-siblings through DNA testing led her to trace how decades of lies and little regulation in America's profit-driven fertility industry have created health risks and other problems for donor-conceived families.

• An NPR investigation reveals how India's well-intentioned 2021 fertility laws inadvertently created a black market for donor eggs where vulnerable women are exploited.

• When a woman's brother is tracked down by two of the 14 children resulting from his 1992 sperm donations, the family discovers unexpected connections through camping trips and surfing holidays, leading multiple family members, including the author herself, to seek ADHD diagnoses after realizing the trait runs through their entire biological line.

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