Study uncovers three conversational styles when discussing donor conception with children

Origin stories in donor-conception: Helping families to promote autobiographical memories and identity development in their children (Navarro-Marshall, 2025)

Navarro-Marshall, J., & Larrain Sutil, A. (2025). Origin stories in donor-conception: Helping families to promote autobiographical memories and identity development in their children. Family Process, 64, e70090. https://doi.org/10.1111/famp.70090

Geographic Region: Chile

Research Question: How do families with donor-conceived children talk about their origins with them?

Design: This study looked at real family conversations about donor conception that happened naturally at home, without researchers present. Families decided when to have these conversations and recorded them on their phones. The researchers analyzed the conversations in two steps. First, they looked at the basic structure: who spoke, who started topics, how family members took turns talking, and whether turns were mainly about expanding ideas (elaborative), stating facts (factual), or telling the story (narrative). Second, they examined the elaborative parts more closely to look for four types of conversational moves: asking questions that open up discussion, describing details and making connections, explaining and reasoning, and how parents and children negotiate who leads the conversation.

Sample: The study included 45 people from 17 families with donor-conceived children aged 3 to 8 years. This included 22 mothers, 4 fathers, 11 daughters, and 8 sons. The families represented different structures: different-sex couples, same-sex female couples, and single mothers by choice. All parents had college degrees. The families used different types of donors: eight families used identity-release sperm donors, five used anonymous sperm donors, and five used anonymous egg donors. One family used a sperm donor they found personally through social media without going through a clinic. Almost all families used donors through fertility doctors and cryobanks, with sperm donor cryobanks located in the United States or Spain and egg donors from Chile (except one from Spain). All families had either already discussed origins with children or were certain they wanted to discuss it. All conversations were initiated by mothers and took place at home, usually close to bedtime.

Key Findings

• Family conversations about donor conception were private and intimate, led by mothers, relatively short (average 6 minutes 25 seconds), created together by parents and children (but with unequal contributions), and included different types of talk: expanding ideas (elaborative), stating facts (factual), or telling the story (narrative).

• Conversations averaged 96 turns total: 38 turns from parents and 36 turns from children. Parents spoke an average of 16 words per turn, while children spoke 4 words per turn.

• Conversations contained an average of 55% factual turns, 28% elaborative turns, 8% narrative turns, and 9% narrative-elaborative turns. Elaborativity (combined elaborative and narrative-elaborative turns) accounted for 38% of all conversation turns, meaning approximately 36 out of 96 turns were elaborative.

• Families used elaborative reminiscing—a rich, detailed way of talking about the past that helps children build memories and identity—with both parents and children actively participating, though parents contributed about twice as much overall. Given the children’s young age (average 4.9 years), their level of elaboration was notably strong. Conversations were structured primarily around open-ended questions (57% of detailed turns), followed by explaining and reasoning (41%), describing details (30%), and negotiating who leads the conversation (5.5%).

• Parents mostly asked questions about emotions, while children primarily described emotions, especially positive ones. Negative emotions were discussed less frequently, with children referring to them more often than parents.

• The researchers found three distinct styles families used when talking about donor conception.

  • The first style, “thoughtful and imaginative conversations,” appeared in seven families across all family types. These conversations were longer and richer than average, with children playing active roles in developing the topics. For example, four-year-old Elena developed her own theory that babies appear when “the heart joins the tummy,” even creating her own word “estúcula” to describe the exact moment a baby appears, while her mothers supported her creative thinking with open-ended questions. (Elena was retelling her mothers’ story of hearing her heartbeat for the first time.) These conversations included emotional content and often followed where the child’s curiosity led.

  • The second style, “narrative conversations with magical elements,” showed up in four families. These were shorter, more parent-led conversations where mothers used fairy tales or magical stories to explain donor conception. Parents used familiar metaphors like “seeds” and “eggs” but called them “little beans,” “white dots,” or “little arrows” to match what they thought their child might understand. For instance, one mother created an elaborate tale about a mother bear searching everywhere for a magic egg so she could have a baby bear. Children in these conversations mostly responded with brief answers and didn’t direct where the conversation went, but the emotional tone was positive.

  • The third style, “realistic conversations with classic metaphors,” appeared in six families, mostly different-sex couples. These were the most straightforward, factual conversations with the least elaboration. Parents did most of the talking, explaining reproductive mechanics using standard metaphors like “the little seed”, “the eggs”, and “the doctor who helps” without much creative adaptation. Children took passive roles, usually just responding “yes” or “no.” One example showed a mother providing important information but then asking closed questions like “Do you remember all that?”.

Limitations: This study included only 17 families, which is a relatively small number, making it difficult to know whether these findings apply broadly to all donor-conceived families. The study also included very few fathers. It’s possible that if more fathers had participated, we would see different patterns in how mothers and fathers tell these stories. The children in the study were young. This means the study couldn’t capture how these conversations change and develop as children get older and start asking more complex questions during middle childhood or their teenage years. Another important limitation is that the researchers didn’t track whether families were having these conversations for the first time or the hundredth time.

Editor’s Note

An important gap in this study is that we don’t know which families were talking about donor conception for the first time and which families had been having these conversations all along. This missing information is essential for understanding the findings, particularly the three conversational styles that emerged.

For example, I would hypothesize that the most elaborative style—Group 1’s “thoughtful and imaginative conversations”—likely represents families who had already built a foundation of simple concepts and accurate language through earlier, repeated stories. Elena’s creative theory that conception happens “when the heart joins the tummy” and her made-up word, shows a child making sense of information she’d heard before. Children can think imaginatively like this after they first hear the basic facts about their conception and their family. Concrete information allows them to contemplate, question, and reimagine.

Group 2’s fairy tale approach didn’t get children very engaged—children responded in brief monosyllables. This limited participation could mean that magical stories, rather than making donor conception easier to understand, actually create confusion that makes it harder for children to connect the story to their own lives and bodies.

Without knowing families’ disclosure histories, we can’t tell whether Group 3’s more rigid, factual style shows the limitations of accurate language or simply the awkwardness of talking about this for the first time. Research shows different-sex couples (who made up most of Group 3) typically tell their children later than other family types. These conversations may have been less elaborative not because parents used factual terms, but because they were navigating their first disclosure conversation with understandable nervousness.

Applications: Parents can benefit from understanding that origin storytelling is an ongoing, co-constructed process rather than a single disclosure event. Mental health professionals can help parents develop skills in elaborative reminiscing, including asking open-ended questions, following children’s leads, scaffolding thinking, and creating space for emotional discussion.

Funding Source: This work was supported by Scholarship N° 21190081, ANID Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo, Santiago de Chile.

Lead Author: Javiera Navarro-Marshall is affiliated with Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile. Her work focuses on family conversational processes, donor conception, and identity development in donor-conceived children. She is a mother through donor conception.

Regulatory Context: Chile currently has no laws regulating donor conception or assisted reproductive technology. Fertility treatments happen entirely through private clinics, with each clinic following its own rules and procedures, though most clinics voluntarily adhere to standards set by the Latin American Network of Assisted Reproduction (REDLARA). However, proposed legislation would shift Chile from an unregulated environment to one with specific prohibitions on surrogacy and egg donation.

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